Beyond the battlefield

Beyond the battlefield: Author shines light on PTSD that occurs outside a war zone

The Rochester Voice
Harrison Thorp
January 30, 2022

ROCHESTER - Kathie Costos of Rochester has devoted much of her life to the study of PTSD, including its far-less diagnosed forms that follow traumatic episodes outside the battlefield.

During a ribbon cutting for her two new books on Thursday Costos explained that her first brush with PTSD occurred at the age of 5 when she was seriously hurt in an accident, but was sent home by medical professionals who told her to just "get some sleep" when she had actually suffered a fractured skull and concussion.
read more here

A couple of lessons to take away from this. The first one is, never give up. It took me 40 years to get support like I've been getting here in Rochester New Hampshire. We moved here 4 months before COVID hit.

The other thing is, I hope readers of these books discover that they have nothing to be ashamed of if they, or someone they love, has PTSD, no matter what caused it. The truth is, surviving the cause, makes us survivors!

If someone thinks they should be ashamed but struggle with knowing they need help, see someone else ask for it and then get treated badly, they won't ask for help. If they see someone breaking the silence and receive help to heal and be happier, they are encouraged to dream about being able to do the same thing.

You can find these books and the rest here on Amazon. I am currently editing the third part of this series. Not bad for five months of work!

Give healing PTSD as a Christmas Gift this year

Give healing PTSD as a Christmas Gift this year
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
December 12, 2012

This morning I opened an email from a woman telling me of her life with her Vietnam Veteran father and what the family went through. Her Dad ended his own life committing suicide days after September 11, 2001. He became part of my greatest fears coming true. Her Dad was one of the reasons I self published my book For the Love of Jack, His War/My Battle because by then I knew what was coming for Vietnam Veterans and their families. The book was finished and I spent over a year trying to find a publisher, but PTSD was not big news and few cared about Vietnam veterans.

When was finished, I was not thinking about troops being sent into Afghanistan or Iraq because 9-11 hadn't happened yet. All I was thinking about was families like mine. They needed to know what I learned just as an average person trying to keep my husband alive and my family together living lives too many others suffered in silence with believing no one else could understand.

By 2002 the troops were in Afghanistan for several months yet the government had not prepared for what combat would do to those we sent or to warn their families ahead of time so they could prepare for homecomings all over the country. I revised the book to add in 9-11 and the troops in Afghanistan along with talk of sending them into Iraq.

A few years later I released it for free on my old website so that no one had to pay for it. Back then I had a paycheck from a job and was doing ok financially. Plus the goal of the book was not to make money but to make families heal. That is still my goal but since I have a non-profit few people offer financial support. That doesn't bother me as much as the fact I am contacted too many times by families after their veterans have committed suicide and face writing another book about something that didn't have to happen.

In 2007 I started this blog and tried to warn families of what was coming.
When war comes home, battle begins for spouse

"When they come home from combat with the horrors imbedded in them, it is often up to the wives or husbands to begin the fighting. We have to fight for them to get help at the same time we fight them to understand they need help. Denial is the first battle. The mood swings and detachment plant the idea it's our fault in the backs of our own minds as we try to understand what's happening. Short term memory loss and poor judgement skills turn us into parents having to watch every move they make. This is what happens when they come home with wounded minds. Can there be any wonder why so many of these marriages fall apart? Most of them crumble like burnt toast when the facts about PTSD are unknown to them. A lot of marriages with Vietnam veterans ended because of this and because so little was known when they came home.

As much as I love my own husband, as much as I learned about PTSD over the last 25 years, our marriage nearly fell apart more times than I can even remember. The frustration of it all becomes too much too often even now. Our marriage license is in half English and half Greek. I tell my husband the adoption orders are on the Greek side of it when I feel as if I am no longer a married woman but a parent to a child 8 years older than me. I was a single parent in all the years of taking control, making sure the government took care of their responsibility to my husband. This is our job.

We become caretakers, nursing their wounds, holding their shaking bodies, comforting their broken image of themselves and trying with all our might to reassure them they are still loved and needed. We adjust to daily prayers of healing as Jesus instantaneously healed the mad man; for patience; for restoration of compassion when self-needs get too strong; for the right words to use when logic is not enough to combat illogic; and above all for the ability to be reassured the person we love is still in there beneath the stranger we see with our eyes.

As spouses take control, we also face financial disasters while claims are "being processed" only to be turned down and appeals have to be filed within the deadlines we have to live with but the VA does not. Employment for these veterans is sporadic at best, but bills are constant. Then there is the astronomical cost of the self-medication they turn to with alcohol and drugs. We loose time at work when they were up all night with nightmares or to take them to the VA for appointments because they cannot bring themselves in the beginning. We loose time at work when we have to take them for hearings and to see the service organizations helping with the claims because they cannot manage to get themselves there without us.

