Please consider going to the movies on the evening on Tuesday, May 18th to show support for military families who have lost loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan.   On Tuesday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m. ET / 7:00 p.m. CT / 6:00 p.m. MT / 8:00 p.m. PT (tape delayed) in select movie theaters nationwide, audiences will be taken on an inspiring and compelling journey to a picturesque Rocky Mountain camp where 25 boys gather for a week of camp to honor the memories of their fathers who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. Get your group together to hear their stories, be inspired and take action!

To help you share information about this touching, one night in-theater tribute to our Military and their families with your community, we have created tools such as e-cards, social media badges, a trailer, flyer and online banners for you to use which you may find on the event website,

www.sonsofthefallenonthebigscreen.com.

This website has connected me with people all over the country who dedicate themselves to helping veterans and their families heal from war’s traumas. Veterans Heart Georgia (VHG), based in Atlanta, is among the pioneers creating programs and assembling resources.  I envy Atlantans for being able to participate in VHG’s monthly Listening Circles where people speak their pain and struggles and find support and understanding.  Community is invaluable to healing PTSD.

One of VHG’s programs is the Children and Families of Veterans Initiative. As part of that VHG is partnering with the Counseling Certificate Program at Mercer University to gather data for a research proposal that seeks to understand intergenerational trauma.

VHG’s first step in gathering data for a pilot study is creating a blog. From the stories they can bring together from the blog, they will look at common threads and see how frequently those commonalities (qualitative data) occur.  Then they will form small focus groups (via conference calls, probably), followed by a smaller number of interviews. This data will form the basis for a proposal to study the prevalence of negative effects of war on adult children and families, as well as to develop an “intervention” or method to help end people’s suffering.

If you go to VHG’s website, www.veteransheartgeorgia.org, you will see the blog on the far right of the navigation bar.  Click on that and then register so you can leave your story.  This will increase the chances that families of veterans, as well as the veterans themselves, will have resources available to them for healing.

You can create a nickname when you register that will keep you anonymous, our use your own name.

Let us all help to create a groundswell of awareness and healing.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Who wouldn’t want a soldier suffering PTSD to get the help he or she needs?  Our attitudes and awareness have evolved light years since World War II when we saw “battle fatigue” as an excuse for cowardice and treated it with either Thorazine or an ice pick to the brain.  Today the term “PTSD” is universally familiar, and the success of movies like “The Hurt Locker” and “Brothers” reveals a deep vein of sympathy and compassion towards our soldiers who suffer from war’s traumas.

So how is it that soldiers like Eric Jasinski cannot get the mental health care they need?  Rather than treating his severe PTSD, the Army courtmartialed him for refusing to go back to Iraq, and he spent twenty-five days of this month in Bell County Jail near Fort Hood in Texas.

Eric enlisted in 2005 and was deployed to Iraq in 2006 where he collected intelligence that helped determine the location of air strikes. “What I saw and what I did in Iraq caused my PTSD,” he told reporters before his trial.  “I went to get help and had an eight hour wait to see one of five doctors.  I ended up getting a letter that instructed me to go see a civilian doctor, and she diagnosed me with PTSD.  I began taking the medications (Zoloft, Seraquil, Periactim, and Ambien), and they were helping, because I thought I was to get out of the Army in February 2009 when my contract expired.” 



But in late 2008 the Army extended his service and gave him a 90-day supply of meds to get him back to Iraq.  (As if the meds alone could take care of his PTSD, let alone enable him to return to Iraq.)  When he told a counselor “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I go back to Iraq,” the counselor asked if he was suicidal.   When Jasinski responded, “I’m not planning on going home and blowing my brains out,” the counselor told him he was then good to go to Iraq.

“There was no way I could go back with my untreated PTSD.  I needed more help.”  He went AWOL during his pre-deployment leave break, and on December 11, 2009 turned himself in to authorities at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas. 



His civilian lawyer, James Branum, believes that Jasinski’s case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers.
 Even while the Army has seen a record number of suicides since 2006 and an escalation of soldier-on-soldier violence, it still does not provide its veterans meaningful mental health treatment. Practitioners are overwhelmed, the demand far outstripping the supply of qualified professionals.

Eric Jasinski is not an isolated individual.  He represents countless service men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who see no choice but to go AWOL when the military does not provide them meaningful mental health care treatment for their PTSD. 
According to a 2008 Rand Corporation report, at least 300,000 veterans returning from both wars have been diagnosed with severe depression or PTSD. 



Eric Jasinski offers advice to his fellow service members: “Do not, do not let a 5-10 minute review by a military doctor determine if you go to Iraq.  Even if you have to pay out of pocket, go to a civilian doctor.  Even then I’m not sure that will help… but you have to take that chance.” 

He believes we need a total overhaul of the military’s mental health care and more experienced psychiatrists– ones who are first and foremost dedicated to the well-being of their patients rather than the “good ole boy” system of their superiors.

We civilians must open our eyes to the treatment our combat vets are receiving.  In our names they have served, and because of that service, they are suffering.  We are all implicated in their suffering.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Last week I attended the Association of Writers Program annual conference- a glorious feast of writers talking about craft, business, trends, discoveries.  To be amongst so many fellow writers exhilarated and replenished me.  On the last day I attended a panel discussion about teaching writing to veterans.  Though I had begun realizing that many people around the country have been dedicating themselves to helping vets re-integrate themselves back into civilian life and healing spiritually and emotionally, this panel discussion opened my eyes to how deep and wide the river of attention is running.

The Hospitalized Veterans Writing Project: the mission of which is “to encourage veterans to write, through the coordinated efforts of volunteers and/or VA medical center staff. Veterans often experience traumatic and life-changing experiences in the service of their country. Writing serves as therapy for many veterans who participate through VA medical centers.” www.veteransvoices.org/mission

The National Endowment for the Arts’ Operation Homecoming: brings “the transformative power of writing to men and women who have undergone enormously challenging experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. In historical terms, it gives voice to the troops who have served in this war.” “Since 2004, the NEA Operation Homecoming writing program has collected the stories of U.S. military personnel and their families. With support from The Boeing Company, Operation Homecoming has brought more than 60 writing workshops to troops at more than 30 domestic and overseas military installations from Camp Pendleton in California to USS Carl Vinson in the Persian Gulf and Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.” www.arts.endow.gov/national/homecoming/index.html

VetArt Project – “creates opportunities for veterans and their family members to work in collaboration with artists from all disciplines to create new art about war for public performance and viewing. Our goals are to support our veterans, create stronger voices among our veterans, provide new opportunities for artists, and offer a venue to hear the voices of our veterans and artists, and foster discussions about how war affects us all.” vetartproject.com/

Warrior Writers – “creates a culture that articulates veterans’ experiences and provides the opportunity for a creative community for artistic expression among veterans. We provide witness to the lived experiences of warriors. Through writing/artistic workshops that are based on their experiences in the military, Afghanistan and Iraq, participants connect with other veterans on a personal and artistic level. Art is compiled into books, performances and exhibits that provide a lens into the hearts of people who experienced war. www.warriorwriters.org/

The Iraq Veterans Writing Workshop: a free, non-partisan outreach program offered by the New York University Writing Program to the veterans’ community in and around New York City.  contact person- zachary.sussman@nyu.edu

Many other colleges and universities- too many to list- also now offer writing workshops and classes specifically for veterans, who are attending school after deployment in record numbers.  If you are a veteran attending school and are interested in exploring how writing can help you, contact your veterans’ co-ordinator or the school’s writing program.

