Hope stands up for the harmed

Hope stands up for the harmed
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
April 23, 2013

One of my least favorite jobs was working for a newspaper as Circulation Manager. (To tell the truth, I was lousy at it. Just not cut out to be a manager hiring and firing.) Newspapers have a slogan when it comes to deciding what story gets the top of the fold "if it bleeds, it leads." In other words when the paper is folded to fill stands, the stories showing up there will get the most attention. The worst story grabs people, or so they think but if this blog is any example, the good stories matter more.

The top post on Wounded Times is the story of Pfc. Kyle Hockenberry with a tattoo "For those I love I will sacrifice." Stars and Stripes had a great article on combat medics and his story was in it. Later on TIME picked up the story reporting that "Kyle Hockenberry, 19, lost both legs and his left arm in the blast." This post has been read over 35,000 times.

The second biggest story was about Marine Lance Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter, "his face missing an eye and crisscrossed with deep scars, stood on the floor of the S.C. Senate on Wednesday to receive the thanks of his state." That post has been read over 14,000 times.

I have a feeling that the first three stories from this morning will be at the top of the hit list of this blog soon.

Daniel “Doc” Jacobs an amputee getting his own baseball card. Combat veterans visit double amputee Boston survivor and then Cpl. Jake Hill. All of them offering hope to others.

They do not hide their wounds. They walk around with shorts. They tell their stories, not for sympathy but to show empathy and stand as an example of hope that brighter days are ahead of them. That their body is not who they are and the missing parts are not parts missing from their character.

I don't know if the people rushing to help the wounded last week really thought about what they were doing. I suspect all they were thinking about was that someone needed help and nothing more beyond that. Some people ran away and no one can fault them for that. Others rushed to help even though they didn't know if another bomb would blow up or not. They proved hope stood up for the harmed. They mattered. Someone, as we now know their names, decided to do harm to total strangers. It was not personal to them because they just didn't care. The ones rushing to help did care about them. There should be an award for these folks risking their lives to help someone else. It turned out there was another bomb. They rushed to help again.

I used to be a young wife, lost and confused after discovering combat had come into my life. That was way back in 1984. No one was talking about what I was going thru anymore than they were talking about what my husband was going thru with PTSD. Now I am amazed by how many are talking about it knowing there is no shame in any of this. The only shame in this is the fact we've been working on Combat PTSD for over 40 years yet lessons learned, the right lessons and studies, have been forgotten. As for the veterans and their families, most of them want help to heal but that is not their ultimate goal. They want to help others feeling as lost and alone as they felt.

They want to offer hope that it does get better. No one is alone in this fight back home. Most of the veterans and family members I talk to want to do something to offer that hope and it doesn't matter to them they will end up refocusing on their own pain to do it. To them all that matters is standing up and telling others it is not hopeless.

They lead the way out of the horrible and to Wounded Times, now that I get to decide what leads, these heroes do.