"Accepting the Ashes- A Daughter's Look at PTSD"
Veterans,
Loved Ones, Friends-
A role of a shamanic practitioner is to help those in her
tribe heal. Quynn has had the unique life opportunity to
work with her father in a way that a counselor/shaman would
work with a client. Through her care, and the
openheartedness of her father, he was able to make great
strides before his accidental death in 2004. After he died
Quynn realized that his story had much to share with others
right now.
As a two-time combat veteran of the Viet Nam war he
struggled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, heart sadness
and alcoholism all his adult life. In "Accepting the Ashes"
Quynn shares her personal story so that other loved ones and
veterans who are fighting right now might not have to wait
30 years to heal their painful feelings.
"Accepting the Ashes" is for everyone. Whether you are a
veteran, loved one, co-worker or fellow American, you can
use the 15 suggestions discussed to help you understand PTSD
and its symptoms. Included are simple, yet profound ideas to
help families move toward healing, such as "many times,
suffering people cannot express their pain and won't seek
help", "many will try to mask or numb pain" and "you have to
demand the right to heal". In a time of war, healing war
trauma is essential, to our families, and for our world,
because we are all in this together.
Below is a short version of the piece. (The 15 suggestions
are included in the book and the audio CD.)
Accepting the Ashes- A Daughter's Look at PTSD (short
version)
My father died in 2004, and as I went through boxes of papers documenting his life, I realized that he had not been able to tell his story. I decided to be his voice.
He died at the age of 62, but his spirit was old from his life experiences. In 1964, when he was 23, he enlisted in the Navy and voluntered to go to Viet Nam twice.
I am a combat veteran's daughter and this story is about his experience, mostly after combat. We as a people, are once again at war and like in wars of the past, combat veterans are experiencing events similar to those of my father, and I feel I need fo give voice to that experience -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) -- and where it took him and my family.
I am not a psychiatrist. I am a daughter of a quiet man with a broken heart and a broken spirit. I am a woman who has the perspective of one who has just looked into the deepest recesses of my father's mind, and there are some things I found there that need to be said.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychiatric disorder that occurs when a person is exposed to a traumatic or life threatening event such as war. Symptoms include panic attacks, nightmares, insomnia, hyper-vigilance, flashbacks, outbursts of anger and irrirability, concentration attention problems and inability to relax. War trauma is unique because in combat, stress is created by many experiences -- the fear of death; the stress of not being able to trust the civilians around you; watching and hearing the terror of death; seeing your friends and allies get hurt, or die; the guilt of survival; and finally the feelings associated with being ordered to kill others, even though they are the enemy.
My father joined the Navy right after he graduated from Georgetown University. He was a Lieutenant Junior Grade on his first tour in Viet Nam. He signed up for a second tour, this time with the Special Forces. He met my mother while he was training in the counter insurgency. They were married before he was sent back to Viet Nam.
A year later he came home, immediately started a family and a career. He attempted to put his warrior past behind him. However, it would not go away. He didn't talk about it and this was his downfall. I grew up knowing my father drank to excess, but I never really understood why. A couple of years before he died, he told me: "I know now that I drink to numb my feelings." The more he tried to numb the traumatic experiences of Viet Nam, the more he became emotionally distant from his growing family.
Even though I remember him as a kind man and a good father, 15 years after his war experience he and my mother separated. After the painful divorce, the relationship between him and his children was, in many ways, severed. I reestablished intermittent contact with him ten years ago and it was apparent to me that alcohol had consumed him. Two years before his death, after not seeing him for quite some time, I found my father alone in his apartment in Portland, Oregon. He looked horrible -- an old man, way before his time. He was by far in the worst condition that I had ever seen him.
I insisted on taking him to the VA's alcohol diversion program. Once there, I watched my father as he sat across from a substance abuse counselor. Immediately, this man began talking to him about Viet Nam, saying things like, "I know how you feel, you can't sleep, and you feel guilty, right?" The dumbfounded look on my father's face said so much. Thirty years after his war experience, and after a couple of alcohol diversion programs, he still felt that his problems were only his failings, that he was "weak" and just couldn't "handle it." Obvious to me, but an amazing revelation to him, that he was not alone in how he felt. This humbling experience helped give my father the strength to get a second wind, and in his last two difficult years, he was able to look at much of his past.
The summer before he died, I spent five days camping with him. I quietly listened to him tell stories about Viet Nam, saying over and over, "I've never told this to anyone." I was grateful that he could finally speak about his experiences and that he felt he could say it to me. A year later he would be dead from head injuries sustained in a fall on a rain slick sidewalk in Portland.
It became my duty to go through the papers he left behind, and it was there that I found a legacy my father had left for me. He kept every paper relating to his life. While going through the boxes of papers, I found documentation of everything -- his youth, his warrior phase, his family years, legal battles, and his fall into a deep well of emotional pain that he had been able to keep at bay as a younger man. Through reading these papers I was able to step into his world, which I had not known existed before.
For years I only saw him occasionally because alcohol and sadness had overtaken his ability to hold his life together, and it was just too painful for me to watch. However, I now realize that I did not fully understand his burden, so I was pleased when we were both given a chance to heal old wounds during that final camping trip. Little did I know that it was our last chance before he died.
So now he is gone, but there are many more men, and now women, like him who are in a far away land telling themselves that everything will be all right when they get home. They do the best they can to get on with life. But what happens when the memories don't go away? What about the wives, the parents and the children who don't know what to do with the intense feelings of the returning veteran? How do we deal with our loved ones when they come home from war?
I am writing this because my father is one image of the future your soldier, your loved one, your neighbor or your client, or you may face 30 years from now. I believe your soldier is my father. I am your daughter. We are all in this together.
Imagine my shock when I discovered the Veterans Administration PTSD assessment with this quote from my father: "Often I experienced constant shelling from mortars, artillery and sniper fire. The screaming of the wounded and terrified, the sickly sweet smell of morphine and the sight of a base watch dog bringing a human femur to the medical bunker as a retriever dog would do. This will be with me forever."
Above all, my final message is that each individual deserves the right to heal the wounds of war. It is a necessity, not a privilege. We are all in this together.
To
reprint the above article for any reason, send an email to
Quynn
For the full 60 minute CD narrated by Quynn click on th
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Short audio versions are available to those in the media
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Look for the book version due out in January
2005!
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