All of this at the same time we have to try to keep hope alive in them, reassure them that truth will win and their claim will be approved so that we can at least keep our homes and pay our bills. We also loose income when their jobs are lost. The income they get from the VA, if and when their claims are finally honored, is a lot less than they would make, along with our own loss of income. We had to have several mortgage "forbearance" arrangements to keep our house, borrowed from family, at the same time I had to work more to keep the roof over our heads. This was a lot of fun when I had to worry about our daughter and my husband needing constant supervision. A tiny crisis left him unable to think often. One time a toilet was overflowing. He called me at work in a panic, not knowing what to do, instead of just shutting off the water flow to the tank and using a plunger, which he had done often before. It was just one of those days for him to face.

We are a huge Army of love, fighting for those who risked their lives but forgotten behind the battle lines. Each day is a new experience. I tell my husband there is never a dull moment in our marriage because I never know what to expect. Sometimes he even surprises himself. Most of the worst days are far behind us. We have adjusted to our own sense of what "normal" is and most days, they are good days. We still have times when my frustration reaches its limit and we have a huge argument, but over the years, they happen a lot less. I learned to deal with the fact he has to recheck the door I just locked and the repeated questions I've already answered twelve times before.

We had our 23 anniversary last month. Marriages do not have to end if the tools are available. That's why I've been working so hard all these years. I'm positive that if I didn't know what PTSD was, there is no way I would be able to cope with any of this. Life does not have to be about existing day to day, but living lives with tiny blessings. It can be about holding hands wherever we go because we held onto our hearts. Yes, we still hold hands!

(Honesty time; I get a little mean every now and then. His short term memory loss opens the door for a little mind game I play every now and then. I will remind him of a conversation we really did have and then toss in something we never talked about. We've gone out to eat a lot because I convince him he promised to take me out. While we're eating, I admit what I did. He laughs and then hands me the bill.)

If you are dealing with a combat veteran with PTSD, learn all you can about it and welcome to this Army of love. The war we fight for them now, will never end, but battles can be won and peace can be declared within our own homes."

In October of 2007 news came out that 148,000 Vietnam Vets sought help in last 18 months
Back then my PTSD videos were on Google and YouTube.

I started doing videos in February of 2006. Is this a coincidence? From the emails I get, it is part of it. It was the goal anyway.

When War Comes Home PTSD
views 2418


Veterans and PTSD version 1
All time views:14,283

Wounded Minds Veterans and PTSD version 2
1567

Wounded Minds PTSD and Veterans version 3
7777

PTSD After Trauma on Google
1709

End The Silence of PTSD on Youtube
Views: 2,919

Hero After War Combat Vets and PTSD on Google
3697
Views: 1,772 on Youtube

Coming Out of The Dark of PTSD on Google
889

Coming Out Of The Dark-PTSD and Veterans on Youtube
Views: 4,304

Death Because They Served PTSD Suicides
1442

These videos are all available on Great Americans at the above tab.

When I think of what was known so long ago emails make me cry because I know the pain all too well but I also know the joy of living with a healing veteran once the darkness of PTSD has been defeated. He is not cured but he is healing and we've been married 28 years. This month marks the 30th anniversary of my work on combat and PTSD. Over half my life has been dedicated to this cause.

If you know someone going through this, give them a Christmas gift that can help them heal. Let them know they are not alone. The price is only $10.00 so that people can afford to buy it.

Authors are now responsible to find their work was just taken?

Authors beware of this site.Docstoc.com

Stunned to find out that my book was on this site and I didn't know about it. I emailed them last week and told them to take it down. They sent me back a form letter but I was not about to read it since I was so angry. Low and behold it turned out the letter said I had to go to a link on their site and file a remove request.

I saw it still up today and was furious. This time I did to the online request but still was not satisfied so I searched for a phone number. The only number I could find was after I signed into the site and it was to customer service. I asked them what made them think they could just take someone else's book and put it up on their site. Then I was told something that shocked me.

They said they get submissions from members and have no control over what they upload. The woman said it was up to authors to ask for the work to be taken down and they were more than willing to do it.

The problem here is that authors would have to do what? Check obscure sites to make sure no one just decided they could do whatever they wanted with their work?

There are literally thousands of writers out there just like me without agents and lawyers to sue sites like this. We work just as hard as "real authors" with an army standing behind them but we don't have anyone to back us up.

I wrote the book 10 years ago to help families like mine when no one was talking about PTSD and families of veterans. I had it for free up on my old website but I guess someone decided they had the right to just take it and put it up on their own site.

Nice work and I hope God rewards them for doing something like this and then telling me it was my responsibility to find out they did it.

New Theory of PTSD and Veterans? Not new and not theory

New Theory of PTSD and Veterans? Not new and not theory
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
December 3, 2012

The biggest problem with PTSD is reporters don't have a clue what was known before they discovered something.

Tony Dokoupil wrote a piece in the Daily Beast and said the Moral Injury connection to PTSD was "new" and used "theory" as if was the truth. It is not new and is not a theory. He picked the title that made my jaw hurt from clinching my teeth. Had Dokoupil used what he later wrote "Moral injury is as old as war." as the title then I would not have taken issue with this otherwise great article.

