Soldiers’ Voices
3 September, 2010, 9:29 am
Voices worth listening to
The war is over.
The tour of duty ended.
But for the soldier, the fighting doesn’t end. The fight against memories of war and death, of the horrors of atrocity. That war, that fight, is far from over.
That fight occurs on an invisible battlefield- the mind and soul of the veteran. The veteran’s wife or husband and their children are not only witnesses to the battle but its unintended victims. They become the targets of anger or torment, the students of depression, anxiety, melancholy- what we have come to call post-traumatic stress disorder.
The collateral damage of war widens, encircling the children of the veterans.
Veterans’ Children is the first community and support organization to uncover and address the consequences of living with the trauma familiar to generations of veterans’ families- from World War II, Korea, Vietnam to our present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our purpose is to serve as a resource for healing and a forum for sharing stories.
Recent Blog Posts
The Iraq War is not Over
2 September, 2010, 1:40 pm
As thousands of troops return from Iraq, let us remember that for their families, the war is from over.
Trauma’s Lingering Blind Spots
13 August, 2010, 2:17 pm
Trauma’s biggest consequence, I believe, is that it blinds us. Initially, this is life-protecting, allowing us to react without being paralyzed by overwhelming terror. But when the source of the terror is gone, when we manage to come to recognize that we are no longer in mortal danger,- a years long process in itself- a subtle blindness continues. After all those years of looking away, we lost the ability to recognize we are not seeing the whole picture of our lives. A sort of existential loss of peripheral vision. When threatened to even a tiny degree, I get tunnel vision, using all my strength and determination to push through, to manage, to cope. And lose the ability to ask: at what cost? What will this mean for me?
Veterans' Children is based on a forthcoming memoir of war's transgenerational trauma:
