I'm Not O.KK
Welcome to I'm Not O.KK, a fresh and engaging podcast where we dive deep into the world of mental health with authenticity, empathy, and a dash of humor. Hosted by two dynamic voices Kimberly Jahns and Kelly Kranz, each episode brings to light aspects of mental health history through storytelling and today's personal stories and triumphs that remind us we're not alone in our struggles.
Every other week we tell a story related to mental health and wellness. With candid conversations we want to dismantle the stigmas surrounding mental health, offering our listeners a safe space to reflect on their own experiences and find comfort in shared stories.
Each episode ends with engaging discussions during the book club portion of our podcast where we dive deep into mental health themes.
As your hosts, we don't just navigate these conversations from a distance; we're right there with you, sharing our battles and breakthroughs. Our goal? To infuse each discussion with laughter and levity, proving that even in our darkest moments, a spark of joy can be found.
I'm Not O.KK is more than just a podcast; it's a community. Whether you're seeking solace, understanding, or just a good laugh amidst the chaos of mental health challenges.
Because when you're here, you're never alone.
I'm Not O.KK
A Tale of 2 Kevins: Resilience Found in The Dark
We spotlight the heart-wrenching and inspiring stories of Kevin Berthia and Kevin Hines. 2 strangers at the brink who come together due to a unique shared experience that happened years apart.
Email us at notokkpodcast@gmail.com
We appreciate you!
Hey, it's the I'm Not OKK podcast. Welcome. I am Kelly and I'm Kimberly and we are your hosts this evening. Please take a seat.
Speaker 2:Well, we're your hosts, every evening, every morning, all the time. We're behind you. We're there Just kidding, we're not. That's stalking and illegal. It's crazy and illegal, it's crazy. Banana towns, yeah. So how you doing, kelly, I'm good, I had a good week good things.
Speaker 1:You know, when you think back and then it's just everything's kind of a blur. But like you have a feeling like associated with, like your your blur, like my week was a blur but like I know it was good, but I can't tell you what was good about it I can't say I've shared that experience before.
Speaker 2:I did drive my car today and I was like, oh, how did I get here? Type thing. You know, we just drive.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was just gonna bring that up. I was like it's very similar to that, like the driving thing, and then all of a sudden you're just like how the fuck did I get here?
Speaker 2:well, at least I you what I was doing have you ever seen the movie click with adam sandler? I hated it. It was kind of upsetting, but it also made you realize that, like, the crappy parts are part of life too that you need to appreciate yeah, so you can have the good parts yeah yeah, how to click come up because he fast forwards through stuff that are bad, and we were talking about how you just like blur, things are a blur.
Speaker 1:Oh I just, I just went.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your train of connection is just off the rails, yeah and we're like two minutes in. So it's a. It's a great start. It's a great start. It's a great start anyway.
Speaker 1:It's a great start. It's a great start, anyway. How was your week? How was your shit? What's going on over there? Oh, you know.
Speaker 2:I'm tired. Constantly. You sound tired. The weather's been decent. Are you allowed to say that?
Speaker 1:to someone you sound tired. I know you're not allowed to say you look tired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's hurtful.
Speaker 1:Can you say you sound tired I? Can you say you sound tired I?
Speaker 2:don't know, that still kind of sounds rude. Okay, well, anything involving looking tired, looking sick, like, oh, you sound sick. No, this is my voice, but thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, you look great for feeling tired.
Speaker 2:See, yeah, that's a backhanded compliment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's a way I fed it. What I can't believe you picked up on that that it was a backhanded compliment. I thought you were just be like, oh nice, no.
Speaker 2:I realize. I like to think most of the time. I realize when I'm being insulted.
Speaker 1:I think I realize when I'm being insulted, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, sometimes people insult me and I'm just like, cool, thanks. But like the vast majority of the time I'm like wait, no, that's like oh, wow, you seem to have things together for somebody with depression, like what, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's that kind of thing. It's like a go fuck yourself.
Speaker 2:Why did you just say that to me? Yeah, like hey just say hey, you seem to have things pretty much together. Okay, thank you. Don't put a caveat on that gosh like oh, you're beautiful for somebody who's overweight. Okay, hate people.