A New Theory of PTSD and Veterans: Moral Injury
The Daily Beast
Author Tony Dokoupil
Dec 3, 2012

Soldiers are supposed to be tough, cool, and ethically confident. But what happens when they have seen and done things that haunt their consciences? New studies suggest that the pain of guilt may be a key factor in the rise of PTSD.

They called themselves the Saints and the Sinners, a company of Marine reservists from the Mormon land of Salt Lake City and the casino shadows of Las Vegas. They arrived in Baghdad a day before Iraqis danced on a fallen statue of Saddam Hussein, and as they walked deeper into the city, they accepted flowers from women and patted children on the crown. Then their radio operator fell backward, shot in the head.

Last month Lu Lobello, a machine gunner with the Saints and the Sinners in 2003, traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak to a panel at the Newsweek and The Daily Beast Hero Summit. To an audience of mostly civilians in business casual, he revived his memories of that battle in Baghdad. By way of introduction, the moderator, Wolf Blitzer, said that Fox Company had killed three civilians in the crossfire. “Well,” said Lobello, “first off, there were about 20 innocent civilians, not three.” He then limned the rest of the raw story: many of the cars in the intersection held families, not fighters. When the Marines realized this, they tried to help, but often it was too late. Another car would come, and they would shoot it, because what if this one was the enemy. “We were shooting at civilians,” his superior officer explained to a reporter in 2008. “We were taking out women and children because it was us or them.” The image that stays with Lobello is one of the first from that day, of a fellow Marine walking in tight circles, talking to himself. “We shot a baby!” he screamed, turning to Lobello. “Lobello, we shot a baby!”

Moral injury is as old as war. It is recognizable in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and in the oldest surviving play of Sophocles. It’s hidden in the private thoughts of soldiers from every prior American war. It was perhaps first used in the journals of Mac Bica, a Vietnam vet turned philosophy professor. In the 1990s two more Ph.D.s popularized the idea, describing the “the psychological burden of killing” and the Homeric betrayal by leaders. The common thread is a violation of what is right, a tear in what some people freely call the soul.
read more here

I left this comment.

While you have done some research, this points to how little research you did. You mentioned "It is recognizable in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and in the oldest surviving play of Sophocles" but did not manage to discover that Jonathan Shay wrote a book about PTSD and the moral wound in Achilles in Vietnam in 1994 and then followed it up 2002 with Odysseus in America. Had you researched this enough you would have never used the term to say it is "new research" and that is the biggest problem when reporters take the easy way out. All the research done after Vietnam veterans came home and fought for it to be done has been forgotten about. If they used what we already knew we wouldn't see so much suffering and a lot more healing going on.

Was it a matter of getting an attention grabbing headline? If it was too many people will walk away with that thought and not allow the number of years research in PTSD has been done preventing the possibility of them walking away furious with the fact that all of this was known so long ago.

When I got into all of this the web was not available for home use. I had to use the library and could only find clinical books on what Vietnam veterans came home with. Not much fun to read and even less support for me as a wife trying to learn what I could do for my husband and myself. Later on self help books didn't provide me with much until I read Achilles in Vietnam. It was then obvious that to heal the warrior, their soul had to be treated above all else that was done.

Medications can only numb. Physical endeavors only work for so long. If we do not tend to the place where the wound lives, we do not heal them.

The story he wrote about the Marines is not new either. I've written numerous times about the same type of event only with a National Guardsman being the one pulling the trigger.

They were on patrol in Iraq one night when a car was approaching them too fast. He tired to get the car to stop at a safe distance. He opened fire, a family was dead and he blamed himself. The image of the family in the car with children became frozen in his mind and he thought he was evil. What he had forgotten about was what he tried to do to prevent it from happening. He fired warning shots in the air, threw rocks, screamed, prayed and then screamed some more. All he could think about was too many were blown up by suicide car bombers and this car just could be one more on a suicide mission to kill his brothers.

Once he was able to see the whole event, he was able to forgive himself for what he had to do.

The help I was able to give him came after a tremendous price he had to pay. By the time he came to me after his Mom contacted me, he had tried to commit suicide twice, lost his family, his job, his home and was sleeping on whatever sofa his friends were willing to let him sleep on. Years of suffering when all it took from me was about 5 phone calls.

What if he had gotten what he needed as soon as he came home from Iraq? How many lives do you think could have been saved if they had the proper help to heal?

New theory? In 1984 Point Man International Ministries started addressing the spiritual aspect of combat. It works to heal them from where they hurt the most. Maybe if reporters would start to take this more seriously, the general public would no longer have the false impression that all of this is somehow new to OEF and OIF veterans. Had they been paying attention all along then I wouldn't have to be writing a book about military suicides so families can stop blaming themselves.

PTSD Is Not God's Judgment

Finding Peace With Combat PTSD

In 2002 I self published For the Love of Jack so that families like mine would not have to learn the hard way how to find peace living with Combat PTSD. Everything I was afraid of happened.

Suicides and attempted suicides went up. Families fell apart. Older veterans realized they did not escape Vietnam as much as they thought they did. Newer veterans came home to the same issues all generations faced before them but as millions of dollars were spent every year, charity after charity collected more and more money, they went without the help they needed.

