Change the conversation from Suicide Awareness to Healing Awareness

PTSD Patrol Changing the Conversation
PTSD Patrol and Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 9, 2018

We have got to change the conversation from Suicide Awareness to Healing Awareness! Suicides increase in Florida, country but we have failed at wondering what the hell we got wrong. 

Considering there has been this massive "effort" to change the outcome, no one seems to thinking about changing the FUBAR attempt of "raising awareness" that people were committing suicide. 

I've spent almost my entire life fighting against oblivious fools because I was also one of those who lost hope to the point where death seemed better than one more day on this earth.

No, I didn't try to commit suicide. I prayed I would get out the hospital bed in a body bag. Yes, I was that lost that I wanted the infection trying to kill me, to actually win.

I know what trauma is. I've been facing it since the age of 5, when a doctor not only told my parents I could have died, but used the word "should" have died. He was talking about how two things that happened, should have killed me. There was no earthly reason for surviving the push from the slide that caused me to fall onto the earth...on my head, and no earthly reason the first doctor missing the crack in my scull and the concussion. She told my Mom to take me home to get a good nights sleep.

One thing after another and every time should have caused PTSD in me, but it didn't for a very earthly reason. Nothing was left for me to "get over" on my own. My family had a habit of talking everything to death. It brought me out of the abnormality of what could have killed me, the normality of a safer existence. They never treated me like a victim. They comforted me for a while and then it was full swing into survivor mode.

I got into all this because of my Vietnam veteran husband in 1982 and have not stopped because while I do not know what combat did to him, I know what trauma did to me. I also know what it did not do and why it didn't. It is one of the reasons I spent years training in Crisis Intervention and becoming a Chaplain. 

Taking back my life from "it" was a challenge I was not about to lose and I am not about to let anyone else suffer in silence and fall into hopelessness without one hell of a fight!

I'm trying my best to get people to understand that their lives can get better. After over 29,000 post on this site, hundreds of videos, books and...you get the idea, I started PTSD Patrol because while I have seen the worst outcome too many times, I am a living example of the best outcome of all! I took back my life from the thing that tried to kill me.

Everything on PTSD Patrol is tied to driving. Yes, driving. Everyone can understand how we control where we go, how we get there but few understand how their vehicle works. This ends up with it breaking down! 

We are in our own vehicles! We are not our bodies but we are in them. The goal is simple and that is to make something as complicated as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder into something that if we do not know how to fix it, we go to a mechanic for our minds instead of our vehicles.

If you want to change the outcome, change the conversation! We do not want your money! I've done this work for over 3 decades and lose money every year because it does not cost much to talk or make people aware they can heal. Plus I have a regular job that covers the expenses.

We want your time so if you want to be part of the Road Crew, contact me. On Facebook, I am scoutpreacher and by email woundedtimes@aol.com. For videos on YouTube PTSD Patrol Sunday Morning Empowerment Zone

Kathie Costos DiCesare
Published on Feb 25, 2018
Starting today, we're going to be changing the conversation from suicide to empowerment. The only way to change the outcome, is to help veterans find hope again. They need to know what PTSD is, why they have it, but more than that, they need to know they can take back control of their lives. Lot better than taking their live isn't it?

Check back on Sunday mornings for more.

If you have one of those groups "raising awareness" then please stop talking about what veterans already know how to do and start helping them learn what they need to know, how to #TakeBackYourLife

Suicide transfers the pain to family left behind

Families of Suicide Victims Say Pain Gets Transferred to Loved Ones
Erie News Now
by Eva Mastromatteo
Updated: Friday, June 8th 2018

The families of suicide victims are faced with a different way of living, after the loss of a loved one. They may have many questions, along with a host of other issues. Venus Azevedo-Laboda, the founder of a group called Boots on the Ground

The families of suicide victims are faced with a different way of living, after the loss of a loved one. They may have many questions, along with a host of other issues.

Venus Azevedo-Laboda, the founder of a group called Boots on the Ground, in Erie County, knows that well. Her brother, who was in the U.S. Navy, committed suicide, after he returned home from overseas.

The non-profit veterans outreach program was created to support and help veterans dealing with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and suicide.

Venus Azevedo-Laboda says, "Unfortunatley what suicide does is just transfer that persons pain onto the whole family, and as families, we say, shoulda, coulda, woulda. I have PTSD from my brothers traumatic suicide so now I have anxiety, I never had anxiety before. Anxiety and depression."
read more here

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One more group not being included in the numbers you hear all the time about suicides tied to the military, is when they are still in the military.

The Department of Defense releases a quarterly report showing that an average of about 500 servicemembers commit suicide each year.

Keep in mind that while they were willing to lay down their lives to save someone else, they could not save themselves.

Armed home invasion left Mom feeling guilty?

