Sunday, November 11, 2007

veterans' day

If I time it right, I get to listen to "This I Believe" on NPR during my Sunday morning drive to work; this week's essay was submitted by Joel Schmidt, a clinical psychologist at the VA's Mental Health Clinic in Oakland, CA. As expected, there was mention of soldiers and medics and airmen: people who have served in Vietnam and Iraq and Germany, a Bataan Death March survivor, a Marine who was at the Chosin Resevoir. But there was one paragraph that hit me in an unexpected way -- he was talking about war veterans when he said:

I have gained a surprising belief from hearing about so much agony: I believe in the power of human resilience. I am continually inspired by the ability of the emotionally wounded to pick themselves up and keep going after enduring the most traumatic circumstances imaginable.

But my thoughts went to our work in the treatment field. I could have easily written his words, all of them (minus maybe "Iraq" and "infantry"). The women we work with might not be "veterans" in the usual sense, but they have been through their own personal wars, they have endured some of the most traumatic circumstances imaginable, they are emotionally wounded. There is no purple heart for living through violence, assault, suicide attempts, overdoses, rape, abuse, abandonment, neglect, loss, self-mutilation, addiction . . . But when I look around the circle during a group and they are talking about these things for the first time and starting to heal those ancient wounds, I honestly feel like going around and pinning a medal to every single one of them. Talk about resilient. Any word you can attach to a war veteran, you can attach to these women. Brave. Strong. Damaged too, sure -- but not permanently.

That's where the hope and inspiration come in. Knowing that we can overcome anything. That emotional pain is bearable, temporary, and brings with it the courage and strength to get through it.

But he put it SO MUCH better than I ever could. You can find the essay in its entirity here.