Rising Stars: Meet Christian Meza

Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Meza.

Hi Christian, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
It is unnatural for a son to speak at his father’s funeral, especially when his son is just 16 years old and his dad was only 51 years old. This was my life on December 9, 2016. I stood in front of a full church at Nellis Air Force Base explaining to hundreds of Air Force troops, family members, and friends that my dad’s service dog was now going on to serve a new veteran.

After all, she had been through $20,000 worth of training to serve veterans with “hidden wounds.” My dad was the definition of ‘hidden wounds’ — displaying anger, rage, and verbal abuse daily. However, the man I knew in life became someone completely different on this daunting December day. At the funeral, I was bombarded with love from his troops explaining that my dad was their mentor, leader, and savior. Hundreds of stories of my father being a “dad” to the younger troops were filling my head, and so many seemed to treat me like a celebrity. The son of this American Hero; how lucky I was on this day. Lucky to be his son? This was a new euphoric feeling to me. After 30 years of service, and shortly after his retirement, my dad was diagnosed with severe PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). He also lived with shrapnel in his hip from a suicide-bomber in Iraq. This everyday pain and brain disorder caused my dad to be inhumane. I lived as normal of a life I could, making excuses for my father and keeping him away from my friends. I did my best to avoid this man I envisioned as a monster.

In spite of this, my lifetime of disgruntled feelings towards my father dissipated in seconds listening to countless stories of how he was so loved. I found myself wondering who this man really was. Was he this cruel human being that took every opportunity to be obscene? Or was he this American Hero everyone was commending? Expecting a somber day, this turned out to be a day of discovery of a man, my dad, I knew only to be rude and insulting. While my dad was alive, our family lived in a toxic world, as my grandmother described it. My mother spent years trying to explain to me that my dad had “hidden wounds.” Upon his death, he was a celebrity in his own right; a “true hero” as one of his troops told me. How could I be so wrong about that man I called “dad?” It dawned on me, as the nine-gun salute sounded, and the folded flag presented to my mom as a token of gratitude for my dad’s service, maybe they knew who he really was and I never did. Maybe my dad was a true hero and maybe he was wounded. Maybe this man did love me and just couldn’t be the dad we both wanted him to be. Maybe hidden wounds are real and some scars can’t ever be seen. That dignified day changed me forever.

What may have been eternal sadness to me will now be a revelation that things are never what they seem. I am now open-minded. The death of my angry father was birth to my freedom of compassion and understanding. I am now able to go forward with more patience, more empathy, and less judgment. While my brother, my mother, and I were completely broken-hearted, we all found peace in knowing that the man who fought for our country, and was our provider, was no longer in pain mentally, emotionally, or physically. For that, we are forever grateful. However, we all feared the future and wondered how we were going to survive financially. Lucky for me, I have the hardest working mother in the world and I thank God every day for her. Thankful for military scholarships and my amazing mother, I am able to go to college. I am able to do what other 20 years old are doing. I am able to find a home of brothers through my fraternity.

I am currently on track for Law School this time next year. I was able to score an amazing marketing and sales internship for a CBD web-development and design company. I am also a speaker and scholarship recipient for the Folded Flag Foundation, Folds of Honor, and Children Of Fallen Patriots traveling around the country telling the story of the short-lived journey with my father in hopes of raising money to provide collegiate scholarships for students who have a lost a parent in the line of duty — just like me. Witnessing firsthand the effects of war on the men and women desperately trying adjust back to their lives before war, I developed the position that I want to help and give back to our military. Through that motivation, I learned that CBD has helped so many with their anxiety, pain, and overall wellness. I was lucky enough to be on the ground floor of a CBD company that assists people in starting their own online CBD store — CBDStartup.io.

Additionally, we offer an array of CBD products at affordable prices so that no one is priced out of any product they want. We have learned that many veterans are unable to hold down traditional jobs with PTSD or TBI, and enabling them to open their own business and market a product that they themselves use has been literally a lifesaver for some of them. My experience at my dad’s funeral gave me the motive to be a disciple of the understanding that we are all experiencing events and issues that may cause us to be someone we are not. After all, we never know what others are going through and what scars they have that we can’t see. In times of offense, I no longer respond with discontent. Trespasses against me are met with a kind smile and a forgiving heart.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
NOT a smooth road at all….my father was a career military man who served seven tours in Iraq and Afghanistan for 9-11 months at a time. His deployment departures were hard and his transitions back were even harder. Each return home, he became angrier and much more obscene. He struggled with nightmares, daily pain, PTSD, and TBI until the day a post-traumatic seizure took his life. After he passed away, my mom, who was his caregiver, struggled financially and worked three different jobs to keep a roof over our head and send me to college. Although I miss my father tremendously, we do find peace knowing that the man who fought for our country is no longer in pain physically, mentally, or emotionally — and for that, we are forever grateful.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am currently on track for Law School this time next year. I was able to score an amazing marketing and sales internship for a CBD web-development and design company. I am also a speaker and scholarship recipient for the Folded Flag Foundation, Folds of Honor, and Children Of Fallen Patriots traveling around the country telling the story of the short-lived journey with my father in hopes of raising money to provide collegiate scholarships for students who have a lost a parent in the line of duty — just like me. Witnessing firsthand the effects of war on the men and women desperately trying adjust back to their lives before war, I developed the position that I want to help and give back to our military.

Through that motivation, I learned that CBD has helped so many with their anxiety, pain, and overall wellness. I was lucky enough to be on the ground floor of a CBD company that assists people in starting their own online CBD store — CBDStartup.io. Additionally, we offer an array of CBD products at affordable prices so that no one is priced out of any product they want. We have learned that many veterans are unable to hold down traditional jobs with PTSD or TBI, and enabling them to open their own business and market a product that they themselves use has been literally a lifesaver for some of them.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
As we have recently launched The Influencer Program, people come to us wanting to start their own online CBD store — and we do all of the backends of things (website development, logo and brand design, order fulfillment, etc.) and all the store owner would do is drive traffic to their online store and do the marketing side of things. We are giving any influencer with a following of 250k+ their own CBD store at no cost to them at all. Again, it would be all branded with their logo and brand vision for the store. We have a product catalog of 60+ high-quality CBD products that the influencer is able to select from to be sold on their new online store.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: cbdstartup.io
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianmeza/
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/spcheeks