Group of military spouses breaking the silence of PTSD

‘You think you’re the only one’: Documentary amplifies voices of military spouses facing PTSD
Idaho Capital Sun

BY: CHRISTINA LORDS
APRIL 25, 2022

“We just felt that we really needed to talk to this group of spouses, which has been silent forever – all throughout history,” Betty said. “We thought we need to get as much history involved as we can.”

‘I Married the War,’ a new film produced and directed by Idahoans about the wives of combat veterans, will make its Idaho premiere May 4

During filming of a new documentary titled “I Married the War,” Director of Photography Bill Krumm captures military wife Laura Daniero Nickel for an interview with Lucien Nickel. (Ken Rodgers)

After the success of their first documentary film “Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor” in 2011, Betty and Ken Rodgers felt in their bones there were more stories to tell.

Their project got men who hadn’t shared their Vietnam War stories in decades — or, in some cases, ever — to open up their experiences. It helped people who didn’t live through the war know what that conflict was really like. And it helped Vietnam veterans connect with perhaps the only people who truly knew what they had gone through – each other.

Perhaps most importantly, for some veterans, it allowed them and their families to start to heal from their trauma.

But there were others who deserved to have their voices heard, their stories told, Betty said.

What about people like her, the wife of a Vietnam veteran? What about their experience healing their marriage from Ken’s post-traumatic stress, caused by his combat experience as a U.S. Marine trapped in one of the worst sieges in American wartime history – the siege of Khe Sanh in Vietnam? What about the wives of these veterans from every American war who come home battered physically and mentally and need care and understanding?
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When I wrote my first book,  For The Love Of Jack back in 2002 (republished in 2012)  it was to #breakthesilence too many of us were living with. It was hard for veterans to talk, even to other veterans. It was even harder for wives to do it. When we did, we not only discovered we were not alone, we found support, gained knowledge and learned the ways of helping those we loved heal.

I am torn about the project above. I am grateful they were doing this at the same time greatly saddened that after all these years, anyone still feels as if they have something to hide or struggle with talking about it, makes it seem as if efforts among the pioneers like me, failed. If we succeeded, the stigma would be gone, hope would take over fear, knowledge would replace gossip and assumptions and no one would ever feel ashamed of surviving what they did, or loving them.

No battle in combat is ever fought alone and no one heals from what it does alone either!