Stealing healing or raising awareness?

In the fight for their lives!
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 5, 2018
Stealing healing or raising awareness? That is the question that needs to be answered fast. If people do not know about a situation, they think it is only happening to them. If no one talks about what is happening to them, no one tries to do anything about it.

That's the point. We talked about suicides when no one knew it was happening, then tried to move onto healing when no one was talking about that either. Now we have to talk about both, but it seems far too few are listening...again.

"Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,How you suffered for your sanity,How you tried to set them free.They would not listen, they're not listening still.Perhaps they never will..." Starry, Starry Night

January 6, 2006 was one of the first post I did on a veteran committing suicide.

An Iraq war veteran's suicide earlier this month was a cry for helping others with post-traumatic stress disorder, his close friend says.
Douglas A. Barber, a 35-year-old truck driver, shot and killed himself on Jan. 16 with a shotgun as Lee County sheriff's deputies and two friends on the phone tried to talk him out of it.

That was when I was "screaming in an empty room" trying to "raise awareness" of something I had been tracking for decades on other sites I had online. After all, I'd been doing it since 1993 when I had been given my first PC. Truth is, by then I had already been active in writing about it to local newspapers since 1984. It took me two years before that to understand enough to open my mouth publicly.

I tried to do something that would hit more people back in 2007 with the video "Death Because They Served" but I had to a lot of research first. Over 400 reports later, it was necessary to get their stories out.

Back then, yes, "raising awareness" was vital.. It was the only way anyone would try to do something on a massive scale. Little did I know that the "effort" would be reduced down to an "easy number to remember" and people would get away with quoting from a headline.

Non-combat deaths, non-caring media was the first attempt to put the stories together April 16, 2007. That was followed up with Cause of death, because they served. It must have worked because in August of 2007, Greg Mitchell asked "Why isn't the press on suicide watch." (I checked to see if the original link worked, it doesn't by mine still does.)

The thing is, we knew there was a problem back then. We also knew there were things to do to make sure we changed the outcome. 

Raising awareness meant that veterans would finally find out they were not alone, and not just about talking about how many gave up. It was about facts, sure, but it was also about the most important fact of all. They could heal. Life could get better.

So, most of in all this since "before the flood" move on from talking about the "problem" after the press and politicians decided they needed to focus on this great American secret we lived with. The problem was when we moved on, they moved in and took over.

They took over the attention of the press and got boatloads of cash to talk about something they had absolutely no understanding of or even a basic enough idea to know what had been done, how long it had all gone on, or even discover the way to change the outcome.

We had to step back into the mix and not just fight for veterans to take back control of their lives, but fight to get the facts straight.

Before I got involved in giving suicides attention, it was more about raising awareness of healing.  That's why the books and the videos, plus all these articles.

If the truth is supposed to "set you free" then we need to make sure we set veterans free from the notion that they cannot heal. That their last worst day is the one they just had because with the right help, there is a whole new world of living with PTSD but not letting PTSD destroy them anymore.



If you want to know what they need to know, here is something they need to reminded of. They were willing to die because they loved others more. Help them live for love now too!