2020 class of Dole Caregiver Fellows, advocates for caregivers of wounded veterans.

Father Caring For Wounded Veteran Daughter Earns National Honor

Patch.com
By D'Ann Lawrence White, Patch Staff
May 17, 2020

Joseph Narvaez has been named to the 2020 class of Dole Caregiver Fellows, advocates for caregivers of wounded veterans.

Joseph Narvaez became the primary caregiver for his wounded veteran daughter, Laura.

(Dole Caregivers Fellow)

CLEARWATER, FL — After his daughter suffered injuries while serving in the Air Force, including a traumatic brain injury from an improvised explosive device, Clearwater resident Joseph Narvaez stepped up to become her primary caregiver.

Now Narvaez is being honored for his commitment by being asked to join the 2020 class of Dole Caregiver Fellows.

The Fellows are 30 military and veteran caregivers who have been carefully selected from across the country to represent Americans caring for a wounded, ill or injured service members or veterans at home.

The role of these Fellows has never been more important as caregivers are under unprecedented stress due to the threat of the coronavirus, said Steve Schwab, CEO of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation based in Washington, D.C.

As a Dole Caregiver Fellow, Narvaez will serve as a leader, community organizer and advocate for the nation's 5.5 million military caregivers – the spouses, parents, family members and friends who provide more than $14 billion in voluntary care annually to someone who served.
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"22" is not honorable for Memorial Day or any other day!

Dishonoring their lives on Memorial Day

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 19, 2020

If you hate it when I rant...you won't like this one! My anger is directed toward all the people out there participating in spreading the lie that 22 veterans a day commit suicide. If you are one of them, doing your pushups, thinking that you are helping, you are not. You may feel good about doing it, but the only people you are helping are the ones collecting the money you raise for them!

I have been fighting that ear worm since the report came out and it is time for more people to do whatever it takes to stop this bullshit! The known cases have gone up since suicide awareness started. It has only made them aware of other veterans giving up when they need to be made aware that their lives can be a hell of a lot better than they are aware of!

York police raise suicide awareness with 22 push-ups per day

YORK, Maine — The York Police Department has entered a challenge to complete 22 push-ups for 22 days to bring awareness to veteran and law enforcement suicides. An estimated 22 veterans die by suicide each day, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. That has given rise to a national movement to bring awareness to veteran suicide and those suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

York residents are encouraged to film themselves and participate in the push-up challenge using the hashtag #22yorkmaine on social media, according to the department’s Facebook page

I am a fan of the police officers but not this stunt!

Fact on veterans committing suicide
Report came from limited data from just 21 states.

From page 15

Are we preventing suicides or preventing the truth? Shouldn't facts matter? Should the fact that suicide is contagious matter? Telling a veteran, or anyone else, that there are a lot more taking their own lives, does nothing to help them want to stay alive. You are robbing them of hope and a reason to seek help to heal.

Good motives do not replace good results. If the did then you would not be seeing an increase in suicides among law enforcement, but none of you are doing pushups for your own house!
Police Officer Suicide Facts

At least 228 police officers died by suicide in 2019, Blue H.E.L.P. says. That's more than were killed in the line of duty. USA Today

BLUEHELP.org

I have a list of names on this site because they were not just numbers. Officers doing pushups for a fictitious number of veterans committing suicide does not make sense when their own numbers have been going up. How many more officers have to take their own lives in the parking lots of Police stations before you guys wake up? 

What will it take for you to grasp the fact that if you #BreakTheSilence about your own pain, you will help them? What if instead of hearing how many others have committed suicide, you turned it around and told them #TakeBackYourLife so that they would want to fight to heal instead of not trusting you to listen to them? They trust you with their lives on the job but they cannot trust you with their pain? WTF? 

Any idea of the fact that the people who started all this push up bullshit just decided one day to "do something" about it without finding out what needed to be done? MY GOD! I did the first report on veterans committing suicide back in 2007!

I admire police officers because there are many times you have saved my life! I survived traumatic events that could have killed me 10 times and most of the time, you guys saved me. It breaks my heart to see so many of you take your own lives because of the jobs you have but when there is still this massive failure going on when it comes to saving the people you risk your lives with, there is no excuse. It is even more infuriating to see all of you participating in this stunt that has been a failure and spreads pain.

If you really want to make a difference, learn some facts and then support the groups doing what they can to actually PREVENT SUICIDES!

Exit12's veteran movement workshop started by Marine

'I WAS A MARINE IN IRAQ, NOW I TEACH BALLET TO WAR VETERANS'

Newsweek
BY ROMÁN BACA
5/15/20

I grew up in a household where we were driven to help other people. My grandparents would go out of their way for others, even if it affected their own happiness and prosperity. And so this feeling of needing to be of help to others is probably part of my DNA.

In high school I had a friend who was a ballerina and I was intrigued, so I started taking classes—ballet, tap and jazz. The call of ballet was so interesting because it was so physical and yet so intricate and smart at the same time.

