The Double-Edged Sword Called "HOPE"

January 22, 2009

The Double-Edged Sword Called "HOPE"
by Lily Casura
Healing Combat Trauma
"Got hope?" the Obama bumper sticker asked. (Hey, we're non-partisan here, it's just an illustration to make a point.)

The reality is, hope turns out to be VITAL, not optional, in someone's struggle to "heal." And "healing," of course, is not specifically an end-result, a "one and done" event -- but a progress along a continuum.

Even the Bible talks about how, "without vision, the people perish." Emily Dickinson, who it's easy to imagine as a profoundly depressed, but nevertheless highly imaginative New England poet, referred in one of her more famous poems to hope "as a thing with feathers." Meaning, pretty airy, light-weight, and able to fly away. Hard to trap and catch, hard to hang onto. If you put the two concepts together, though, hope is both necessary AND hard to hard to hang onto. No wonder it's so important.

Over the last few months, I've been watching as a hardened combat veteran, with severe PTSD, has stepped out of his comfort zone, and put his "hope" to the test: Hope that there was a life for him outside the realms of severe combat trauma. It's been incredibly interesting and refreshing to see what's happened to him since. And hope shows up at every turn. Without going into it in much depth here -- there'll be another time and place for that -- I've been able to see his physiology as well as his psychology change, in just a few short months -- and I've seen the renewal of "hope" this has caused within him. For one thing, hope to be considered more than just another "crazy, effed-up combat veteran" -- the mask he's apparently worn for society for years (decades, in his case). Hope that he can have an actual life and happiness beyond what he had been reconciled to, by virtue of "throwing off" some of what's hindered him (the Biblical wording here is purely incidental.)

The deal about having a mask that you wear, as a combat vet, because it's what society expects of you -- and it's also what allows you to keep other people at bay -- is a very interesting concept in its own right. It helps, but it also hinders. It frees, but it also constrains. And suddenly, with better health, comes the realization that it may be time to consider laying that mask down, at least part-time.

Whoa. Strangely...that turns out to be a tad problematic.

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