Boots on the Ground in Moore Oklahoma

This weekend, I put out what I call my "distress call" to one of our Peer-to-Peer Mentors who is also one of our Board of Directors.   First, what constitutes a "distress call?"   When I have a veteran that is exhibiting the signs of classic PTSD and not responding to family requests appropriately or to me, then I call in my boys (don't get offended, I just don't have any girls on staff for us at the moment).  A single father of a 5 year old boy, Mark gave up his Sunday afternoon to spend about two hours with one of our GWOT Veterans that is exhibiting the classic symptoms of PTSD (isolation, aggression, at-risk behavior, shall I go on...).   He asked the veteran, "What do you do all day?"   He responded, "Sit here and play X-box."   Mark looked at him and said, "Dude, you have got to have a purpose.   What has meaning to you?   What do you do that is productive?   You have to have a purpose."   When we left him, I put a sign on his television so that when he came in he would see it.   It was the dictionary definition of "purpose."  
  
Purpose (n):  the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc. an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.  ddetermination; resoluteness.the subject in hand; the point at issue.  (v)  to resolve  (to do something).

On Monday, an F5 Tornado left a path of devastation and destruction in the community of Moore, Oklahoma.   My Fight Continues Family, my boys, went into what I call "combat mode."   That means, they were given a purpose by a higher power.   Given their training from their respective military branches, given their life experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, they felt that their purpose was to go to Moore, Oklahoma to assist in the wake of the tornado.  Our first team left yesterday and arrived.  Explained their purpose and their gifts to offer and were quickly placed in charge of one of the elementary schools.  At 0700 this morning, their rescue efforts began.   Our second team with heavy equipment to use to remove large pieces of debris should be arriving as I write this.  

I have come to understand their definition of purpose.   It is something bigger than you.  It is something that no matter what, you are called to do.   I am a firm believer that we are all given our talents and gifts in this life by a higher power.  I am also a believer that we are set on a path in life with our experiences as our teachers.   Once we have learned, not far down the road, the student becomes the teacher.  On Friday afternoon, I will be leaving with our third team from The Fight Continues taking down the supplies that have been asked for based on their assessments.   It is my purpose.   It is my resolve to do this.   It is the reason for which I have existed or been intended to be utilized by my higher power.  Am I prepared for what I am about to walk into...probably not.   We have been assigned the elementary school and will be working with the spouses that have lost their spouses to retrieve items from their homes or what is left of their homes.   My prayer is that God gives me the strength, the resolve to do what I am intended to do.   

None, absolutely none of this is about me...The Fight Continues...my amazing boys....it is about our purpose as a member of the human race...a purpose to give back, pay it forward, and be there in a time of need.

Confessions....

This week one of my Peer-to-Peer Mentors stepped out of his comfort zone and posted this as his Facebook:
Been off-line for a while for some health issues. I feel that now the war is over I can come clean with problems that I have had because of the war. I never wanted to be taken out of the fight and when I finally was because of my drinking, I stuffed away all the other things that nobody knew about. To all my friends who were there with me I hope my words will help heal. To all of my friends who witnessed White 5 flash and blow apart I pray that some understanding comes from my words. I thank God every day I am here after that event. Nobody had lost legs or shrapnel wounds. We all know that was far to common and to not be among their numbers made me feel grateful. I have however over time had a deterioration of my left leg because of a small fracture between my L1 and S5 vertebrae. This was and still is hard for me to deal with as I was able to hide it and keep up with the platoon before however I am now starting to have to use a cane for balance. I won't let this issue stop me though, I just cannot hide it anymore. I am only putting all this out there all at once so I don't have to explain the retarded cane I am using for balance. It feels very uncomfortable when I get asked why I am using a cane when I am only 28 years old. That is the only secret that I have kept locked away since the beginning of my war. I got hurt.
This is far too common with our GWOT veterans.   One of the set questions that we ask during our initial assessment is "What do you want to be doing?  Where do you see yourself?"   They have all said that they want to be in combat with their units, their family.   I am blessed to be working along side and in the think of things with these young men and women.  But I have also been blessed to have the support of some equally amazing men and women from our Vietnam Era and War.   They have supported not just my passion for our military and veterans but have invested in my work with The Fight Continues.  They know that it was the hell that they went through that we have so many of our GWOT Veterans coming home today.   That is a blessing but for so many it is a mixed blessing.  They know that they are blessed to be with their families here but they feel as if they have abandoned their units, their military families for being here.   Then our military sends them out into the civilian world without support or transition assistance that is of any substance.   But at the same time, our civilian is not prepared either for the inundation we are started to experience and will continue to experience as the military downsizes.  As a whole, most have to admit that they do not understand what TBI even stands for let alone the impact it has on the individual, families, and potentially the community.   As a whole, most have to admit that they have no clue about PTSD beyond the stories that the media provides.  We have a society that is so, so sheltered.  I have seen the marriages and families that are being destroyed by the warrior's inability to accept that they still carry the horrors of war with them.   I have seen the wounded individuals that are afraid to go to sleep, afraid to go out into their communities, that are tired of answering the questions, tired of being stared at because they have had a limb amputated or three amputated or something like being 28 and needing a cane to keep their balance.   What this Marine has confessed is not isolated.   He is not the first and will not be the last.
What does our society need to do?   First, stop allowing the only knowledge you have of something be what the media chooses to let you see.   Not all homecomings are warm and fuzzy...most are not.   Education.   Start educating yourself about Combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury due to multiple exposures to blasts/explosions.  Pressure on our elected officials.  Pressure?   Yes, remember that you as a constituency elected these individuals to do a job.  Hold them accountable for their decisions, their lack of decisions.  The vary individuals that have upheld the foundation of what our country was founded on, that pursuit of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness...are still waging battles but these are now battles that they are waging for their own freedom.   Freedom from horrors of war that do not share easily with others that have not walked in their shoes.   Freedom from the limitations that their physical wounds.   Freedom that we take for granite.