Exit12 Dance Company, which I co-founded in 2007, works predominantly with, and for, veterans of war. Sadly, all our 2020 tours have been cancelled or postponed because of COVID-19.

Román Baca, artist, choreographer and US Marine Iraq War Veteran, pictured in Iraq in 2006. ROMAN BACA

After losing two of my Marines to suicide in 2011, I started to develop Exit12's veteran movement workshop, Movement to Contact. We invite veterans to work with us and go through one of our movement workshops. Initially these were designed to rebuild the feeling of self and a sense of trust and teamwork. But a lot of veterans were reporting that they were also being inspired creatively. The workshops allowed them to create, choreograph and think imaginatively, and they would say, "wow! I did that! I wonder what else i could do with my life?"

We had one army veteran who served for the U.S. in the Vietnam War. He would self-report that the army trained him how to kill, that he was a killer, a shell he's been trying to shed his whole life. He came to a couple of our workshops and he did a couple of writing workshops with another veterans' organization. And now in his hometown, he is a peer veteran counsellor.

When I got into dance, I was drawn towards the story ballets that had impact and purpose. At university, we performed a piece by Antony Tudor called Dark Elegies. It's a piece where the children in a community die in a tragedy. We interpreted it as them playing on the beach and getting swept away by a huge wave.
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Find more inspirational stories here

Rory Hamill cautionary story about when helpers need help too

When the helpers cannot help

Sarasota Herald Tribune
By Billy Cox
Staff Writer
Posted May 17, 2020

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going to happen — emotionally, psychologically, to the public at large — once the coronavirus infections began their roller-coaster ascent in March, igniting shelter-in-place rules. 

SARASOTA — “I began writing at 3:46 in the morning on April 19, 2020. I’ve been drunk on red wine since the previous night. I haven’t slept. I haven’t stopped suffering. My own personal hell has been reignited, in light of present circumstances affecting us all.”

Motivational speaker Rory Hamill was losing altitude. The disabled Marine corporal had been here before, back in 2012, as he sat in his car, contemplated his gun, round chambered. Thoughts of his children pulled him back from the brink.

Hamill swerved from the abyss into public service, promoting his own resilience as an example for others. He was determined to keep a record of that journey, even amid the downward spiral of gravity.

“This pandemic,” Hamill pressed on last month, “although viral in nature, alludes to what happens to us as human beings, when we are stripped of our outlets and are deprived of our ability to socialize.”

When the news of Hamill’s suicide rippled out of New Jersey last week, the loss scattered shock waves across many of the 45,000 nonprofits dedicated to supporting America’s veterans. Hamill’s record still lingers in cyberspace, through videos, newspaper articles, a “60 Minutes” interview, and exhortations on his website:

“In light of my injuries, I learned that helping others, helps myself. No obstacle is impassable; by endurance, we conquer.”

Hamill, 31, encountered the impassable obstacle amid the national isolation. And as a result, everyone is taking inventory of mental health issues inside their own military circles.

“The wounded veteran community is fairly tight-knit, and when something like this happens, the word gets out,” said Kevin Kenney, an Army veteran and director of Operation Patriot Support (OPS) in Bradenton.
read it here

Also Combat wounded veteran Rory Hamill inspired others to live on...until he lost his own battle
On March 14, 2020 I posted a warning about the need to take action to help veterans with PTSD during isolation. I was thinking more about older veterans, since most of them are not online.

Suicides end when others break their own silence

Miracles after attempted suicides prevented

PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
May 17, 2020

Stories collected from Wounded Times

In 2007, Owen Wilson attempted suicide and it was big news, and spread around the world. At the same time, we were facing 948 attempted active duty suicides, along with 99 who lost their lives. It was also the year when many survivors faced charges. A female reservists was facing charges after she survived. She tired again, and again, she survived. The charges against her were dropped and her story showed that her mental health crisis had been pushed aside by her superiors.

"I Sat around numerous times with a .44 in my mouth. But for some reason, I just couldn't pull the trigger. I don't know why." said a 57 year old veteran who had attempted it three more times.

Not long afterwards reports of veterans attempted suicides had grown more than "patient count" in the VA. The eyeopener in this piece of news was the age groups who topped the numbers from 2000-2007. 20-24 year old attempts went from 11 to 47 per year. 55-59 year old attempts also went up from 19 to 117.

By April of 2008, the reports on attempted suicides were increased to 1,000 per month in the VA system.

And then something amazing started to happen. Veterans were talking about their own pain so that others would understand it is not all doom and gloom. 

Two years later, veterans were trying to do whatever they could to change the outcome and encourage veterans to seek healing instead of suffering. That is what Jeremiah Workman did as the recipient of the Navy Cross.

He went on to write "Shadow of the Sword: A Marine's Journey of War, Heroism, and Redemption"
read more here