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).

Suicide, Not About Wanting to Die but Wanting to End the Pain

If you have been reading this blog, you know that I have been teaching Tim O'Brien's  The Things They Carried.  We started looking at what makes one a leader this week.   I asked them to identify one person that they perceived to be a leader and be able to give five traits or characteristics that make that person a leader.  They identified people like their parents or a sibling or the President.   Then we looked at the Marine Corps 14 Leadership Traits (seriously, yes, I work predominantly with Marines and in 22 years of teaching and seeing people go into the military, the Marines do something right...they create leaders).  The students were give an article from Yahoo! News titled "Vet who saved many in Iraq couldn't escape demons" (http://news.yahoo.com/vet-saved-many-iraq-couldnt-escape-demons-190136480.html).  The article details the service of Army Captain Pete Linnerooth and his transition back to civilian life.   Capt. Linnerooth was deployed to Iraq in 2007 as a psychologist.  He was noted as "The Wizard" by those who he worked with because he was able to counsel soldiers during some of the most brutal fighting of the OIF campaign.  The article opens with praises for Capt. Linnerooth's ability to sooth, counsel, comfort, and console those who were in states of shock, grief, nightmares, insomnia; who were hit with the smell of blood, death, burns, screams.   He was a professional all forms of the definition in a place that wasn't human by any means.   He was a family man that carried his daughter's baby shoes on his ruck sack for good luck.   Capt. Linnerooth three things that worked for him during his time in Iraq..."an instant rapport with soldiers, an empathetic manner, a big heart."  This was the magic that was Capt. Linnerooth.  He worked 70 plus hours in a week, day and night, sometimes in a make shift office and others in the field along side the soldiers in the thick of the battle.  Capt. Linnerooth, a few months short of his 15 month deployment, he left Iraq because he had come to the realization that he had heard and seen enough horror, death, and could no longer be beneficial to his fellow soldiers in the capacity of a therapist.
He returned to the United States and began to transition to civilian life.   He became a college professor, then a counselor for veterans, wrote about professional burnout, and worried about how little he felt he had done in relation to helping the troops and the veteran suicide rate.  Capt. Linnerooth personally dealt with PTSD, depression, anger, despair, drugs, and a failed marriage.  He struggled with all the demons that have brought about the creation of The Fight Continues.  On January 2, 2013, Captain Linnerooth shot himself with his own gun at age 42.  One buddy stated that he was "the guy who could help everybody - everybody but himself."   What started out as a simple Yahoo! News article to supplement the teaching of The Things They Carried, turned into not just an ahaa moment for me in the understanding of the suicide death of a young lady this fall that I love like a daughter but led me on a quest to learn more about Captain Pete Linnerooth.  What set me on my quest was two statements that were made in the article.  The first was when Brock McNabb (Linnerooth's best buddy and was deployed with in him to Iraq) stated "For the record, Pete Linnerooth did not want to die."  ... "He just wanted the pain to end.  Big difference."  This simple statement sheds a great deal of light on what the thought process is when someone gets to the point where they either have a gun to their head or a noose around their neck or a bottle of pills in their mouths.  For me, I feel that I have gained the understanding there is a level of desperate need to stop the pain, perceived or real; to stop the images, the sounds, the repeating statements that pull them down.  It is a big difference in just wanting the pain to end rather than to die.   The other statement was that of Linnerooth himself when he stated to McNabb "Maybe we're all meant for just one great deed and we're done."  What was Linnerooth's great deed?   Was it that of the countless soldiers that he counseled while in Iraq or on his return to civilian life?   Was it that he was a constant voice that criticized the military for their lack of recognition of mental health issues related to our GWOT Veterans?  Was that he couldn't recognize that he had done so much already but because the suicide rate continued to skyrocket in regards to our GWOT Veterans that he perceived that he had not done enough?   
Two weeks after Linnerooth's suicide (one of the first to be recorded for the year 2013), The Pentagon released the suicide numbers for 2012.  Military suicides had reached a record number in 2012 with 349.  This number is greater than the number of combat deaths in Afghanistan alone for the year.  It has to scream something to our society when Time magazine online has a specific section labeled Military Mental Health.   It has to scream something when a Colonel states that "the last decade plus of war has taught many valuable lessons...lessons...known only after the fact.  (That) we have to be vigilant to the signs that they (caregivers) have taken on too much of everyone else's burdens, and need help themselves."  
Since Christmas 2012, I have met a number of individuals through The Fight Continues that have been at that crossroad of suicide or life, death or pain, and there are a number of us that are blessed that those individuals have chosen life even though their demons will continue to haunt them and cause them pain.  Over the next few years, our military will be downsizing and our communities will be flooded with GWOT Veterans and their families as they transition back to civilian life.   Our neighborhoods, our communities, our churches, our schools, our colleges, our first responders ... must be vigilant in recognizing the signs of combat PTSD and the impact that it already has and will continue to have on our soldiers, their families, their lives, our lives.  As a society, these individuals have volunteered to defend our basic ideals and have followed the commands of the decision makers that we as an electorate have placed in office.  It is time to step out of our nice little bubble of ignorance and selfishness to recognize that there is a very grave (pun intended) problem that is only going to get deeper.

