I Am Broken Too

Copied from my other site, PTSD Patrol because after all these years on Wounded Times, it shows why I gave up working exclusively with veterans and their families.....it never meant anything to people I know.....

PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
December 6, 2020

I am so pissed off right now my head is ready to explode! This is not going to be one of those cheery post with a chair dancing song, I picked I Am Broken Too by Killswich Engage for this reason.

I was on Facebook and a veteran friend of mine I've known for decades, posted about "22 veterans committing suicide today" and I flipped out! After 38 years of posting, tracking, treating veterans spiritually, educating and advocating, it meant nothing! Over 500 videos on YouTube, 3 books and way too many posts to count on Wounded Times along with my older sites and I had to read something like this from someone I know? WTF!

If you need help, veteran, family member or anyone dealing with PTSD, I know what it is like to feel lost and alone. I know what PTSD does as a survivor of over 10 events. What it was like for my veteran husband and what it was like for the veterans whose lives I saved! Above all, I know what it is like to need help and NOT FIND IT! So yes, I've been broken, beaten down and still willing to do the best I can everyday because this is something that is in my DNA after all these years.

If you need help, email me woundedtimes@aol.com or call me 407-754-7526. Read the posts on PTSD Patrol and Wounded Times.

You carry this weight trying to cover your mistakes

To make it seem like nothing could ever break you

But I see right through, 'cause I am broken too

In all the same places as you

And if you needed proof, I'll reopen my wounds

Reopen my wounds, yeah

I see myself in you (in you)

I know you can make it through

If you needed proof, I'll reopen my wounds

In all the right places for you

So now you see the truth that you are broken too

I'll reopen my wounds for you

I keep making the same mistakes, just to feel alive again

It's the only way to break on through

So stop numbing all the pain

'Cause it just won't go away (won't go away)

If you only knew how much I needed you

And if you needed proof, I'll reopen my wounds (my wounds)

In all the right places for you

I can see the truth 'cause I am broken too

I am broken too (broken just like you)

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Adam Dutkiewicz / Jesse Leach / Joel Stroetzel / Justin Foley / Mike D'Antonio

I Am Broken Too lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd. 

How can music help you heal PTSD?

PTSD Patrol

Kathie Costos

November 29, 2020

Oh, give me the beat boys, and free my soul
I want to get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Beginning to think that I'm wastin' time
I don't understand the things I do
The world outside looks so unkind
So I'm countin' on you to carry me through
If you haven't guessed by now, the feature video on PTSD Patrol is Dobie Gray Drift Away.

Hopefully by now, with all the music being shared, you've noticed how you mood does change, even if it is just for a little while. This is why music therapy works on PTSD. It takes your mind away from your problems and helps to teach your body to calm down again.

This is one of the best songs to explain that.

Remember, it is your life...get in and drive it. #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD

go to PTSD Patrol for the rest of this

PTSD does not mean you are broken....

Wounded Times and PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
November 27, 2020

Today I noticed that Wounded Times is still getting about 1,000 hits a day after months of not posting on it. That tells me the need to find this work, is still there. While I have been focusing on everyone with PTSD since June, I keep getting reminders that our veterans are not getting what they need to heal. One more reminder came Tuesday when I received a phone call from someone working with veterans. 

As we were talking, the sadness took over because he was having a hard time facing the fact that his work was hard to find too. So much nonsense out there getting in the way of what works, and what can change lives, more and more people are giving up. We're not! We are not giving up because as heartbreaking as it is to know how much suffering there is out there, the feeling we get when lives are changed, is so worth whatever price we have to pay with our own emotions.

I know first hand that life can change for the better. My husband knows that. All the veterans I've worked with over all these years, know that. I just wish everyone knew that.

So today, the daily video on PTSD Patrol is featuring Jon Bon Jovi Unbroken. If you are a veteran, you are not broken and you are not the problem. If you are a person trying to heal PTSD, you are not broken either. No one is really broken, a little dented, OK, but not broken.

I was born to be of service

Basic training felt like home

I had honor, I found purpose

Sir, yes, sir, that's what I know

They sent us to a place

I'd never heard of weeks before

When you're 19, it ain't hard to sleep

In the desert on God's floor

Close your eyes, stop counting sheep

You ain't in prison anymore

We were taught to shoot our rifles

Men and women side by side

Thought we'd be met as liberators

In a thousand-year-old fight

I got this painful ringing in my ear

From an IED last night

But no lead-lined Humvee war machine

Could save my sergeant's life

Three more soldiers, six civilians

Need these words to come out right

God of mercy, God of light

Save your children from this life

Hear these words, this humble plea

For I have seen the suffering

And with this prayer I'm hoping

That we can be unbroken

It's eighteen months now I've been back now

With this medal on my chest

But there are things I can't remember

And there are things I won't forget

I lie awake at night

With dreams the devil shouldn't see

I wanna scream but I can't breathe

And, Christ, I'm sweating through these sheets

Where's my brothers? Where's my country?

Where's my how-things-used-to-be?

God of mercy, God of light

Save your children from this life

Hear these words, this humble plea

For I have seen the suffering

And with this prayer I'm hoping

That we can be unbroken

My service dog's done more for me

Than the medication would

There ain't no angel that's coming to save me

But even if they could

Today twenty-two will die from suicide

Just like yesterday, they're gone

I live my life for each tomorrow

So their memories will live on

Once we were boys and we were strangers

Now we're brothers and we're men

Someday you'll ask me "Was it worth it

To be of service in the end?"

