I wish to share a little story of my life to help tie together how Invictus Clinic came about. It is the beginning of summer in 2015; I was fresh out of the Marine Corps and experiencing my first true unraveling. I had overcome so much resistance by this point in my life, but this ego death was overwhelming for a number of reasons that don’t matter right now. I didn’t know it was possible to feel such exquisite, torturous sensations. My internal storm was so loud; thoughts screaming to throw in the towel, to stop fighting, that nothing I did in the last four years amounted to anything, that everything I worked towards since a child was pointless. I often found myself unable to fall asleep due to my circumstances, so I would sit on the couch and watch Bob Ross. To be clear, Bob Ross has been one of my teachers since childhood, watching him paint some happy little trees was my only sense of relaxation. On one particular night my thoughts were so loud and so chaotic I found myself unable to move. On this particular night, the episode that was being shown was towards the end of the series where Bob was giving a statement about his diagnosis of cancer. Hearing this statement was the first step in overcoming my PTSD and allowed me to unlock the next part of my story. He said, “Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come. I’m waiting on the good times now.” Hearing him say those words brought me a single moment of clarity that provided me with a thought that has never left me, it was very much the same thing that Bob just finished saying with my own twist on it: “Life is our masterpiece, from the day you are born to the last breath you take, every day you are adding color. Yet, a painting with too much shadows is murky and you cannot see anything clearly, a painting with too much highlights are superficial and you have no depth. Only when a painting is balanced highlights and shadows is it a finished masterpiece.” The next day was the beginning of the rest of my life, and those ego deaths and continuing to be born again have continued through the years. It was the first true introduction into the end is only the beginning.