The book is no online again after being provided for free on my old website.

If you want an inside look at what was known so long ago, read my book and then you'll know that nothing is impossible. They can heal and so can their families if they are finally told what they needed to know.

You can also watch my videos on the above link to Great Americans to help you understand what it took 30 years for me to learn.

For the Love of Jack His War/My Battle: Finding Peace With Combat PTSD
Authored by Kathie Costos
List Price: $10.00
6" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Black & White on Cream paper
268 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1481082570 (CreateSpace-Assigned)
ISBN-10: 1481082574
BISAC: Biography and Autobiography / Military

The battle to save the lives of combat veterans is not lost and it is not new. 18 veterans and more than one active duty service member take their own lives each day. More attempt it.

Kathie Costos is not just a Chaplain helping veterans and their families, not just a researcher, she lives with it everyday. Combat came home with her Vietnam veteran husband and they have been married for 28 years.

She remembers what it was like to feel lost and alone.

Everything you read in the news today about PTSD is in this book originally published in 2002 to serve as a guide to healing as well as a warning of what was coming for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

If you see a link this book with a different cover, it is not a legal copy. It was pulled from the original publisher years ago.

Save Kathie Costos so she can save them

Save me so I can save them
by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
November 13, 2012

While you read the stories I track everyday, I read emails from veterans and families. I read emails from psychologists and social workers, groups and most of the time from families involved in stories you read here all the time.

What you don't read about are the lives I have saved, families able to stay together because they have finally been informed about what they really needed to know.

In 2002 I self published For the Love of Jack because I knew so many other families would go through the hell we survived. I wait 3 years hoping and praying for the money to come it to be able to do this work full time. I worked for a pay check and did this work when I could.

In 2005, I gave up waiting and put the book online for free. Here are just two of the first emails I received when I did that.

From a female Vietnam Veteran in July 2005

Dear Kathie,

Thank you for sharing your life and wisdom in For The Love of Jack. I must also thank you for sharing it through the internet.

I admit to you that I had not initially sought out this information. It was forwarded to me yesterday by my good friend Edward. I started the book last night, didn't sleep very well, too many thoughts on the matter at hand, woke up this morning, made a lighter and quicker breakfast fare than usual only so that I could get back to your story.

Being forty-eight years of age I do share most of your pre-Jack memories of Vietnam, especially the news reports at dinner time, it was a pretty horrific time in our lives. I'm ashamed to admit that Vietnam was a memory that I had set aside.

I had heard some talk of PTSD, it only came to light with 9/11. I had also heard of "shell shock" but again, it seemed like a distant memory of something that happened to people back in WWII. In my ignorance I thought that it was caused by a physical manifestation - like shrapnel or a head injury having been it's cause.

Your book enlightened me in more ways than you can imagine. I wish these living angels could sprout wings so that we would know them when we see them, so that we could revere and thank them and treat them with the fullest respect and dignity that they so deserve.

Then again, you should have sprouted a set of wings, too!

From a Vietnam Veteran December 2005

I came across a Web-site and I enjoyed what you had written there. I am a Veteran Vietnam 1967-69. I know what it is like to be married to a Vietnam Veteran. I have two ex.-wife's neither of whom can say I ever abused them. I think the word normal is something Vets don't have. My last two wife's still love me either can sleep in the same bed with me. So they now sleep in the bed of someone else. I have a knew wife of a year and she has moved to the couch.

She I think she is afraid, I might died during the night.

I do love her very, very much so I respect her need to sleep on the couch. I have got the works, heart problems, Sugar, PTSD a whole list. I go out and work everyday I can to take care of her and would not have it any other way. My problem I just don't no how mush longer I can hang in there.

I have been fighting with the Veterans Administration since 2001 to get help. Last Dec. I manage finally to get some help. I was homeless for three years after 2001. I would work and could only make enough money to eat and buy my smokes. I was refused care by four Veterans Hospitals during that time. So, I know what you have been through. I know in your heart your a good person. You not only tried, but you kept tiring. Most women just take the money and run!

Thank you Kathie for hanging in there with yourVet, heaven has a place for you waiting.

Hundreds of emails later and very little money in donations, I ended up having to give up my website because I couldn't afford it anymore. The fact is that more and more families have come to me for help and while I have saved lives, the people I help cannot afford to make a donation and to tell you the truth, I am not going to ask them when they are going through hell.

Imagine for a second what that has been like for me. I can't pay my own bills. Do you know what it is like to go to bed every night not knowing how you're going to make it one day to the next with the voices of families falling apart in your head?

I keep asking for help but few have thought what I do is worth even a small donation.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not new but while the media is now talking about it and others are coming out all over the country, making millions a year doing very little, I work 7 days a week at least 10 hours a day. I can't afford publicity like some of the major groups out there even though what they are doing is less than I do everyday. They just have a great PR firm standing behind them. This is not about money. This is about doing the work that I am compelled to do.

I can't do it without your support! If you read Wounded Times and think it is of value, then please support it. If you cannot donate, then please pass it on to others you know. Subscribe to it so that when Google puts up ads I'll get paid more than a couple of dollars a day.

You can donate by clicking the link to PayPal and here's the info

POINTMAN INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES
Pointman of Winter Park
IRS #90-0749457
FLORIDA CH36936


You can mail a check to
Pointman of Winter Park
PO Box 196992
Winter Springs FL 32719-6992


If you are not there for me, I can't be there for them!

I just discovered that the book in online for free from another site and requested it be removed. If people are reading it for free again, then no one will donate for it.

From Barnes and Noble reviews FOR THE LOVE OF JACK HIS WAR MY BATTLE

Anonymous
Posted September 3, 2003
PTSD is sadly too common
Kathie's book was amazing. I have PTSD myself and could identify with both her husband and Kathie since I know what my husband has gone through dealing with me and can look back at the worst times. A very insightful account of a family torn apart by PTSD. Help keep the shelter open since proceeds go to help Veterans who are badly in need of help.

Anonymous
Posted July 8, 2003
His War Her Battle Our Story
In Kathie Costos's groundbreaking new work, 'For the Love of Jack' she documents the life that thousands of families live everyday: living with a Vietnam Veteran who has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the book, Costos describes the disorder and its effects on family and life through her own experiences. Although PTSD is a disorder that varies from individual to individual, anyone who has seen even the slightest of hints of it can relate to this book. Through the chapters the reader comes to know and love Jack along with his family and ultimately can relate back to veterans of all wars and their struggle with this disorder. Never before have I read anything quite like this. Costos's unique and insightful perspective allows the reader to realize the after effects of war on an individual and on a family that are all to often overlooked. She reminds the reader that, along with the Vietnam Veterans, the families too share in the pain and suffering and describes them eloquently as, 'America's Secret.' I think that anyone who read this book would immediately understand that Vietnam isn't just a war or a country but a day to day struggle that all too many families and friends of Vietnam Veterans along with the Veterans themselves continue to battle to this very moment. The subtitle of this piece is His War My Battle. As the proud daughter of a Vietnam Veteran, USMC 1968-1970 I can tell you that its not only His War and Her Battle but Our Story.

Stop dying a slow death, start healing

Stop dying a slow death, start healing
by Chapalain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
October 18, 2012

TO COMBAT VETERANS
Have you ever had a cut that just wouldn't heal? You wait for it to get better. You may put a bandaid on it thinking it won't get worse as you go back to doing what you always do. Day after day, you change the bandaid. It isn't getting better. It is getting worse. Then you discover it is worse than you thought. It is infected. While you waited for it to get better, it got stronger and spread.

Well, that's PTSD when you leave it alone, hoping it will just go away. Bandaids like have a few drinks, or a lot of them, only numb the pain you refuse to face. Pushing people away from you makes it worse. Trying to make sense out of what you're doing to them ends up with you blaming them because you don't want to face the truth within yourself. You need help but you may not believe you deserve it more than you think you don't need it.

Trying to convince yourself you'll get over it isn't the worst part. That comes when you believe you'll never get over it. It is eating away at you. You may think there is an answer for you, so you search but each day you are left without finding what you need, hope is slipping away. Giving up on finding it is dying a slow death as PTSD takes over more and more of your life.

The worst part in all of this is that it is also hurting your family. The people you love don't know what to do to help you. They don't know what you need. They don't know what you are going through so they're looking for reasons and bandaids just as much as you are. You may be pulling away so much you actually get what you want and they walk away. Is that what you really want? Is that what you had in mind when you were heading home from Iraq or Afghanistan? Or from Kuwait? Or from Vietnam? Or any other country you were sent to?

No, you thought you'd just go home and get over it, pick up where you left off. That delusion was fed by bullshit. No veteran has ever come home from combat unchanged. Everyone changes by events no matter what they say. Some are changed more than others for one, simple reason. Their ability to feel things more deeply. If you can love more deeply, care more deeply, then you can hurt more deeply, so you just better face that fact so that you can stop the bullshit and get busy. Stop dying a slow death and start healing.

For the families out there, you better decide if you want to fight for them or let them go. Do you really want to walk away from them? Don't you want to live the rest of your life with them the way you did when you got married? They are still in there. Everything you loved about them is still there but there is a lot of pain hiding them from you.

This is what it looks like from the inside of a family living with combat PTSD. You're looking right at it. I wrote a book 10 years ago about living with it before all the reports about PTSD and suicides came out. None of this is new and none of this is impossible. You may never be "cured" but you can heal enough so that you start living again and stop just waiting to die or looking for a way to do it.

I don't want to have a conversation with your family when it is too late to save your life. I've had too many of them already and their biggest regret is, no one told them what they needed to hear. They blame themselves for it. Do you really want to put them through that?

FOR THE LOVE OF JACK, HIS WAR/MY BATTLE gives you an idea of what it is like for the veterans as much as it gives veterans a clue what it is like for their families. Time to learn what I tried 10 years to tell you about.