Speaker 1:some people suck you're feeling, anyway, you are feeling. No, I want more. I want more angry kimberly.
Speaker 2:No, you don't this is a lot of anger. I don't want to spew it into the world. I need to soak up all that negativity again. Deal with it in therapy and take a nap. None of that sounds healthy, but okay, oh, dealing with it in therapy doesn't sound healthy.
Speaker 1:Kelly Soaking up all the negativity and then going to take a nap.
Speaker 2:No, but the stuff I just spewed out, I'm saying I need to soak it back up I don't want to put that on anyone else and then I'll deal with it in therapy because my therapist helps me productively deal with it. So thank goodness for therapy, am I right? Am I right, you're?
Speaker 1:right. Yeah, we're fucking nuts today.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:It's like we changed roles like I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm over here being a kimberly oh my gosh, what an insult to me. That's an insult like fuck you, oh my gosh. This is what happens when I don't have a nap. I'm like a child. I.
Speaker 1:I need a nap. You're a damn toddler, it's my it's my nap time.
Speaker 2:I watch Dateline or 2020. I take a nice nap and I wake up refreshed.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're interrupting that today, but yeah, we gotta we gotta be professionals, we gotta we gotta be disciplined professionals. We gotta get get shit done Right. That's right.
Speaker 2:I should have taken a nap. That's what a good professional adult would have done. Would have said hey, it's nap time, I can't meet up. But yet here I am because you know I care about you and your well-being and whatever.
Speaker 1:So here I am oh well, thank you for being there for me. I'll take you're welcome. I'll take that backhanded compliment. How's yours? No, it was. How's your two degrees going?
Speaker 2:all right. So mine was eating something for breakfast along with my coffee and like I want I want to say like I was like, oh, yogurt, oh, whatever you know. Like you're like oh yeah, yogurt isn't always the greatest I literally had, oh gosh, what's it called. I was going to say chicken and a biscuit. I told you about it the other day.
Speaker 1:Biscuits and gravy.
Speaker 2:I had biscuits and gravy, so I'm like I need to eat breakfast. So what do I have? I have like basically a roll of butter. Like all it is is buttered flour, and then I just dump more butter and like milk on it. Like that is not healthy in any sense. It's so good but like maybe I need to up that. So my two degrees is like okay you know, but you did it.
Speaker 1:You did it anyway, like you didn't specify what it needed to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I should have.
Speaker 1:It's a it's a start. It's a start.
Speaker 2:My new two degrees is going to be to eat a vegetable every day.
Speaker 1:I feel like you already do that. Do you not eat a veggie, do you not?
Speaker 2:eat a veggie. Do you not eat a vegetable every day? No, oh wow, it's embarrassing, but I don't.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'll have soup and you know there'll be vegetables in it or like a stir fry, but when I actually think about the things I eat like I had tortellini the other day and then I had more tortellini because I had the leftovers for dinner so it's like okay, where's the vegetable? And my body, I think, is like crying out for not sugar. It's like cool, thank you for all this sugar. We're packing it away for later, but please give me vegetables. I'm literally dying here. So, yeah, yeah, I think I need to like eat a vegetable every day, even though you're supposed to basically only be eating vegetables, and then like throw in other things yeah I mean, you gotta start somewhere.
Speaker 2:Though that's two degrees, but how's your two degrees, kelly?
Speaker 1:I like it. I well, I've been doing the email thing, so like the anxiety. Where I left it off last week was I was going to try and reframe the stories of like the emails in my head into like good things behind them, so I'm more like apt to open them.
Speaker 1:So, I'm like still doing that in the moment, but also, as we're reading this book on fuck your brain, I learned that an emotion sits with us for 90 seconds. So if I feel an emotion of anxiety towards that, like I, just I just like to acknowledge it and sit with it. So I'm also going to like take some steps to try and do that, no matter how fucking uncomfortable it is. But I'm going to work on this like comfortable it is. But I'm gonna work on this like email aversion that I have.
Speaker 2:So, if you're all, fucking sick of listening to it. Fuck you like I'm, I gotta do my work here.
Speaker 1:I gotta this is what I'm doing, but yeah, no, that's what that's. That's what I'm sticking with.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna keep keep going there well, you need to add on to it two degrees more.
