Community

When we lived in a major city with a small military presence, I expected that the sense of community would be varied at best. Having come from a small city with a large base, I knew that it would be different. People didn't really talk to each other and kept to themselves. That I understood. When we moved back to that same small city with a large base I expected to find the close knit military community that had been there 5 years earlier. What we found was a community destroyed...

On her first day at her new school, my daughter found that there were several kids in her class cutting themselves, and they were really proud of it. That's messed up!!! I found myself wanting to go to the school and start asking why no one was doing anything about this problem. At the request from my daughter, I refrained. The question I would love to have answered is this, if my 12 year old was told of this on her first day, why is no one doing anything to help these kids? When over half of a class of pre-teens is cutting themselves, there's a problem! Where are the parents, teachers and counselors? If it were my daughter, you can be darn sure I would be working with her to stop it. It made me wonder, if there are that many struggling families in one place, wouldn't you think that something needs to happen to help them?!? This is a problem that effects the entire family, not just the military member.

Why can people all over the country and the world band together to offer help for diseases such as cancer or MS, and yet here's this disorder affecting so many people in our own community and everyone turns a blind eye.

A PTSD diagnosis doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you've failed. It means that you need some help to deal with things that humans just aren't equipped to deal with on their own. So what's the harm in people knowing that you accepted the fact that you needed help and went to get it? Someone who lost a limb needs help to heal, what makes a mental disorder any different?

I remember my husband getting a call from a family member who had seen a film on tv called War in the Mind, a documentary following Canadian soldiers and their families and their struggles with PTSD, she very quietly asked him if that's how life was for him... His answer was very simple, he said, "Yes." That one film changed how his family saw him. While they will never fully understand, just as I won't, the desire to be tolerant and understanding of the mood swings he struggles so hard to control is now there. It made a difference to have a family who understood. This is where the sense of community comes in. If there are so many people suffering alone through this disorder, why aren't they leaning on each other? Why hasn't the effort been made to find a safe place for them to talk about it?This isn't a problem that will just go away by sweeping it under the rug, it grows each and every day.

If you haven't seen the film, you can watch it at the link below.
War In the Mind