Vet’s Midwest Writing Workshop – April 23-25, 2010 midwestvetswritingworkshop.com/

VetsWrite4Life – “Veterans of war, ANY war, or veterans of the wounds of living, particularly if you are suffering from PTSD, join with a community of people who are WRITING their way back from shame. We’re following method developed by Maxine Hong Kingston in her ongoing veterans writing workshops. Tell your story as it happened or in fiction. Prose, poetry or whatever is OK as long as it’s honest. You can request feedback or not. You can ask for comments or critiques about a specific aspect of your writing that will make it clearer and stronger.” groups.yahoo.com/group/VetsWrite4Life/

The plethora of writing and art programs for veterans is testimony to the healing power of art.  As one panelist said last week at the AWP conference, “Writing kept me alive.”

If you are not a veteran but wish to be of service to those who are, almost all of the programs listed above need volunteers.  Contact them.  My work and conversations with veterans have been invaluable to me.  I hope I have given to them as much as their honesty and courage to reveal their pain have given to me.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The “reclusive” author,  J.D. Salinger, died at the end of January, and the front page New York Times article (www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/books/29salinger.html) said this about his service in World War II:

“He served with the Counter-Intelligence Corps of the Fourth Infantry Division, whose job was to interview Nazi deserters and sympathizers, and was stationed for a while in Tiverton, Devon, the setting of “For Esmé — with Love and Squalor,” probably the most deeply felt of the “Nine Stories.” On June 6, 1944, he landed at Utah Beach, and he later saw action during the Battle of the Bulge. In 1945 he was hospitalized for “battle fatigue” — often a euphemism for a breakdown — and after recovering he stayed on in Europe past the end of the war, chasing Nazi functionaries.”

Given that, as part of the 4th Infantry Division, J. D. Salinger landed on Utah Beach on D-Day and fought at the Battle of the Bulge, it seems odd that his “battle fatigue” received half a sentence. Nor does the article mention that his division liberated Dachau’s subcamps. Yet though the article– just like all other commentaries and discussions of Mr. Salinger’s life– explores at length his solitary and unusual characteristics, there is no mention that his trauma might have played any role at all, yet alone a significant one, in his behavior.

Neither “battle fatigue” nor “PTSD”reveals what war does to the soul. As a veteran says at the end of Ken Burns’ World War II series, “We all were war casualties.” War’s terrors rip soldiers from their moral and emotional anchors, severing them from their identities, families, and communities. Mr. Salinger’s isolation and literature expressed the consequences of where he had been and what he had seen there.  Take another look at  “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”

I wrote a letter to the New York Times pointing out the value that such a perspective might create.  The newspaper did not publish it.

For all the presence of “PTSD” in our news, our vocabulary, even our television shows, I see a deep resistance to acknowledging how people in our lives- whether intimate family members or cultural icons—were and are troubled by trauma. Perhaps such acknowledgement would require recognizing within ourselves stunted aspects of our own spirits.

I know how painful and difficult that is to do.  For years—in the face of incontrovertible evidence— I avoided recognizing my own trauma.

Judaism believes we are all born with a neshama tora. A pure soul.  Acknowledging the loss of that integrity is excruciating.  But to deny it keeps us stuck, unable to heal and renew our purpose.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

In December 2005, four months after I returned from a trip to Germany to visit the site of the concentration camp my father helped to liberate, I discovered a book published a month before: War and the Soul by Dr. Ed Tick.  This book became my North Star, guiding me to understanding that enabled me to forgive my father- and myself. Dr. Tick’s view of PTSD brought together all the pieces of my mystery: why had my childhood trauma not only occurred but then become invisible?

It would be a disservice to you and War and the Soul to pretend that any summary of it would suffice.  Please, buy a copy and read it from front to back.

After working for over thirty years– first with Vietnam veterans and then with veterans from all the wars of the last century– Dr. Tick does not see PTSD as a mental illness with symptoms of stress/anxiety.  Rather, it is a disorder of the soul that results from witnessing or partaking in violence lacking any transcendent meaning and violating the soldier’s moral code. The soul’s response: to flee the body as the encounter of terror makes safety impossible.   Rather than assigning the words “post traumatic stress disorder” to the acronym PTSD, Dr. Tick assigns the words “post terror soul disorder.”  The soldier has become a “psychospiritual” casualty, violence and terror having shattered their identities.