"Only What You See"

Tonight, I got to have dinner with an amazing young man.   We were introduced to each other this past fall by an equally amazing young lady.   They had a number of things in common, on particular thing was their ability to express themselves through their art.   Tonight, Chris was showing me his art work that he had gotten back in school today and he showed me this picture entitled "Only What You See."   He had submitted this past fall for the St. Louis Post Dispatch's 100 Neediest Cases and it was number 19. 

For me, it spoke volumes about the perceptions that people take at face value.  People look at a woman and assume if they see a black eye that it is the result of an abusive partner that, well for lack of a better description, takes their anger out on or are part of a cycle of abuse that she has the power to walk away from.  But, pardon the pun, that is taking things at face value.  

Let us take this to the next level, combat PTSD or otherwise known as the "invisible wounds."  What is behind that black eye?  What is behind the eyes?  What is behind the tears?   What about the fears about if they say something, they will make them mad?  What about the fears of thinking that they are not doing enough or anything?   Are they wrong for thinking about walking away from that person?  Does the person even see that there is something wrong?   Has anyone thought that the person that inflicted the visible marks has so many invisible wounds themselves that are so horrific that they cannot tell about it?  In Kevin Sites's book The Things They Cannot Say, he quotes SPC Joe Caley US Army / Vietnam Veteran talking about his own PTSD "I felt guilty, basically every time you got into an argument.  They couldn't understand why you feel the way you feel.  You just get mad and you can't tell them why.  I mean, who are you going to talk to about it anyway and what are you going to say" (Sites 160).  But as a society, we judge so quickly and attach stereotypes to individuals that leave visible wounds on others.  

I am not condoning abuse or violence for that matter.   What I am saying is that as a society, as a friend, as a family member, as a spouse, a co-worker, an onlooker...ask ourselves, what are the invisible wounds?   If you know that the individual is a veteran...in fact you know that the individual is a GWOT veteran...be honest with them and with yourself as the onlooker.   You can not even begin to fatham what it is that they saw, or did.   You can not say "I got it" unless you were there.   There is some form of combat; some form of war because war is not human.   War is not humane.   War is a total different world where individuals are forced to do things that they would never do anytime or anywhere else.   A world where they are forced to see things they would never see elsewhere.   To hear, to smell, to feel, ... it is a reality that no textbook can prepare you for.   It is a reality that they do not tell you during Basic or Boot Camp, will be your reality for the rest of your life whether you intend for it to be or not.   It becomes ingrained in you.  

When I saw Chris's drawing, I immediately saw not just what was a visible wound but what was an invisible wound.  To see the extent of the invisible wounds, you look into the eyes.   For me, I look into the eyes of former students that I have sent off into the military...that I have sent packages to in far away places...and there is no longer a spark in their eyes.   There is a blackness that is haunting to this day.   There is a nervousness that others do not see.  Our society ignores the invisible by thinking out-of-sight-out-of-mind but that is so so far from reality.   The reality is that the war they were in far away is too often still going on inside of that person.  A few years ago, I had the opportunity to reconnect with a graduate from the high school that I teach at, that I had met in detention (which that seems to be a theme with the Marines that I know and is a topic for a later blog), and worked with to pass his classes so that he could go in to the Marines on time the summer after 9/11.  He did 8 years of active duty being in both the 2003 and 2005 Fallujah pushes and 2 years of funeral duty.  He and his amazing wife (a New York girl that will fight to the death for her Marine) came to hear me speak about the importance of our military around Veterans' Day.  We were talking after and I was encouraging him to come and speak with me.   Tina (his wife) thought that would be an amazing therapeutic tool in fighting his PTSD.   I will tell you that when I saw him for the first time an probably 9 years, I looked into his eyes and the spark that I loved so long ago was no longer there and it made me sad.  So we talked at great lengths on the phone after Christmas about him speaking with me in the spring to follow up the Walter Dean Myers novel "Fallen Angels."   He started to talk about Fallujah and then quickly diverted and said, "Google the battle of Fallujah."  There was some silence, and then I just said, "There is nothing that you can tell me that will make me love you any less, or make me respect what you did any less.  If anything, I will love you more and respect you more."

When you see our veterans, especially our young veterans, and you can see the visible wounds think about the invisible wounds that they carry.   Look at them and see what Kevin Sites described when talking about James, an "embittered state [...] feelings of being damaged, worthless, and guilty for even being alive" and realize that they are carrying with them "the most unforgiving postwar enemy" (Sites 121) in themselves.

To the Warrior:  There is Help....ask another Warrior and they will be there.

This is my Marine that I spoke of, Cpl Gabriel Bradshaw USMC (OIF Veteran).