Thousands of soldiers return to long search for 'normal'

When I wrote my book For the Love of Jack self published in 2002, I wrote how our lives took on a "new normal" because living with PTSD is not part of the "normal" world most live in. Then again, most people are not combat veterans. What is "normal" for most people is not normal for veterans. How could it ever be? These men and women lived in a world few of others will ever know. Civilians do not know what it is like to have bombs blowing up, bullets being fired at them or what it is like to see a friend killed. We don't know what it is like even when we are married to a veteran but we know what all they went through does to them.
The fact PTSD is a normal reaction to the abnormal world of combat makes living with the aftermath normal for us. No matter if they return with full blown PTSD, mild PTSD or not, they come home changed. Every event in a person's life will change them to some degree. No one returns from combat unchanged.
Read the book and then see that while Iraq and Afghanistan are different from Vietnam, what the veterans and their families go through is not different. What is available is new and wonderful. The media reports open up a window to what was once a deep secret. As more and more veterans talk about the aftermath of combat, more and more will seek help to heal as well. As families like mine talk about successful marriages and what can be done to help, more will stay together and stop feeling hopeless. We celebrated our 26th anniversary last September. I can assure you that none of this is hopeless.

Thousands of soldiers return to long search for 'normal'
BACH upgrades staff, services for 101st Airborne
BY JAKE LOWARY • THE LEAF-CHRONICLE • JANUARY 30, 2011


For the last year, more than 15,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division have been fighting hard on the front lines in Afghanistan.

Many have been involved in heavy combat, witnessing death and injury firsthand.

Soon they will come home, where life is relatively normal by the standards of American masses. They will be thrust back into the lives they left behind as fast as they were thrust into combat.

Kym Owens, a Fort Campbell spouse of more than eight years who now lives at Fort Hood, is well attuned to the reintegration process. Especially after the first time.

"I didn't honestly know what reintegration looked like," she said, and equated the distance she felt from her husband to the quality of their relationship.

"He wasn't ready to snuggle yet. ... I also took (his attitude and behavior) personal," she said.

Knowing that many soldiers and their families face similar struggles, Blanchfield Army Community Hospital has ramped up its services to prepare, and has given its new reintegration program a dry run with some 600 soldiers already back from Afghanistan. But it will be truly tested in the next few weeks as thousands more come home.

More services have been added, along with more people and a more comprehensive way to identify and track the soldiers who might be experiencing problems.
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Thousands of soldiers return to long search for normal