Husband of wife who survived attack: 'She was the hero that night'
Good4Utah
By: Marcos Ortiz
Posted: Jun 08, 2018

PROVO, Utah (ABC4 Utah) - Hayley Peterson fought to stay alive. She didn’t want her children to be motherless.

Peterson spoke publicly for the first time after surviving a brutal attack during a home invasion at their Orem home last year. Her 4-year-old daughter was also physically attacked that night.

Rodolfo Villalobos pleaded guilty to the crime and Friday was sentenced to prison.

Prior to sentencing, Peterson addressed the court, telling the judge that she and her daughter are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the events that night.

“I am grateful to be alive,” she told the judge. “While he was attacking me I thought I was going to be murdered. I fought like hell for my life. I had to live to protect my children.”

Her children were in the home but their father was not. He was on duty. Steve Peterson is an officer with Unified Police Department. He said it was the hardest call he ever had to take. His neighbor called him with the news.

“She was hysterical,” Peterson said. “I didn’t even recognize who she was.”

He eventually learned his wife and daughter were brutally attacked in their Orem home.

Afterward, Steve Peterson who also requested the maximum sentence said his family did achieve justice. But he also walked away knowing that his wife still regrets not being able to protect her children.

“It was extremely heartbreaking to hear that,” Peterson said. “That was probably the hardest thing today is to hear that. But by no means did she fail to protect anybody. She was truly the hero that night."
read more here

Valor Act abused by some, victims left paying the price

Fixing the Valor Act for Victims 
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 9, 2018

There are many things that get to me. The most obvious one is PTSD in our veterans, especially Vietnam veterans. I got into this work 36 years ago because I fell in love with my Vietnam veteran husband. They have been forgotten about in all the "efforts" everyone seems to be talking about.

There is another topic that gets to me, and that is domestic violence.

I was a victim of domestic violence. As a kid with a Korean War veteran Dad, who was a violent alcoholic until I was 13 and he stopped drinking. For me it was what he was doing to my oldest brother and my Mom and the constant threat of it happening. So, I am a survivor of that. 

I was a victim of my ex-husband, not a veteran, deciding one night, I needed to die. As soon as the police took him away, I was, yet again, a survivor of domestic abuse.

There is a report out of Massachusetts about a Vietnam veteran who is accused of domestic violence. Vietnam service may keep veteran from facing assault charges on the Boston Globe

SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF

Louise Guy hugged her dog Blue. Guy’s ex-boyfriend is accused of assaulting her.

"Accused of slamming his girlfriend’s head into the floor and nearly strangling one of her golden retrievers, Warren R. Broughton faced charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and animal cruelty in a New Bedford courtroom."

There is no excuse for this. While justice should be measured with military service, justice must also factor in the victims.

It looks like Judge McGovern thought it was more important to honor the veteran's service than hold him accountable for what he was charged for doing to his girlfriend.

“Well, thank you for your service to the United States of America,” Judge James McGovern told him.

One more case of politicians writing Bills without really understanding what the hell they are doing.

The Valor Act’s author, state Senator Michael F. Rush, said in a statement in January that he would change the law to prevent such applications.

“Domestic abuse and assault is unacceptable, inexcusable, and intolerable by any individual, especially by a veteran,” Rush said then.

But his bill, which passed the Senate in May, did not end eligibility for those accused of domestic violence. Nor did it provide any way of tracking defendants who had already invoked the Valor Act in court.

The article points out that veterans do not want anyone to receive a "get out of jail free" pass. The Veterans Courts are great at holding veterans accountable. They make sure veterans get the help they need, support from a mentor to get through the program, and if they do not do it, they go to jail.

Too many times we have seen people take advantage of poorly written laws. This is one of those times. Read the rest of the article and see how many have abused this effort to do the right thing for our veterans, and left victims paying for it.

Disabled veteran left homeless after being hacked

Gulf war veteran and family living in a U-Haul van after hacker stole disability benefits from online account
Dallas Morning News
David Tarrant, Enterprise writer
June 7, 2018

DENTON — Jeff Slaughter needs answers fast after his monthly disability check didn't show up in his bank account earlier this month. The disabled Persian Gulf War veteran said he was told by Department of Veterans Affairs officials late last month that his account was hacked.

Slaughter had been staying at a La Quinta Inn off Interstate 35 in Denton, waiting for new veteran housing to open in Houston. But after his account was hacked, his money ran out. Today, he's living out of a U-haul van in the hotel parking lot with his wife, son and two dogs. Hotel management lent him a fan, but it was still a rough night.

"We didn't get much sleep — hardly any," Slaughter said, standing outside the white van.

A VA spokeswoman said that its eBenefits program, which handles compensation for the nation's disabled veterans, has not been hacked. Instead, individual eBenefits accounts — which 4 million disabled veterans use to get benefit payments — have been fraudulently accessed. Jessica Jacobsen, a VA spokeswoman, said about 2,300 of 7.1 million eBenefits accounts have been compromised since August 2015.
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