Ryan Castleberry
I served as a Tactical Air Control Party specialist in the United States Air Force — one of the most demanding roles in the military. The job required embedding with Army units and coordinating close air support in combat zones. It also left me with a traumatic brain injury that changed everything.
Not the deployment. Not the combat. The injury itself was invisible. And that’s what made it so destructive.
From the outside, I looked fine. Sounded fine. So everyone assumed I was fine. But my brain was different. Anxiety got louder. Thoughts looped and wouldn’t stop. A grocery store felt like a war zone. I’d snap at the people I loved and couldn’t explain why.
I lost my home. I survived a motorcycle crash that sent me face-first through a windshield. I watched a flood destroy everything I owned. My dog died in a fire. The woman I loved left because I turned my grief into a weapon. And my daughter — my greatest love and my deepest failure — eventually asked me to sign away my parental rights.
Through all of it, the TBI was there. Making every thought louder, every emotion sharper, every reaction faster than my brain could catch.
It took years before I understood what was happening to me. And more years before I found the tools to manage it — therapy, endurance sports, brotherhood, meditation, and something I never expected: mercy.
I wrote a book about it. It’s called Mountains, Monsters, and Mercy. I narrated the audiobook myself because nobody else could read these words the way they were lived. And I created a framework called the 30-Day Mercy Climb — built on four daily pillars: movement, reflection, connection, and mercy — because I wanted to give other TBI survivors what I wish someone had given me when I was drowning.
March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. 2.8 million Americans sustain a TBI every year. Most of them suffer in silence because the wound is invisible.
My brain injury journey isn’t over. It never will be. But I’m climbing. Every single day. And if my story helps one person understand what’s happening to them — or helps one family understand what their loved one is going through — then every page was worth writing.
Ryan Castleberry
Air Force Veteran (TACP) | TBI Survivor | Author
Canyon Lake, Texas
RyanCastleberry.com