The Things They Carried....The Things They Cannot Say

I am a 100% volunteer for The Fight Continues.   So, somehow I have to pay my bills...that would be as a public education high school teacher.   People ask what I teach and I respond "life" or "reality 101."   Usually, their response is "No, really what do you teach?"  Then I go into the fact that I have been teaching Special Education for the past 22 years.  I have taught in both rural and suburban public schools.  I have taught students that have been identified as having an educational disability ... everything from down's syndrome, mentally handicapped, behavior disordered / emotional disturbance, specific learning disability, other health impaired, autism, and traumatic brain injury.   But teaching teenagers is really not as cut and dry as giving them an educational identification.   They are curious about all the things that adults are.   They love a good story ... whether you are telling them the story or they are reading it.  

I have been prepping my students to read The Things That They Carried by Tim O'Brien.  I have been using supplemental materials from our Global War on Terrorism Veterans and from Kevin Sites' book The Things They Cannot Say.  I have pulled all sorts of resources from the Internet from other teachers that have taught The Things That They Carried and have found that the teachers are overwhelmingly focusing on the tangible things that the soldiers carried.  While yes, these have a huge importance, I am taking a different slant and asking my students to identify the not so tangible things that the soldiers are carrying with them.   I am teaching them terms that they do not know or understand, like PTSD and TBI.  I have showed them the video of LCpl James Sperry on the Kevin Sites YouTube channel being readied for transport after his injury in the streets of Fallujah (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7hzC1vEBxU).  I have TPCASTT with them the poetic poem written by Eric Calley (http://the-fight-continues.com/?s=hell+between+the+ears).   TPCASTT?  It is an acronym for "Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Shift, Title, Theme."   Where the person reading the poem actually predicts what it is about or means and then breaking it down as they read through it.  I then had them read the chapter from Kevin's book titled "Dogs of War."  The chapter is about a young man, Specialist Joe Caley, that is drafted into the Vietnam War.  He doesn't fit into the Army's MOS system and found himself working as a point scout with the 25th Infantry Division's Platoon Scout Dogs.  The chapter is part about the relationship between Spc. Caley and his dog, Baron, and then part about the things that he carries with him.   Spc. Caley carries with him memories ... memories of killing.

If you are a teacher, please feel free to utilize the above and what I will be posting in regards to the lessons we will be learning as we read "The Things They Carried."

Solitude...There in lies the Problem...

