The Heart-Ship of Loving Veterans with PTSD

It isn't hard to believe that Lily Casura has become an outstanding hero on PTSD. When I think of all the years we've talked and shared, it is hard to remember all the conversations but this one stood out in my mind as well as Lily's. We were talking about the kind of heartache she was heading into working with veterans trying to heal PTSD. First I told her that it was not impossible, but it was almost impossible to get through to them in the beginning. Then I told her that listening to their stories or reading their emails would break her heart but soon she'd see how great these men and women are.

To imagine that depth of pain comes with a person still willing to do it all over again no matter how much they suffered after is a testament to their character. They do not worry as much about themselves as they worry about their families and what this is all doing to them. They tell stories of how they ended up divorced or how they believe they are heading to it. They don't want to hurt anyone and they don't want to hurt anymore. Lily gets it.

Last week she did a post for Valentines Day. I've been out of my mind with classes and trying to keep up but this semester brings killer classes like typography and screenwriting taking up way too many hours a day. I have time to breathe now that several projects due tomorrow are done and wanted to post what she wrote. When she wrote heart-ship, it went right to the point of what love does when it is anything but normal to most, but normal to the world we live in with PTSD getting in the middle.

February 15, 2011

The Heart-Ship of Loving Veterans with PTSD
by
Lily Casura
Valentine's Day -- and coming up next week, five years of writing this site -- are making me think about holding the space of loving veterans with PTSD in my heart, and the "heart-ship" sometimes of doing so.

I was warned early on about this, by none other than Kathie Costos, who I esteem highly to this day. A few years into it, she wrote me in response to some problem I was bringing up, "I told you in the beginning when we first started corresponding that they would break your heart while you did this thankless job but the rewards would be worth millions for your heart. I told you they were magnificent! I am so happy they are starting to tell you how much you mean to them. That's really wonderful and even more important they are opening up. That is a big compliment to your work. They have a hard time opening up to anyone."

Well, open up they have...especially in a forum linked to this, which is the Healing Combat Trauma site on Facebook, and all the different relationships that have come out of that.
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The Heart-Ship of Loving Veterans with PTSD