Lyndie Irons was prepared for the worst upon sharing the unbridled truth about her late husband Andy Irons. After all, though he was exalted as an incandescent force in competitive surfing, the three-time world champion had earned a reputation in the industry for his substance abuse and at times volatile personality.

A wild card on and off the water, Andy’s battle with addiction and mental illness wasn’t a secret, Irons says, not among those who knew him. But his closest friends and the tight-knit surf community did manage to keep the public in the dark during the years he spent at the top of the professional surfing world, seemingly invincible. “No one talked about it,” Irons says. “Maybe to protect him, maybe because you can’t expose that vulnerability as an athlete because it shows a sign of weakness.”

Either way, Irons believes it wasn’t the pressure of competition or fame that unraveled him. “Andy couldn’t sit still for too long,” she says. “I can’t imagine him living a normal life or having a typical job. Being on the road 24/7 kept his mind busy. It might have even helped him get through things better than if he were at home.”

In her early 20s at the time, Irons kept quiet through her husband’s euphoric highs and self-destructive lows, supporting him while managing his hectic schedule and finding her own way launching a swimwear line. “It was all so new to me,” Irons says. “I never once asked for help, even when Andy was in rehab. I was just trying to get through every day the best I could.”

Andy was on tour in Puerto Rico in 2010 when Irons got word that he’d fallen ill and pulled out of competition. On his return trip home to regroup in Hawai‘i, he made a stopover at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and checked in to the hotel room where he was later found unresponsive, leaving Irons with an unborn son and painful truths that took years to finally bring to light.

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Following Andy’s death, Irons was approached by countless Hollywood producers looking to tell the tragic tale on film. But it wasn’t until she met with Teton Gravity Research—a Wyoming-based sports media company that had worked with Andy for years—that she felt his story would be in the right hands.

“They were the ones that massaged the truth out of me and talked me into to telling the whole story,” Irons says. “It was a really hard process, but really healthy in the long run. They helped me more than they’ll probably ever know.”

So what was it like reliving her and Andy’s whirlwind nine-year relationship and the downward spiral that brought him his untimely end? “Traumatizing,” Irons says. “Looking back on my interviews in the film, I was still very guarded about everything. I was grieving, and I felt like I wasn’t honoring Andy by talking about his struggles.”

As it turns out, talking about it was the best thing she could’ve done. During production for Andy Irons: Kissed by God, Irons was making monthly visits to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to pour over interviews with the TGR production team and embarking on a cathartic journey of coming to terms with Andy’s death and dispelling misconceptions about his life. “Now I feel like I’m honoring him by speaking his truth,” Irons says. “Countless people have reached out to me and said that the movie has changed their life.”

The film’s overwhelmingly positive feedback was the final push she needed to launch the Andy Irons Foundation, a cause Irons took up full time after selling her swimwear business, Acacia, in 2017. So far the film has been the foundation’s biggest platform, but it’s just the beginning for AIF.

Though Irons gave up the swimwear line to spend more time being a mom to her son, Axel, she’s busy as ever diving headfirst into unfamiliar waters in the nonprofit world. She’s currently in talks with the National Alliance on Mental Illness about screening the film in schools around the country next year, so needless to say, the work is going well.

And that’s not all. Irons recently learned that Andy’s rival-turned-confidant Kelly Slater successfully campaigned to add a dedicated psychiatrist to the world tour in the wake of her husband’s death. “The more you ask for help, the more help there is out there,” Iron says. “You just have to be OK with asking.”