If you're not into reading, then go to the top of this blog and watch some of the videos. You should learn enough to at least stop blaming yourself for what is happening to you and start putting on antibiotic to heal.

Vietnam vet reaches out to young soldiers with "Facing PTSD"

Vietnam vet reaches out to young soldiers with "Facing PTSD"
by Todd Moe
Listen with NCPR Player
Keene Valley, NY
Oct 11, 2012

Tom Smith grew up in Connecticut, but his family has owned land in Keene Valley for four generations. He was drafted in 1968 and flew helicopters in Vietnam. Smith saw lots of combat, was shot down numerous times, and when he returned to the States, he says he was a changed person - easily irritated and angered.

In the '70's and '80's he moved around, living in Alaska, Hawaii, California and then back in the Adirondacks.

He turned to writing as a way of coming to terms with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He calls his third book, Facing PTSD: a Combat Vet Learns to Live with the Disorder, an auto-ethnography. It includes heartwarming stories of family and friends and also comical adventures. Tom and his wife, Kathy, have two sons. He told Todd Moe that while he is still dealing with bouts of pain, anger and sadness, life is good. Todd spoke with Smith from his home in Keene Valley about his time in Vietnam, writing the book and reaching out to a new generation of "wounded warriors".
read more here

Iraq veteran's wife shares what PTSD did to marriage

Anderson Iraq War vet's post-traumatic stress tears apart a marriage, but there's a happy ending
Sep 14, 2012
Indystar.com
Written by
Barb Berggoetz

A turning point for U.S. Army Spec. Wes Carlile, Anderson, came in 2003 when 15 members of his Army unit were killed and 26 were wounded after insurgents brought down a Chinook helicopter in Fallujah, Iraq. As a chaplain’s assistant, he was required to plan their services. / 2003 Associated Press file photo

Newlywed bliss and togetherness turned into a broken marriage.

Their worlds separated, painfully so.

Iraq War veteran Wes Carlile, plagued by nightmares and flashbacks, retreated into his private hell.

"I was very angry and bitter," he said. "I hated God for my friends who died and others I lost."

Carlile's wife, Andrea, belittled, emotionally and physically abused, turned to alcohol and thoughts of suicide.

"It broke my spirit. I felt like I was nothing."

Each felt abandoned, betrayed. They turned away from each other -- and God. They signed their divorce papers.

But their story doesn't end there.

Andrea, in her new book, "The War That Came Home," calls theirs a story of hope. And she wants the book, to which Wes contributed, to bring solace and inspiration to others fighting similar battles.

"Miracles still exist. Blessings of others can make a difference. . . . A battered woman can find her footing again and champion against abuse. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) does not have to destroy the veteran and his or her family."
read more here

Thank you for sharing your life and wisdom in For The Love of Jack

How did I go from this,

July 20, 2005

Dear Kathie,

Thank you for sharing your life and wisdom in For The Love of Jack. I must also thank you for sharing it through the internet.

I admit to you that I had not initially sought out this information. It was forwarded to me yesterday by my good friend Edward XXXXXX. I started the book last night, didn't sleep very well, too many thoughts on the matter at hand, woke up this morning, made a lighter and quicker breakfast fare than usual only so that I could get back to your story.

Being forty-eight years of age I do share most of your pre-Jack memories of Vietnam, especially the news reports at dinner time, it was a pretty horrific time in our lives. I'm ashamed to admit that Vietnam was a memory that I had set aside.

I had heard some talk of PTSD, it only came to light with 9/11. I had also heard of "shell shock" but again, it seemed like a distant memory of something that happened to people back in WWII. In my ignorance I thought that it was caused by a physical manifestation - like shrapnel or a head injury having been it's cause.

Your book enlightened me in more ways than you can imagine. I wish these living angels could sprout wings so that we would know them when we see them, so that we could revere and thank them and treat them with the fullest respect and dignity that they so deserve.

Then again, you should have sprouted a set of wings, too!

With love and continued healing and blessings to you and yours,
Elaine

August 4, 2005

Hello Kathy - I was just about to contact you. Late Tuesday afternoon, Bobby XXXX, our PTSD Unit Case Manager completed his review of the book (I've inserted his comment below) We just wanted to allow our internal case managers an opportunity to review before placing online. Now, in terms of formatting, how would you like the book to be placed on the website? In Adobe or some other format? We are now in the process of revising our website and over the next two weeks will have a lot of new information going online, at that time, we will also place your book online. Do we need to have any formal agreements from you in order to do this? Anything else you want to let me know about? Just let me know. Thanks again Kathy.

Here is Bob XXXX comment

Hi Stephen,I put a little more into Kathie's book.It'll be especially helpful to significant others or those affected by secondary ptsd,up close or from distances.She makes it easy for the readers who need to grasp closure as well as those who quietly need to know.

December 20, 2005
Dear Mrs., Costos

I came across a Web-site and I enjoyed what you had written there. I am a Veteran Vietnam 1967-69. I know what it is like to be married to a Vietnam Veteran. I have two ex.-wife's neither of whom can say I ever abused them. I think the work normal is something Vets don't have. My last two wife's still love me either can sleep in the same bed with me. So they now sleep in the bed of someone else. I have a knew wife of a year and she has moved to the couch.