Dr. Tick uses mythology and ancient European and Native American wisdom to explore what the soul is- the source of our will, our aesthetic and ethical sensibilities, our consciousness and identity, as well as of our shadow desires.  To approach healing PTSD through traditional psychotherapy and medication alone ignores and denies what happens spiritually to a soldier.

“Society disowns the suffering war creates for its soldiers,” Dr. Tick writes, and this “abandonment of veterans is as much a cause of PTSD as the war itself.” To heal PTSD, Dr. Tick says we must “surround the trauma with soul.”  He lays out how that might happen: public storytelling, witnessing of the veterans’ pain, holding retreats for veterans after they return but before they re-enter their families and society.  At the retreats, elders would create a container for the veterans’ traumas and sanctify and purify their consciences, enabling a new identity to emerge.

This past weekend I had the great fortune of not only meeting Dr. Tick, of not only attending a training on how to put into practice his ideas, but of participating in a “talking circle” for veterans and family of veterans.  Twenty-three people– Vietnam vets, children and spouses of Vietnam vets, OIF vets, a fiancé of an OEF soldier, children of WWII vets—we took turns speaking our truths.  As I write this, gratitude wells up in me as I think of the pain, the grief, the loving kindness, the compassion and empathy people expressed and contributed to one another.

This was the first time in my life that I have felt joined in my deep pain, the pain I have spent much of my life covering over or ignoring because it never found acceptance.   Here, at last, I found a community, and through these people– who only that morning had been strangers– I found support for healing. The piece of my soul that has never quite believed it could be safe is now willing to believe safety might be possible.

The next day, as I entered the Atlanta airport, I saw everywhere I turned women and men in uniform, waiting for planes that would take them to Afghanistan.  Over three hundred of our service people are deploying every day from Atlanta alone.  Yet no one on Sunday seemed to see them, as if the soldiers were just ordinary people going to ordinary destinations.

Please, buy a copy of War and the Soul, and when you next see a man or woman in uniform, go up to them and express your gratitude for their serving us, express your wish for their safety and well-being.  Let them know our thoughts and prayers accompany them.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

I spent this past weekend in Santa Fe with the Vet Art Project, which put on a workshop for veterans and family members.  The workshop’s purpose was two fold.  On Saturday it facilitated telling stories through art and writing, and on Sunday it brought civilian members of the community at large to witness the veterans’ stories.

While I had known that telling our stories is critical to our individual and collective healing, until this weekend my “knowing” was only of my mind, not my heart.  Because this weekend was the first time that I was a part of witnessing veterans speaking their truths.  It is one thing to read a veteran’s story and a whole other experience to be present physically before the veteran as they speak or read their piece.

One of the veterans at the workshop served in Vietnam and spent many years writing his memories, trying to give them form and intelligibility, trying to convey the experiences that created decades of physical and emotional anguish.   About seven years ago, he stopped writing, saying he felt he had to make a choice between continuing therapy and writing, that both created too much pain.

A local radio station program accepted a chapter he submitted, and we sat together as a group to listen as the program aired the veteran’s reading his piece.  This was the first time he had shared his writing.  As he sat amongst us we heard of a jeep ride a superior officer ordered him to take on a road notorious for its mines before the mines sweep had come along to clear the road.  The story’s language, dialogue, descriptions transported all of us to that road some forty-five years ago. By the end, the veteran did not need to explain his PTSD.  That one jeep ride, let alone all the other encounters he had had with terror, would have undone our souls.

When the story was over, he looked at us, we looked at him.  He saw our faces, our eyes, our mouths, our emotions brimming over. And in that moment I believe he knew community and validation.  If only for a fleeting afternoon, he was not alone with his pain.  His words had enabled us to receive it and feel it, renewing our bonds and responsibility to one another.  He told us later this was the safest he had ever felt in a group.

I wish this for every veteran.  We are obligated to be present for every single one of them.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)