A Cheerful Heart Does Good Like a Medicine

My adorable friend Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma , just did it again. She wrote a great piece on the families part in helping veterans heal. If you want to know what she wrote about me, you'll just have to click the link and finish reading it yourself because frankly she gave me too much credit.

While it is true I did what I did because I loved my husband and still do, (we're going on 26 married in September) it was because of what I knew about my husband and his character that I saw veterans through different eyes. I adore all of them.

Lily and I had a discussion about the difference between victim and survivor. What we need to do is see these men and women as survivors of what few other humans have been through. Then maybe we'll understand them better and know how to help more than sit back, feel sorry for them, complain about them and walk away a lot less. With over 300 million people less than one percent of the population serve today and while we have about 24 million veterans in this country, less than that are combat veterans. Understanding them, helping them and their families will in turn help the rest of the population living with PTSD.

Doubt it? Then think about the fact when Vietnam veterans came home there was nothing there for them when they needed help to heal from what used to be called "shell shock" and they were on their own. What they did was fight for the research to help them heal. That research lead to psychologist, mental health workers, more research into trauma and yes, even Chaplains trained in crisis intervention. So much came out of what they did that it is impossible to come close to all the mental health advances made over the last 40 years that did cannot be tied back to them.

How we treat our veterans and the troops will spread into how we all treat each other after traumatic events. It will help everyone understand that the part of the marriage vow of "in sickness and health" does not always come with a physical illness but often with an emotional one. It will help communities join together to help each other the way things used to be when everyone knew their neighbor and could count on them. Our future depends on how we treat these unselfish people willing to lay down their lives for the sake of the rest of us.

Marriages don't have to end. Kids don't have to grow up hating their parent because they don't understand why they act the way they do or blame themselves for it. They don't have to kill themselves or ever reach the point of hopelessness their only option seems to end their lives. None of this has to happen if people would only look at these men and women as survivors of something horrible.

August 06, 2010
A Cheerful Heart Does Good Like a Medicine: The Struggles of Living with PTSD...in Your Spouse
by
Lily Casura
I went to a retreat recently for combat veterans and their families. The retreat is in its third or fourth year of existence, and did a fine job with its core mission, which was providing community for veterans who had lost the camaraderie they'd experienced with other vets in combat. In theory it would also have been a supportive experience for family members who ordinarily might not find anyone else to talk with about living with and loving a combat veteran. PTSD wasn't the focus by any means -- it rarely came up -- but of course because of the demographic, many of the people at the retreat were struggling with the experience of having, or living with, someone with combat-based PTSD. And since the focus of the retreat was building community, not therapeutic counseling, the PTSD topic was somewhat of the elephant in the room, at least to me. So many people experiencing it, on one side of the aisle or another (veteran or spouse), yet few addressing it directly and certainly no one officially.
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A Cheerful Heart Does Good Like a Medicine