She I think she is afraid, I might died during the night. I do love her very, very much so I respect her need to sleep on the couch. I have got the works, heart problems, Sugar, PTSD a whole list. I go out and work everyday I can to take care of her and would not have it any other way. My problem I just don't no how mush longer I can hang in there.

I have been fighting with the Veterans Administration since 2001 to get help. Last Dec. I manage finally to get some help. I was homeless for three years after 2001. I would work and could only make enough money to eat and buy my smokes. I was refused care by four Veterans Hospitals during that time. So, I know what you have been through. I know in your heart your a good person. You not only tried, but you kept tiring. Most women just take the money and run!

Thank you Kathie for hanging in there with yourVet, heaven has a place for you waiting.

Thank you again, To be kind is ever so wise !
Your Friend,
The Rose

to not being able to pay my bills?

What really gets to me now is that being right way back then has left me being last on support. Organizations spending most of their money on raising more funds have taken the spotlight away from people way ahead of them on the work, so they can turn around and claim they are now doing what has been done all along.

When I think of how many people I've reached over the years, my heart breaks because I could have reached so many more but was not given a chance because I didn't have financial support or even enough people passing on what I do. That was the whole point of doing this and will be the point of doing all of this tomorrow.

If you cannot find it in your heart to support what I do financially, can you send the link to my work to people you know? If you cannot do either one for me, then can you send a prayer that someone else will?

Tenth Anniversary of For the Love of Jack, His War/My Battle

Tenth Anniversary of For the Love of Jack, His War/My Battle

Ten years ago I self published For The Love Of Jack, His War/My Battle about living with Combat PTSD. I wanted to help other veterans and their families by talking about what was still a secret war going on when men and women came home from war.

It was finished and I was looking for a publisher when September 11th came. I rushed to have it self-publised. You can read more about this on the above link. To make a long story short, there is so much we knew back then that there are no excuses for what is not being done today. When you read it, you'll know what I mean.

I hope it helps you to understand a few things.

First, it is not hopeless and it does not have to win.
Families can stay together and help each other heal.
Older wives like me can help the younger generation learn what it took us 40 years to understand, in my case, 30 years.
That family members need just as much support living with Combat PTSD as the veteran does. Families are on the front line of this and it is up to us to fight for them when they come home.
Above all this, the need for spiritual healing since PTSD is a wound to the soul.

I don't just study PTSD and report it on my blog. I live with it everyday. I've seen the darkest days losing hope but I've also seen my wonderful husband come out on the other side of darkness. Sadly as you'll read in the book, his nephew did not make it and took his own life. His death was one of the reasons I decided to fight even harder to make sure there were more healing and less dying.

With the reports of 18 veterans suicides per day and an average of one military member committing suicide, it breaks my heart knowing none of this had to happen and I couldn't get anyone with the authority to do anything about it to listen.

For all the talk about June being PTSD Awareness Month, it seemed only right to release this work at the end of the month.

Marine veteran hopes his memoirs will help others

Marine veteran hopes his memoirs will help others, speaks at FSCJ Tuesday
Van Winkle will be giving a lecture on his book, 'Soft Spots,' at South Campus.
Posted: February 27, 2012
By Anthony DeFeo

Like scores of other veterans, Clint Van Winkle couldn’t stop waging the war inside his head.
After serving as one of the first troops on the ground in the Iraq War, he knew something wasn’t right from the first night he was home.

“Pretty early on, from the first night home, when I was away from the Marines,” said Van Winkle, “it didn’t feel right.”

His memoir, “Soft Spots,” chronicles his wartime experiences and the struggles he experienced after his return home.

It tells a personal tale of how war can affect a person and how difficult it can be for a veteran to seek help.

Van Winkle will be giving a lecture about his book at Florida State College at Jacksonville’s South Campus on Tuesday. The event is at 7 p.m. in the Wilson Center Theater and will be followed by a book signing.
read more here

Soft Spots continues to get rave reviews

Van Winkle offers view of PTSD

The Living Diet is a great read

Once in a while a book for me to review comes in and I am pleasantly surprised. Usually by the fourth page, the book gets put away and I never mention it. I simply don't give bad reviews. This is one of the books that I am happy to share. It is short, so that says a lot for the author not wanting to "hear his own voice" more than the message he wants to share with the readers. He wants to share healing and that is very much needed right now. Great read.

The Living Diet
The world is full of people who are stressed out. Anyone who has lived through a catastrophic event – military veterans, disaster survivors, crime victims, firefighters and others – can have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Living Diet chronicles the life of a veteran who is overwhelmed by PTSD following his return from overseas combat tours. His only safety line is a former military chaplain who encourages him to seek help. It doesn’t matter who you are – veteran or non-veteran. It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female. PTSD can get a grip on you and control your life. Learn to adapt to the four key strategies of The Living Diet and begin your healing process today!

