“Protecting Your Peace When You Can’t Say No” with Dan Cramer and Mitze Alexander

Brigadier General Dan Kramer answers the phone with his kids waiting at the dinner table. Mitze Alexander has a friend on the phone who wants advice, not a session, and expects it for free because that’s just what Mitze does. Neither one gets a real day off, and both of them have learned exactly where to draw the line anyway.

This week on Veterans Radio, host Shelly Rood sits down with Brigadier General Dan Kramer and Army veteran and licensed therapist Mitze Alexander to talk about protecting your peace when you can’t say no.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER

✓ What it looks like when life stacks one hard thing on top of another, and the shift that changes how it lands ✓ Protecting time and connection at the top of a career, not after it ✓ What the families holding down the home front are actually carrying ✓ From the National Guard to the police force to the therapist’s chair ✓ Third-party trauma, boundaries, and what it actually takes to walk away from someone else’s worst day.

Brigadier General Daniel Kramer

Assistant Adjutant General - Michigan Air National Guard

Brigadier General Kramer has spent nearly thirty years in the Michigan Air National Guard, raising six kids alongside his wife Susan through every move the Guard asked of them. He tells you what rising in rank actually costs, and the one thing he refuses to let responsibility take from him.

Mitze Alexander

Licensed Master Social Worker - U.S. Army (Ret.)

Mitze Alexander served in the Army, spent seven years as a Muskegon police officer, and for the last decade has worked as a licensed therapist, much of that time with military women carrying trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. She names what third-party trauma does to a provider, the boundary that keeps her whole, and why it’s okay to not be okay.

Shelly Rood

Host - Hardcore & At Ease

Shelly C. Rood served across 16 years as a U.S. Army Reserves Intelligence Officer — Captain, Company Commander, and S2 — leading covert briefings overseas and overseeing security programs for nearly 4,000 soldiers. A Distinguished Military Graduate of Western Michigan University and a third-generation Detroit business owner, she brought that same standard of leadership into the private sector. She is the founder of a training and leadership development company, Mission Ambition, LLC, creator of the Others Over Self® leadership mindset, and the architect of Be At Ease, Woman Veteran™, a peer support program serving military women since 2019. She is host of Hardcore and At Ease, and author of Mission Wildflower 🌻. Today she leads a team of veterans who continue to serve beyond the uniform.