Speaker 1:I did the sitting with the emotion for 90 seconds.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're going to do that, okay, yeah, I'm actually going to acknowledge that it's happening, like, okay, well, I have anxiety again. Okay, okay, it's over this email. I'm going to sit with that feeling for 90 seconds. I'm going to, you know, acknowledge it. I guess, honor the feelings, one would say, and then let it go, because our emotions are just meant to, like, alarm us that something's happening and then they're meant to go away. But you know, some sometimes our brains don't let them do that.
Speaker 2:Sometimes our brains just screw us over. You know, it's always like protect, protect, protect. And it's like, okay, let's calm down, we're deciding between pepperoni and sausage.
Speaker 1:Like we don't need to freak out about this. It's not that crazy. I make the law calm down.
Speaker 2:So do we have any two degrees? You know we do so. This one is from Tyler, she, her. It says hey, kimberly and Kelly, greetings from sunny California. I wish I was in California.
Speaker 2:They didn't say that I did. Your two degrees concept has been a game changer for me as a busy software engineer in Silicon Valley. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by trying to learn multiple programming languages at once, I've started with just 15 minutes of coding practice each day and I've gradually increased my study time. Your podcast has helped me manage stress and become my go-to during my commute on the 101. Thanks so much, tyler. Very cool, very cool.
Speaker 2:I mean I actually want to learn to code, so this is actually a great two degrees for me to add on to mine.
Speaker 1:We're being listened to on the 101.
Speaker 2:I don't even know what that is. I know it's the highway.
Speaker 1:It's a highway. It's just fun to think about Like someone's listening to us on a highway.
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean I think my partner listens to us on the highway. Does that count?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we know him.
Speaker 2:Okay, I guess he's. I'll tell him. You know, your listens are no good here no, no, tell him.
Speaker 1:But thank you, tyler. Thank you for writing in that's very sweet, awesome.
Speaker 2:Keep up, keep it up and if anybody else wants to write in please send us your two degrees yeah, we like that.
Speaker 1:You can email him to us at not okk podcast at gmail or there's links in our episode Bios description. Yeah, there are descriptions or episode descriptions that say two degrees. There's a link there and you could just text us your two degrees and it goes right into our email.
Speaker 2:I just realized isn't there a band 98 degrees?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was, back in the day, nicholas Shea, like come on, he hosts like every trashy Netflix.
Speaker 2:Yes, because it's funny 98 degrees plus our two degrees is 100 degrees Wow.
Speaker 1:So trippy, yeah same. Thing.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Kelly, it's your turn for the story. I want to hear it. Tell me, tell me.
Speaker 1:It is my turn. It is my turn for the story. I want to hear it. It is my turn. It is my turn for the story.
Speaker 2:Okay so.
Speaker 1:Knock my socks off. I'll knock your stockings off and your socks off and your girdle.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's offensive that you think I wear a girdle.
Speaker 1:Nobody wears a girdle, sweetie.
Speaker 2:A lot of people wear girdles.
Speaker 1:I believe drag Queens do yeah oh yeah, well, I'm thinking of corset, or is it? Wait, is a girdle or corset? Because I think I'm thinking a girdle is something like more like now I have to google this ish. Okay, uh girdle just a little girdle, break a belt or cord worn around the waist yeah, see, that's what I thought it was like lower.
Speaker 2:No, I think men can wear girdles too. No, I think men can wear girdles too. Yeah, oh here, girdle versus corset. Girdles usually have higher levels of compression than corsets, all right, so maybe drag queens wear them. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyway.
Speaker 1:Anyway, and we're back. So today's story is a tale of two Kevins. My sources are from two CNN articles, one from June 2014, and one from November 2023.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:There's also a YouTube source with backgrounds on the two Kevins and an all that's interesting article. Those are my sources for today's story and before I get going into the story, I just want to let everyone know that there is a trigger warning. The story does contain suicide in it. Now, hopping in a tale of two Kevins, the first Kevin we meet is Kevin Hines.