I am a fan of a number of the positive forces on Facebook (Positively Positive, Dave's Words of Wisdom, etc...) and this came across my news feed today.  I have been on Spring Break all last week and this week.  Being a single mom, that means that the noise in my house was with his father and I was surrounded by silence.  At first, it was cathartic.  I was able to just breathe in the silence and to exhale.   That was the first full day but then the next night, when I laid down to go to bed, my mind would not shut down.   I picked up Kevin Sites book, The Things They Cannot Say, and started to read. 
I read this quote and found myself thinking about this past week of "solitude."  The ability to be in solitude, to be in the silence...is something that I take for granted.   In my solitude and silence, I am haunted by decisions that I have made in my life.   But as a I really start to think about this, it isn't about me at all as to why this quote stuck out to me.   It was all the things that I have read in Kevin's book, the student veteran that I was told about that for the third semester in a row within the first three weeks just stopped coming to classes, listening to Julie Vinnedge (Gold Star Mother of LCpl Phillip Vinnedge) tell me about how she was notified of her son's death in Afghanistan and then hearing her tell the story of the 1951 pickup that would become Fallen Hero's Dream Ride.   It was being with LCpl James Sperry at a small community college finding out what their challenges were, visiting with a PTSD/TBI Army OEF veteran and his family that had been home for a week and listening to their challenges, and hearing him speak for the first time about what had brought him to this point in his life and the inception of The Fight Continues.  At some point, all of these individuals had retreated into solitude, their own solitude.  It was a veteran that retreated from the pressures of the civilian world by no longer going to class.   It was a Gold Star Mother that stood in front of approximately 150 people, asking them to please not forget her son and the reason that he served, that they had served.   Her solitude lays within her memories of her son and the life that they breathe into a 1951 pickup truck.  It was a man wearing sunglasses standing in front of that same audience telling of the death of one of his best friends in Iraq and how he acquired that friend's rosary.  His solitude lays within himself and his personal quest.  Kevin Sites writes "Despite his embittered state, his feelings of being damaged, worthless and guilty for just being alive, he is still able to reach out to me" (121).  And I was able to see what Kevin saw; "I see the warrior still, a man whose humanity abides" (121). 
But there was the young Marine at the Veterans Appreciation Dinner that was standing and looking at the Fallen Hero's Dream Ride.  Know no strangers, I approached a young man that was looking at the truck.   I asked if this was the first time that he had seen the truck in person and he nodded.  I continued to talk about the truck and the story and the healing that it has had with so many of us that have gravitated to it.  He told me that his injury had occurred about the same time frame as LCpl Vinnedge's death.  I invited him to sit at my table with James, two friends from the Mid Rivers Vietnam Veterans Association Chapter, and a World War 2 veteran (wearing his purple heart) and his wife.  I watched this young man, this young Marine, as Julie spoke and as James spoke.  I saw this young warrior go into his own personal solitude.  In this solitude, in this silence, what truth was heard?  what solutions where found?  What I saw was a young man, that when the Star Spangled Banner was sung stood like a Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine).  What I saw was a young man with a cautious smile and eyes that were like pools of blue water without the glimmer.   What I saw was a young man, a young warrior, within a solitude ... a silence that those of us that have never walked in their shoes can ever understand.
It is a solitude, a silence, that so many of our Global War on Terrorism active duty and veterans carry with them.   That solitude, that silence, are their wounds.   The wounds that society, as a whole, doesn't see, doesn't understand, cannot comprehend.   The wounds of the warrior that volunteered to uphold the foundation of our nation.  As a society, we must respect the cause of the solitude but at the same time, we need to educate ourselves, our society about the RED FLAG that the solitude is.   We are allowing a generation of men and women to slip away from us.   

Inspiration

I am a firm believer that we get our inspiration from some of the most unlikely places and people.   I have had the opportunity over the past 8 years to work with an amazing group of veterans from The Mid Rivers Vietnam Veterans Association in St. Charles, Missouri and to be nominated twice by the Wentzville VFW Post 5327 as their Citizen Teacher of the Year.   I am humbled by their support and dedication to not just me, but to this next generation of veterans from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.   I have come to them in need of support for young veterans needing assistance with financial burdens and they have come through for me without question.   They have shown that a generation that was scorned and riddiculed because of their service to our nation (whether they had a choice or not isn't even an issue) in an unpopular war/conflict, are this generation's greatest untapped advocates and resources to fight the battle on the home-front.  The singer, Alicia Moore (Aka P!nk) recorded a song titled "I Have Seen the Rain."   It is a song, written by her father about being a Vietnam Veteran.   Listen to the words carefully...I Have Seen The Rain...  The men and women of these two organizations noted above, know who they are, and for me, they are truly my heroes for walking the path of not letting what happened to their generation, happen to any other generation again.