Rise Stronger: The Spartan Approach to Grief with Kim Pastore
The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena
Spartan Races
4.7 • 870 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Joe De Sena sits down with Kim Pastore, a widow who faced unimaginable loss when her husband, a dedicated SWAT officer, was killed in the line of duty.
Kim opens up about the overwhelming grief and challenges she faced and shares how she found the strength to keep going by turning to the Spartan Way. Through gratitude, resilience, and a commitment to honoring her husband’s legacy, Kim founded a foundation to support the mental and physical wellness of first responders.
Kim’s journey offers hope, showing that even in the darkest times, we can find purpose, strength, and a way to help others. This is a story about love, loss, and the power of never giving up.
Highlights:
00:00 Intro
00:47 Kim’s husband George and his SWAT journey
02:50 George’s tragic death and the grieving process
09:04 The Spartan way of overcoming grief
13:29 The role of adversity in childhood
15:15 Gratitude as a tool in tough times
18:35 Launching the George Pastore Foundation
23:20 Humble warrior games and community support
24:16 How to get involved with the foundation
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Jorge Pastore Foundation | Website:
https://www.jpastorefoundation.org/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | For me, there's no other option. |
| 0:05.0 | And I did the days in bed and I did the days, ooh, had some really, really dark days. |
| 0:10.0 | Every single thing in your life changes when you lose your person. |
| 0:13.0 | You can drink, I guess, you could take pills, you could stay in bed, or you could exercise. |
| 0:18.0 | Is to always come back to gratitude and always come back to love. |
| 0:22.3 | Use the Spartan way to get through grief. |
| 0:25.3 | Welcome to the Hardway podcast with Joe DeCena, founder and CEO of Spartan races. |
| 0:31.2 | We're teaching you how to overcome your obstacles in your life the same way we teach our 10 million plus Spartans to overcome obstacles on the course with insight from the smartest must accomplish experts from every corner of the world get ready to elevate your life today |
| 0:47.3 | go to the center here CEO and founder of Spartan and host of the hard way podcast I've got my pal Kim Pistor on the phone. She's got |
| 0:55.9 | a story to tell. And hopefully everybody is sitting down for this one because she's gone through |
| 1:03.7 | some tough times over the last year. But I think we can find some strength here. Welcome aboard, Kim. |
| 1:09.0 | Thank you, Joe. Great to be here. So your husband, |
| 1:12.9 | George, had a dream. Tell us what happened. So my husband George was a firefighter and |
| 1:19.2 | paramedic in Florida, and after the Pulse Nightclub and Parkland shooting, he started to become |
| 1:25.0 | a little frustrated with the police not being able to get in there and neutralize the threat right away or the paramedics having to wait for the police. |
| 1:33.2 | So they've started to do a lot where they've made law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics kind of all either work together or what's called a tactical medic. |
| 1:42.9 | So you can kind of neutralize the threat and also save lives. So he worked to kind of do those things in Florida, but it wasn't |
| 1:49.2 | quite what he wanted. And so he had seen something about APD SWAT and he said, that's where it's at. |
| 1:55.2 | That's what I want to do. Long story short, we moved out to Austin. He quickly pursued his dreams of all of those things and got |
| 2:03.2 | onto the SWAT team. Not easy, though, to get on the SWAT team. It's not easy, but that's right up |
| 2:08.4 | George's Alley. The crazier, the harder, that's just him. He's going to stay ultra-focused, |
| 2:15.0 | find the right people, get the right mentors, figure out where he needs to be, |
... |
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