Speaker 1:On a crisp September morning in 2000, 19-year-old Kevin Hines stood on the rust-colored expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog swirled around him, mirroring the chaos in his mind. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, kevin was in the throes of a psychotic episode. The voices in his head drowned out the cheerful chatter of all the tourists around him asking hey, can you take my picture? With tears blurring his vision, he made a split second decision that would change his life forever. He just turned around and jumped. Taurus asked to take the picture. He just turned around and jumped In a heart-stopping four seconds it took to plummet 220 feet. He had the epiphany I don't want to die. I made a mistake. The impact of hitting the water shattered his T12, l1, and L2 vertebrae, but miraculously he survived. They say a sea lion, as if sent by fate, kept him afloat until the Coast Guard arrived. I knew you were going to love that part. That's so cute. I knew you were going to love that part. Oh's so cute. I knew you were going to love that part.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that sea lion deserves an award. He does. Oh my gosh, I just got chills.
Speaker 1:I know I love animals that help. I know Sometimes they just know. And there's so many stories about it. I'd love to ask that sea lion, yeah, is that a sea lion?
Speaker 2:yeah, that is no, but I think they're very. I don't know. I'm not gonna clap on podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, you just did and it was embarrassing. Yeah, that is kevin hines. Now we're going to meet Kevin Berthia. Fast forwarding, we're now in 2005 and it's March. Kevin Berthia is a 22-year-old African-American postal worker and a new father. He was on the same bridge the Golden Gate Bridge, teetering on the edge of despair. The weight of a $250 overdraft fee and the challenges of caring for his premature daughter had pushed him to this breaking point. And then, for 92 agonizing minutes, he stood on a four inch ledge with the icy wind while a California highway patrol officer, Kevin Briggs I guess that's our third Kevin arrived, His voice was a calm lifeline to Berthia and as they talked, a photographer actually captured this moment of Kevin on the bridge and the officer talking to him, and this became a famous image that was iconic to suicide prevention circles, and Berthia didn't know that. He had no idea that it was going to play that, but Berthia came off the ledge after 92 minutes because of this officer and these conversations. Now we're going to go to a decade later. It's now 2015. Both Kevins are attending a suicide prevention event in Sacramento.
Speaker 1:Kevin Hines we're just going to go by last names now Kevin Hines and Berthia. So Hines is now a well-known mental health advocate and he was scheduled to speak and Berthia, still struggling with his past, was there as an attendee. Their first interaction was tense. Hines, accustomed to sharing his story, approached Berthia with enthusiasm, screaming hey, you're the guy from the bridge. And then Berthia is still uncomfortable with his past, recoiled and was basically you know, I'm not ready for this. And that's the picture that comes into play. That that's the famous picture like hey, you're the man from the bridge. So over the following months their paths continued to cross at the various events that they were attending and slowly they began to open up to each other.
Speaker 1:So Heinz shared the daily roller coaster of his bipolar disorder the manic highs that left him buzzing with sleepless energy and the crushing lows that made even breathing feel like a fucking chore. I threw the fucking in there because because I feel that Beria, his voice often barely above a whisper, spoke of his ongoing battle with depression. He reveled in the guilt about his suicide attempt and keeping it a secret from his daughter because he didn't want to see what her reaction would be. He was very fearful of it. So as their friendship deepened, they became each other's lifeline. Late night phone calls became their norm. Talk to me, man is something that Berthia would say when Heinz called. His voice would always be heavy with the weight of his illness, because he was suffering too, and he'd let Heinz know I've been there too. So when Berthia struggled with public speaking because he wanted to get into advocacy as well as Heinz, Heinz became his coach, shared techniques that were honed through his years of advocacy, and together they began to celebrate milestones. Berthia finally opened up to his daughter and Heinz was able to mark another year of survival.
Speaker 1:In 2018,. They co-founded Second Chance, a support group for suicide attempt survivors. The group became a sanctuary where pain could be shared without judgment, and their contrasting styles complemented each other perfectly. Hines had a very dynamic presence. He could captivate large audiences. He could articulate the complexities of mental illness, While Berthia with his quiet strength. He connected deeply with the individuals one-on-one, especially young African-American men who saw their struggles reflected in his story, because there's such a stigma in the African-American community about mental illness and now there was an advocate out there saying this happened to me and they could see themselves in it. So something beautiful there. Their friendship sparked a movement Overall in 2020,.
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