Can Love Live Again After Combat PTSD?

Are The Battles We Fight At Home Worth It?
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 17, 2017

The song "I Can't Make You Love Me" by Bonnie Raitt hit me hard every time it was on the radio in the early 90's. Honestly, it still does. I remember the darkest of times when I thought the song was about the life I was living. Now, looking back on those years, I understand what other wives are going through but as much as I understand that, it is more important that they understand what is is like coming out on the other side.

This was the part that I refused to surrender to,

"I'll close my eyes, then I won't see

The love you don't feel when you're holding me

Morning will come and I'll do what's right

Just give me till then to give up this fight

And I will give up this fight"

I was not about to give up the fight. Did I think about it? Sure, too many times. Did I walk away? Partly. I left him a few times but we never stopped talking. Even with everything I knew about PTSD back then, I couldn't get him to go to the VA, so, I couldn't find hope that he would get the help he needed to heal.

Finally, he agreed to go. Even back then we had the same problems as this generation does. I can assure you that the VA is not the enemy. They have helped generations of veterans and their families. Just don't give up and do not take "no" for an answer.

I already knew that love alone couldn't make him happy. It just didn't matter how much I loved him, how many times I prayed for him or how many times he broke my heart.

Instead of just walking away, I got pissed off! The Vietnam war wanted to take him away from me. It was almost as if I was fighting another woman for his soul.

I won and it lost. This month is our 33rd anniversary but it has been 35 years of a fight I never planned on. So yes, I get it. I get the pain, the endless questions in your mind and the fact you're probably getting advice to get divorced and give up. That is up to you but base your decisions your intelligence, not your emotions.

What made you love him/her? It is all still inside of him, but it is trapped behind a wall his mind created to protect it from feeling more pain. Trapping out the bad, it also prevents good from getting back in.

First, understand that he/she loved so much they were willing to die for other people. That kind of love is very rare. Maybe you're wondering why they can't show that same type of love for you? They would if your life was on the line, but when your love is on the line, they can't believe they are worthy of being loved anymore.

They forget the fact the men and women they served with were willing to die for them, but during a time when they need them the most, they don't want to bother them with a phone call for help. It is almost as if they have forgotten in combat, they called for all the help they could get, and didn't see anything wrong with that.

You have a fight on your hands if you decide to stay. The only question you need to know right now is, are you ready to give up this fight or are you ready to give up fighting this battle after combat with the wrong weapons?

Everything you loved about them is still in there. They just forgot how to find "who they are" because of how they feel about themselves.

Learn all you can so that you'll be able to understand why they act the way they do. Why are they making a big deal out of nothing? Why are they freaking out over such little things? Why are they acting like everyone is their enemy?

All the answers are there along with what you can do to make the decision to calm things down or make a stand. Pick your battles wisely. Too often if you set aside your pride, you'll be able to see it isn't worth fighting over. Save that energy for when you do need to take a stand.

Define their lives and your future together by what they were as much as what they can become again. Nothing in this is impossible. Remind them of what you saw within them when you fell in love and then tell them you know it is all still there.

The most important thing I can tell you right now is that PTSD is because they feel so deeply. Their emotional core is that strong! What is good within them hurts them the most. They are worth fighting for and things can be so much better on the other side of the choices you make today.

You can't make them love you... because they already do!

Vietnam Veterans Film "The Lost Homecoming"

‘They were fighting in something the public didn’t support.’ Filmmakers hope documentary gives them a voice

Sun Herald

Tammy Smith

September 17, 2017

In “The Lost Homecoming,” about 45 Vietnam War veterans, many of them from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, talk about their experiences both in country and when they returned to the States. Dawley, who lives in Diamondhead, produced and codirected the one-hour program, and Lenny Delbert of New Orleans is co-director and the filmmaker.

‘The Lost Homecoming: When Our Vietnam Veterans Came Home’ will air on WYES on Sunday night at 10 p.m. Courtesy WYES/Pan Am Communications

As a Veterans Administration psychologist, Harold Dawley heard many stories of war experiences and the aftermath of service.

But one story haunted him for four decades. He finally has been able to use one young man’s painful struggle to tell the story of a generation that felt torn apart.

“The Lost Homecoming: When Our Vietnam Veterans Came Home,” will be aired on New Orleans PBS station WYES at 10 p.m. Sunday, Sept, 17, about a half hour after the first episode of Ken Burns’s documentary series “The Vietnam War” airs. 

“They were fighting in something the public didn’t support, and so they really felt defeated,” Dawley said. 

The story that stayed with him was that of a young African American man from a small Mississippi town. 

