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Mar
18
How you can honor our Vietnam vets
Filed Under Combat PTSD, Peace, PTSD, Tears of a Warrior, Troops, Veterans, Vietnam Veterans, War | Comments Off on How you can honor our Vietnam vets
Ann McFeatters: How you can honor our Vietnam vets
Guest Post from the Dallas Morning News:
By ANN MCFEATTERS
Published: 05 March 2015 07:27 PM
The man who said his name was Danny arrived at my door with a huge floral box. Inside was one of the most beautiful bouquets I’d ever seen.
Danny was with the Maryland highway department, supervising a crew installing new curbs on my street. He was also a Vietnam veteran who had seen the small blue star in my window, indicating two family members were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Danny came from a generation that provided 9.2 million people who served in the military during the Vietnam era, many of whom came home from war reviled, not thanked for what they gave their country. Like most of his fellow veterans, Danny vowed to show only gratitude to those in military service, no matter what the politics of any current war that service members are called on to fight. Flowers to a stranger were to thank my family.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the arrival of 3,500 Marines in Da Nang, South Vietnam, beginning 10 years of a terrible conflict that would sear and scar this nation.
In the “lessons learned” department, perhaps the most important is to separate the warrior from the war. Today Americans of all political stripes express sincere appreciation for what the men and women of the armed forces are called on to do for their country, whether the mission is popular or not.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the mall in the nation’s capital, with its awesome wall designed by Maya Lin, engraved with the names of 58,300 people who gave their lives in the jungles of Southeast Asia, was meant as one way toward healing a divided, bitter country.
It has worked. The three-acre memorial with its gardens, wall, Vietnam Women’s Memorial and The Three Servicemen statue, is visited by 4.5 million people a year. Its website, with photos and information on veterans and messages from their friends and families, draws 4 million virtual visitors annually.
The veteran behind the memorial, Jan Scruggs, a man of enormous personality and drive who raised the $8 million needed to begin implementation of it, is retiring this year.
One way the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund plans to honor him and all the war’s veterans is to raise money for a $116 million underground education center to display some of the 400,000 personal items left at the wall by visitors, a unique occurrence which stunned the memorial’s founders.
From teddy bears to tear-stained letters, the items, stored in boxes maintained by the National Park Service, which owns the memorial, tell powerful stories.
Approved by Congress with no funding, the education center needs donations from the public if it is to be ready for a ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2020. Most of all, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund wants future generations to learn about the Vietnam era, how decisions were made and what they meant to the nation.
Tomorrow’s fifth-graders must learn they owe a debt to those who came before them and that they, too, must leave a legacy of service, the best way they are able. Technology will give them access to such things as digital oral histories from veterans and TV footage of the first war played out in the nation’s living rooms.
There are 7 million living Vietnam War veterans. Beyond those who died or went missing there, Vietnam veterans are still dying of injuries sustained in the war, such as exposure to Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress disorder. The fund’s CEO, Jim Knotts, a Desert Storm veteran, stresses that these veterans must be honored, and that good health care for all veterans must be a national priority.
Because of space restrictions, the education center will be the last major memorial built on the National Mall. Fifty years after the start of the Vietnam War, it is time to take the next step in honoring those who fought it, whether they wanted to or not.
Here’s to you, Danny, and all those like you.
Mar
7
FIFTY SHADES OF PTS(D)
Filed Under Combat PTSD, Fifty Shades, PTSD, Tears, Tears of a Warrior | Comments Off on FIFTY SHADES OF PTS(D)
by Janet J. Seahorn, Ph.D
The big movie (at least for many women) seems to be Fifty Shades of Grey. Not having read the three book series or gone to the show (as of yetJ) I decided to check with my sister who has read all three. As she described the main character, a Mr. Grey, I asked her to tell me about the number “Fifty”. What the “Fifty” supposedly refers to is what I expected…. Fifty shades of one’s personality, including some erotic sexual preferences. Now I probably have some of your attention…
Yet, it is what she explained after my title question that was most intriguing. You see, Mr. Grey, being a brilliant, wealthy, handsome billionaire had a pretty troubling childhood. That early experience made him more than a little narcissistic and unable to have true, intimate relationships and feelings for others. What Mr. Grey displayed in his life and personality is what we all fall into, albeit, in different scenarios and reasons. So here is where we all can relate to the Fifty Shades of Me or Fifty Shades of Post-Traumatic Stress.
Each shade of ourselves is colored by the time, place, situation, and prior experiences of our lives. When we are calm and things in our daily lives are going well we are in that green, blue, maybe even lovely lavender zone. If the triggers are under control and the demons are taking a short nap, we are content, happy, and can go about our world looking fairly normal.
It is when all the crap hits the internal emotional “fan” that the colors of ourselves can change – pretty drastically and swiftly. When our triggers are on edge from prior traumatic experiences, our emotive colors display very bright shades of crimson, reds, oranges, yellow… The many hues of these shades have a huge impact on how we internalize the external world and all of its inhabitants and barriers.
In Post-Traumatic Stress, the weaver and tapestry are even more complex. There is no one way, right way, or best way to experience trauma and its aftermath. There is no singular impact that is 100% the same for each person’s prior experiences. Individual experience will shape the impact and actions of the trauma.
The only thing that remains similar for most individuals is the anguish and uncertainty of how long the emotional pain will last.
Remember the adage, “What one resists, persists”. Dealing with intense emotions that have shaken one’s very core takes time to heal.
Our personalities contain many different colors and various shades of each. Like Joseph’s Amazing Colored Coat, we too wear an array of colors depending on what is transpiring in our lives both past and present. Our coat of many colors, our Fifty Shades of who we are came from each experience of life. The colors represent the tapestry of our history, our individuality, our temperament.
A multicolored life is far more interesting than a bland, one color existence. However, to display these beautiful, brilliant colors, we have to be unafraid to live each day with the courage to recognize we are clothed based on our experience.
Therefore, celebrate your fifty shades of who you are…. You earned each and every one of them.
