After a catastrophic night at sea left him suicidal and numb, a retired Navy officer rebuilt through music, animals, and asking for help. This is his story of how color came back into his world.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses mental health & wellbeing, trauma & healing and suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you’re not alone. Help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
• Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au
In April 2010, Navy officer Rich Papais was at sea when a refugee boat sank beneath his vessel. He spent hours in the water that night, overwhelmed and afraid. When he was rescued, something inside him had broken. For years afterwards, Rich lived with severe PTSD, nightmares, insomnia, and a stutter that seemed to come from nowhere. He was suicidal. He couldn’t go to concerts, couldn’t ride a bus, couldn’t be around his grandchildren. He saw the world entirely in gray.
But slowly, through the unlikely therapy of music, the unconditional presence of his dogs and cats, the dark humor of his closest friends, and finally a decision to retrain as a peer support worker, Rich rebuilt. He learned to focus on the stage during his first concert in years. He started riding trains again. He learned that music could say things his voice could not.
This episode is for anyone who has survived trauma and wonders if they will ever feel like a person again, or who is supporting someone in that place. Rich speaks plainly about suicidal ideation, about handing over his Navy knife because he didn’t trust himself, and about the small, ordinary victories that proved recovery was possible. He talks about music to help with PTSD, not as a cure, but as a tool that met him where medication and words alone could not. And he talks about why he now volunteers helping others in crisis: because he never wants anyone to go through what he went through alone.
🕒 CHAPTERS:
00:00 When color came back
04:32 Joining the Navy to escape
12:32 Twenty-one years at sea
22:14 April 2010: the boat went under
25:58 Hours in the dark water
30:33 Handing over the knife
34:16 Invisible wounds, visible shakes
43:23 Why I was still alive
45:01 Music says what words can’t
52:04 The dog that stopped me leaving
57:43 Small victories now
1:02:37 A hand on the shoulder
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📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Lifeline Australia: https://www.lifeline.org.au
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Welcome.
We’re glad you found your way here.
Kintsugi Heroes was created from a simple belief: every person has a story worth sharing, and sometimes the story we need to hear arrives exactly when we need it most.
Our name comes from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold. Rather than hiding the cracks, they are honoured as part of the object’s history. We believe people are much the same. The experiences that challenge us, break us, shape us, and help us grow are often the very things that connect us to one another.
This channel is home to honest conversations about resilience, hope, grief, recovery, courage, love, and what it means to keep moving forward when life doesn’t go to plan.
Here you’ll find six podcast series, each sharing stories through a different lens:
• Kintsugi Heroes, hosted by John Milham
• Animals & Us, hosted by Natalie Stockdale
• Grit Diaries: From Grit to Grace, hosted by Simone Allan and Maryan Bova
• From There to Here, hosted by Emma Bellamy-Dodd
• Golden Threads: Stories of Disability & Resilience
• Pride in Stories, hosted by John Dwyer
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We help people tell the stories they need to share so others can discover the story they need to hear.
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