“His best friend in Vietnam was a young white man, and he was killed right beside him,” Dawley said. “The thing that carried him through his time in service was the thought of his homecoming. He made sergeant. When he was headed home, he was looking outside the window of the bus and thinking about what people would say.” 

When the bus stopped in his hometown, the white man who owned the service station there looked at him, finally recognized him and said, “Well, boy, I see you made it back OK.” 

“He didn’t know that was going to be all the homecoming he was going to get,” Dawley said. The rejection the young man felt affected several aspects of his life. He became a drug addict, and his marriage fell apart.

read more here 

Thank You Florida National Guard!

When you read this report and watch the videos, remember, they left their own families to take care of the rest of us! "Thank you" is just not enough to say! 

National Guard provides support across Florida

News 4 Jax

Kent Justice
September 15, 2017

CLAY COUNTY, Fla. - The men and women serving at Florida National Guard headquarters are thousands of the state’s neighbors, co-workers and fellow citizens.

In the wake of Hurricane Irma, this group is providing support across Florida. The Guard’s emergency operations headquarters is at Camp Blanding in Clay County.

“Our main job here is to help the citizens of (the) state,” Sgt. 1st Class Rodney Watson said. “I mean, I'm a citizen of the state of Florida. So all we're doing is helping our brothers and sisters inside the state.”

Watson lives in St. Augustine. One of his commanding officers is from St. Johns County. His colleagues hail from across the Sunshine State.
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Florida National Guard distributing food and water in Fort Myers

Florida National Guard distributing food and water in Fort Myers after Hurricane Irma. Food and water distribution centers are scattered across Southwest Florida to help those in need after Hurricane Irma left the majority of the population without power and displaced.

UCF Hosts Florida National Guard After Hurricane Irma

UCF has answered the call of Gov. Rick Scott to host the National Guard on campus as it uses the football facilities, including Spectrum Stadium, to stage its recovery operations efforts in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

Ex-POW Vietnam Veteran Joe Crecca Keynote Speaker for POW MIA Service

Veterans honor those who came home — and those still missing — during POW/MIA ceremony

My Edmonds News

September 16, 2017

It was a heartfelt homecoming in so many ways, for so many, at the Edmonds Veterans Plaza Friday night.

For an hour, local veterans  —  many of them Vietnam vets — remembered those who became prisoners of war or were declared missing in action during our nation’s conflicts. The occasion was national POW/MIA Day, and nearly 100 people gathered for the remembrance held in the new Veterans Plaza space, which officially opened at 5th and Bell on Memorial Day.

The crowd heard first from keynote speaker Joe Crecca, a former Air Force Major and Vietnam veteran who spent more than six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam after being shot down by a surface-to-air missile on Nov. 22, 1966.

A North Bend resident, Crecca described being captured, beaten and interrogated, followed by eight months in solitary confinement. “During that time I tried to keep my mind busy,” he said. “The first thing I did was remember all the presidents of the United States in chronological order, then the states of the union in alphabetical order and all the capitols.” After that, he said, he “started working on math and physics problems and remembering classical music themes.”

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Wisconsin Vietnam Veterans Honor Flight of Remembrance

Wisconsin Vietnam veterans visit D.C. with Stars and Stripes Honor Flight
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Meg Jones
September 16, 2017

Photos: Stars and Stripes Honor Flight
A group of Vietnam veterans visiting the Air Force Memorial in Washington, D.C., pose for pictures. The Port Washington-based Stars and Stripes Honor Flight brought its first planeload of Vietnam veterans to the nation’s capital as the ranks of World War II and Korean War veterans dwindle. Meg Jones / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

WASHINGTON - They came because they wanted to visit their buddies.

They wanted to see the names of men forever 19 or 20, men who never aged or grew gray or started families or got on with the rest of their lives after serving their country.

They came to experience the camaraderie only people who have served in combat, no matter how many decades ago, feel when they come together. And though they weren’t expecting it — they also received the heroes’ welcome veterans of other wars had gotten but was cruelly denied to many of them.

A group of 80 Vietnam veterans traveled to Washington, D.C., Saturday on the first Stars and Stripes Honor Flight dedicated to men and women who served during that conflict.

Stewart Johnson came to visit Johnnie Vaught Jr. John Phelan wanted to see Bob Gasko. Ted Peller Jr. was paying his respects to Danny Sikorski.

Johnson, 68, a retired Milwaukee police officer, planned to leave a medal awarded to him for saving someone’s life in Vietnam. His daughter, Kelly Becker, encouraged him to instead take a picture of his medal and leave that at the memorial at the spot where Vaught’s name is listed among 58,000 others who lost their lives in Vietnam.
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