Well, the blessing and the curse is

Yeah, I'll do it all again

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi

Unbroken lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group 

Wounded Times filmed the original push up fundraiser

Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

July 29, 2020

As stated when I stopped publishing daily on Wounded Times, it would be updated at will.

This is why, after 38 years, I was forced to give up trying to help veterans! Dealing with this #FUBAR is BS!

In 2012, the Veterans’ Administration (VA) released a Suicide Data Report that found an average of 22 veterans die by suicide everyday. The 22KILL initiative started in 2013, at first just as a social media movement to raise awareness, and later became an official 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in July of 2015.

Charity Navigator 

Keep in mind that I have done all this work for no financial support. I was actually losing money for the last several years and I didn't care. The goal was to help them heal and give them hope. Groups like that one, robbed them of that.

Aside from the investigations this site did, not just proving the number itself was fictitious, it did not help veterans learn why they should stay alive. 

Countless articles and videos later, veterans were having a harder time finding people like me. I was ready to deal with the hatred I found when I addressed this online. So were a lot of other people.

Task and Purpose writer Carl Forsling took a good look at this group back in August of 2016.

Likewise, awareness doesn’t do much. You can know a problem exists. That doesn’t mean you are any closer to solving the problem. There are a lot of diseases and societal issues with different color ribbons and special days for awareness, but not a lot of solutions. Veterans dying by suicide has been all over the news since the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal broke in April 2014.

Some might say that awareness of veteran suicide might help prevent more suicides. How? How many hashtags and social media posts identify warning signs to look for in friends and coworkers? How many identify resources for veterans in distress to seek help? How many explain that the latest report found of the 20 veterans a day who died by suicide in 2014, 65% of them were 50 years of age or older?

In fact, the 22 Pushups Challenge may have actually hindered solving the problem of veteran suicide. If people think they’ve done their part to help by just posting to social media and don’t follow up with actually doing something to help veterans, then an opportunity to achieve real change has been squandered. Awareness is nice, but action is essential. 

 

So now I'm going to give you best reason of all. No matter how many other videos I did on PTSD and suicide, this was the top one. 

It went up in 2012 and has been viewed 68,557 times as of right now, 12:14 July 29, 2020. It went up on September 15, 2012.

In June of 2020, after a "friend" and I recorded a radio show, all he wanted to talk about was groups using raising awareness that veterans were killing themselves and the stupid number. That was the beginning of the end for me.

By July, I had given up my work with Point Man and my tax exempt. I closed my bank account and turned in the keys to my post office box.

After surviving traumatic events over 10 times as a civilian, along with my research on PTSD, I decided that it would be better for everyone if I focused on everyone dealing with PTSD. With over 8 million Americans struggling, the pandemic, recession, protests and financial struggles, it is going to get worse for everyone.

The truth is, since I was ahead of everyone on veterans with PTSD, what it was doing to families like mine, ahead of the rise in suicides before anyone was putting any of it together, ahead on the necessity to address the mind-body and spirit, along with everything else, getting ahead on this one, was just one more in a series of foresight.  

PTSD Hero After War

Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

June 17, 2020

Hero After War

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is nothing to be ashamed of. It is because you put your life on the line and felt it more than others that you suffer today. The good news is, you can change again and heal to live a better life. I am uploading some of my older videos and pray they help you too!

PTSD Grieving and Healing

Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

June 17, 2020

PTSD I Grieve 

This video won and award from the IFOC. It was intended for National Guard and Reservists, but Chaplains were using it with Police Officers and Firefighters.

National Guardsmen and Reservists have the same wounds as active duty troops but they come back home without the same support. They grieve just as much but for many, they are also risking their lives as police officers and firefighters. Vietnam veterans have been healing from what their service did to them and they know what it is to grieve. Combat PTSD is different from other types. We only know about this wound of war because they fought for everything available today for all veterans. If you have PTSD understand this one message. You are not stuck the way you are and your life can get better. PTSD caused the change in you. Change again!

Healing PTSD Coming Out of the Dark

Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

June 17, 2020

Coming Out of the Dark

Why be afraid if you're not alone? Life is never easy, the rest is unknown. The song is by Gloria Estefan and the first time I heard it, all I could think about were the Vietnam veterans I spent so much time with including my husband. You are not alone fighting to heal PTSD just as you were not alone during combat.

PTSD healing awareness videos

Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

June 17, 2020

The following videos are all about healing PTSD. Since my work was focused on veterans for the last 38 years, these are about them. The only difference is the numbers are higher than they were when I started these in 2006.

If you are not a veteran, they should help you understand PTSD enough to know that no one is beyond healing it! I pray you find enough hope in these to #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from PTSD.

In 2006 I created this video on Wounded Minds. Long before PTSD was in the news, families like mine were doing the best we could to make our veterans lives better. Sometimes we failed but after three decades, I'm still married. I still have no idea how other families do it when they know hardly nothing about PTSD. I knew almost everything and there were times when it was almost impossible to find hope. The key is to learn as much as you can, love as an active partner in their healing and find what works to make your lives better!

This is from my old website, NamGuardianAngel. Go to Combat PTSD Wounded Times to learn more.