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Great American Warriors: Football ultimately took the life of her dad. She never lost faith in her Heavenly Father.
June 24, 2025 · 3 min
Discover Samantha Schwitz's testimony of faith amidst grief, chronic pain, and mental health struggles, teaching us the power of perseverance.
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In this video 0:00 Overcoming Adversity and Embracing Mental HealthComments No comments yet. Start the conversation.
Overcoming Adversity and Embracing Mental Health 0:00 So we were a pretty comfortable middle class family. My father was a former football player. He developed a lot of head injuries during that time, and they came decades later. And he developed a progressive degenerative0:10 brain disease, immensely declining, and kind of go backwards into almost like, a childlike state. Both his inability to work anymore and his extreme medical don't bankrupted my family. We lost our house. We lost our0:22 cars. I watched my father dying solely over years as his brain disease got worse. And so it was a very difficult time in life. My name is Samantha Schwitz. I'm the chief operating officer of Liberty0:34 Staffing Services. When it comes to my own personal health challenges, I do have a degenerative chronic disease in my jaw and my joints. I've been living in nonstop chronic pain for about 15 years. Especially at a0:46 younger age, I look healthy to others. Having explained people why I have to suddenly cancel plans or constantly feeling that guilt, like, I can't always be at places where I'm supposed to sometimes. There's definitely0:56 that that constant fear that I'm not gonna be enough for others. I would I do want to be a mother, but1:01 I have the fears of whether or not my health and my pain will all1:04 fall my back. But I've learned that nothing in life is perfect. You have to live that with hand and doubt, and you make the best of it. Change it if you can't. If you can't, you just have to keep pushing forward. After1:15 my father's death, I bottled a lot of feelings up inside of me. I didn't wanna process mentally the things I'd seen during that time or things I experienced. I just tried to push forward, and I never wanted to take time
1:25 for myself and process my grief. I fell into what's called a major depressive episode, and then I developed major depressive disorder, and I actually had to go live in a clinic for a week. I never in my entire life
1:36 imagined I would ever be in that situation ever. And it was apparently an accumulation of the grease over the last couple years after my father passed. I didn't wanna deal with him mixed with dealing with a chronic
1:48 health issue. For about 1 year, I was kind of loading in a reality. And it was really hard, and I honestly don't think I was just about it. When I had no interest in life anymore, when I had no interest in moving
1:58 forward, something inside me said, even if you don't want this now, the future you, you may want this. Just so much stigma around mental health and to people when they experience it, they're afraid to talk about it. It
2:10 really makes it worse. It really prevents people from seeking help. Huge advocate now of mental health. No matter what's going on in your life, if your mental health is starting to suffer, you address it. You start doing
2:18 the actions. Your body starts going through the motions of getting better with the safe side. Your brain will 1 day catch up to you, and that's the way out. Taking care of your mental health is very important. My father
2:29 was such an amazing man, and when his funeral came, there was a massive line out the door. People from the local neighborhood who hadn't seen him in decades saw that he passed away in the paper. So when I spoke
2:41 at his funeral, I said my life goal going forward would be to emulate just a fraction of what my father was and who my father was to people and to touch people's lives the way my
2:52 father did. Those are the ways I try to live out my life in his honor.
2:57 Thanks for watching this episode of Great American Women. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and get notified when future episodes are released. If you or someone you know would like to be considered for an upcoming
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