Help Other People Evolve

Help Other People Evolve

by
Chaplain Kathie

H O P E

Today I went to a trauma seminar at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne FL. The speakers were wonderful but my mind drifted away from the civilians they were talking about focusing instead on the men and women in our military as well as the veterans.

We all get up in the morning not thinking today is the day our life will change forever, as a couple of the presenters pointed out. No one plans on traumatic events. It could be a car accident. It could be a fire. It could be someone deciding they wanted to obliterate co-workers they thought treated them badly. No matter how careful we are and no matter how much we don't deserve traumatic events to come into our lives, they happen usually because we are careless or because someone else caused it.

Getting over it depends on the kind of help we receive after, support from family instead of them avoiding us and the event and it also depends on our own inspiration to heal. God blessed us with the ability to overcome. All we need is already there but most of us have no clue where to look for it. Most want to return to the way they were before and when they can't this adds to the pain they carry. Any good therapist will tell them honestly there is no way possible to "return" to normal after trauma but they will also add in that the survivor can be better than they were before since every event in our lives, no matter how trivial or serious, changes us in some way.

Normal, regular people experience traumatic events in daily life even though we all try to avoid them. As bad as things can get for us, we need to stop and think about the men and women in the military serving today and the veterans we have living among us. Think of purposely going into danger and what that takes to be able to do it. Knowing someone ahead of them wants to kill them yet doing it anyway. This takes great courage to expose themselves to danger constantly in order to do their "jobs" and what deliver on what is asked of them.

We see police officers respond as they did today to the shooting in St. Louis

8 people shot, 3 fatally, at St. Louis factory, police say
January 7, 2010 2:50 p.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Suspect identified as Timothy Hendron; no word whether he's among those killed
Police doing room-by-room search at plant; interstate, surface streets closed
Of 8 shot, 3 are dead, 3 critically injured, two in fair condition, officials say
St. Louis, Missouri (CNN) -- Three people were killed and five others wounded Thursday in a shooting at a St. Louis, Missouri, transformer manufacturing company, police said.

It was unclear whether the suspect was among those killed at ABB Inc., St. Louis Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

A law enforcement official identified the suspect to CNN as Timothy Hendron.

The shooting occurred just before 6:30 a.m. Arriving officers were told that a man had entered the building with a rifle and a handgun, and that several people had been shot, police said.
read more here
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/07/factory.shootings/index.html

We know they have to do this kind of thing all the time as well as respond to everything else going on in "regular" life. What we do not see is what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan any more than we saw what really happened in Kuwait, Bosnia, Somalia, Vietnam or any of the other actions. We saw news reports but do you ever wonder what it would have been like if film was rolling 24-7 with each and every unit? It would begin to help the rest of us understand that if traumatic events can change our lives so drastically with one event, what must it be like for them with event after event after event? We know civilians end up with PTSD and we know responders do as well but somehow that does not translate into assumption of "normalcy" when it comes to the servicemen and women.

Years ago I tried to explain that PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal events, events out of our control bringing everything in our lives into question, because we can understand the shock a family feels when someone dies unexpectedly, the shock when a fatal diagnosis is given or when someone never walks thru the door again. We have an easier time acknowledging what the survivors are going through than we do when it comes to people dealing with all of it, plus their own "normal" traumatic events the rest of us go through. An example of this came this week.

Mom serving in Iraq hears two young sons died in house fire back home
Sons die in fire while mom's in Iraq'SHE'S DEVASTATED' Father pulls boys, ages 2 and 5, from room as smoke billows out window
January 5, 2010
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter
If the dreaded news comes, it's supposed to arrive stateside with a knock at the front door and a visit from two somber soldiers.That tragedy played out in reverse Monday when a Lansing soldier serving in Iraq was told her two small children had perished in a fire while napping at home."She's devastated, and she is trying to hold on," said Clint Towers, who is Areah Brown-Towers' father-in-law and grandfather to the two victims -- Joshua, 2, and Jeremiah, 5.Clint Towers said the American Red Cross was making arrangements Tuesday to bring the grieving mother home -- perhaps as soon as Thursday.
read more here Sons die in fire while mom in Iraq

This Mom expected traumatic events in Iraq but as she faced them, the trauma came back home when her two sons died. Her life changed in an instant, yet not the kind of change, not the kind of trauma, she suspected would happen. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, they are prepared for the fact they could be in the wrong place when a bomb blows up or when a bullet has their name on it, just as they are prepared for the fact one of their friends could die, but as they face this reality, they also know something could happen back home even though they force themselves to not think about it, push it out of their minds because they have enough to worry about where they are as they face the reality they can do very little about it while they are deployed.

This is their reality.

When they are in the National Guards, they are soldiers while deployed, first responders back home facing natural disasters at the same time they worry about their families. For many, they work regular jobs, but these regular jobs often come with facing traumatic events on a daily basis while they are police officers, firefighters and emergency responders. All of this adds to what they have to heal from.

We are all humans, no matter what caused the trauma. It doesn't matter if we willingly risked our lives or not because all of our lives are at risk everyday. Most of us make it through our days without anything terrible happening, but for those touched by trauma, there is a private hell we either climb out of or sink into. For those who are able to climb out, we have a unique place in this world. We can help others find hope of being able to make it out of that pit because we are standing there.

We do not have to have PTSD to understand someone with it. We don't have to lose a limb to understand how something like that can change a life just as we don't have to lose a family member to be able to understand that. We understand better if we are survivors of the same kind of outcome, but just surviving trauma in itself helps us to be able to help them.

There is no kind of trauma that has not touched my life and perhaps that is why I was able to understand my husband better. He's the combat veteran and I am a veteran of trauma. My traumatic experiences began the day I was born with an violent alcoholic father who stopped drinking when I was 13. Before I was 5 I almost died because of what someone else did. Another child pushed me off a slide. I landed on my head, cracked my scull and had a concussion, but my life was placed in greater danger because the x-ray was read wrong and I was sent home. This was followed by a car accident, being beaten by my ex-husband, miscarriage and then almost dying after my daughter was born and an infection turned my system septic. With all of this and more, I was able to understand that trauma changes everyone. I also knew being a survivor was not anything to be ashamed of or feel hopeless about.

We can always offer hope to someone else. We can help other people evolve from darkness, feeling lost, frightened and alone into someone able to see that they can come out on the other side stronger too. We do this with experience, compassion and living an example of the continuation of living a full life by overcoming that which we cannot heal. Some trauma survivors have had serious bodily injuries they may never be able to fully recover from but that is not what has trapped them. It is what they have living inside of them trapping them from healing. You can help them find the power to heal and help them make peace with the fact the event changed them but does not have to destroy them.

When you read stories like the ones above, remember that most of the people on this planet will experience something out of the ordinary finding it hard to find someone as a role model to find hope from. Be there for them. Try contacting others online and share what you did to heal. If you are not healed yet, reach out to someone else and heal each other. None of this is impossible as long as there is still compassion in your heart from someone walking in your well worn shoes.