Shock Waves, PTSD book that tells it like it is

When it comes to PTSD the best therapists either have PTSD or live with someone who does. There are many things that you can't understand just by reading books or talking to someone from time to time. The frustration of living with mood-swings, walking on eggshells, constant turmoil and heartbreak, glimpses of hope shattered by reality, the constant worry for their safety, the list goes on. No one understands this better than the people living with it. When it comes to books on PTSD, it follows along the same reasoning. If you want to know what it is like living with PTSD, read it from someone who does and not some casual observer just copying news reports or interviewing people without really understanding what questions should be asked. I've been living with the good and bad for 26 years. When I'm pulled into a book I'm reading, into their world and their pain, that's when I know they get it.

Cynthia Orange gets it. In her new book Shock Waves, she shares her life and uses quotes from others to help healing. She shares her life along with research to get others to know the life we live everyday. It's well written and flows without hype and needless words just to fill pages.

It's the best $14.95 you can spend if you want to learn more about PTSD.

I am asked all the time to review books and usually I cringe a bit when I get an email about the newest book coming out. I don't give bad reviews, so I don't mention the books I find more self-promoting than helpful. One recent book came to me and when I read about full names being printed along with personal information by a therapist, I just about fell off my chair. That one almost made me reach the point of stopping reviewing books all together. Other books left me feeling as if they just don't know enough about it. Shock Wave just restored my faith in good people writing for the right reasons.

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Relationship

I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I need them now just as I needed them in the beginning to help heal my husband. I had to go it alone for years but finally found great doctors at the Bedford VA in Burlington MA, and we got my husband thru the darkest of times. That's one of the biggest things missing today.

Families are often avoided when a veteran is being treated for PTSD instead of added into the healing. Too many veterans are not receiving any therapy at all to go along with their growing list of medications they take. What we see are more suicides, attempted suicides, families falling apart, drug abuse, homelessness and hopelessness. All of this does not just happen to the veteran at the center of the turmoil in the family but to the entire family often being carried over one generation to the next, just as it had been since man first went to war with man. No one was doing anything as PTSD claimed more and more of the character of the veteran.

Today we have the Internet allowing veterans to connect to veterans all over the nation and families connect to other families for support and advice. As we travel the world wide web of knowledge, keep in mind there will be great advice as well as bad advice. Most sites offer support from groups of individuals in the same position and of the same background. Not one single site, including mine, has all the answers and they never will.

I know what it's like living with PTSD and have gained great insight into their world talking to them and their families, as well as my own husband, but no matter how much I know, I cannot go past suspecting PTSD. It takes a doctor to diagnosis it and provide medication for it. I can add to therapy they receive but I cannot replace it. I can give back hope of healing but I cannot answer prayers or replace God. My job is just to get them back into communicating with God instead of feeling abandoned by Him or trying to hide from Him.

Helping as teams, much can be accomplished but if you come across anyone acting as if they are the alpha and omega with all the answers on PTSD, run as fast as you can. After over 25 years, there are still things I am learning but above all, learning I can't do it all and was never intended to.

Read books and reports on PTSD and about what it being done. Find something that makes all of this click because there is no one size fits all answer or treatment any more than there is one style of therapy that works for all. Keep searching and stop being afraid to hope.

This is a book you may find helpful as you learn more about PTSD.

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Relationship: How to Support Your Partner and Keep Your Relationship Healthy
The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Relationship
(Paperback)
Diane England (Author)


Editorial Reviews
Product Description
War, physical and sexual abuse, and natural disasters. All crises have one thing in common: Victims often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their loved ones suffer right along with them. In this book, couples will learn how to have a healthy relationship, in spite of a stressful and debilitating disorder. They’ll learn how to:
Deal with emotions regarding their partner’s PTSD
Talk about the traumatic event(s)
Communicate about the effects of PTSD to their children
Handle sexual relations when a PTSD partner has suffered a traumatic sexual event
Help their partner cope with everyday life issues
When someone has gone through a traumatic event in his or her life, he or she needs a partner more than ever. This is the complete guide to keeping the relationship strong and helping both partners recover in happy, healthy ways.



About the Author
Diane England, PhD has a particular interest in the topic of post-traumatic stress disorder after having worked with military families for five years at a NATO base. Dr. England holds a PhD in clinical social work from the University of Texas at Arlington. In addition, she has a master’s degree in family studies from Oregon State University and a bachelor of science degree in child development from the University of Maine. She is a licensed clinical social worker who has practiced as a psychotherapist. She has also held other positions that provided opportunity to educate individuals on how to strengthen themselves, their marriages, and their families.

Shell-shocked: Jacqueline Winspear takes on PTSD

This may help the general public finally begin to understand what it's like. I know it helped my Mother when she would read mystery novels and love stories. Occasionally she would come across a character with PTSD and feel terrible about them, around the same time she stopped telling me to get divorced. Before words of the writers of these books connecting her to the character, even her own son-in-law was hard to understand. It was almost as if she was just too closely connected to him to really see him. In fantasy land of the fiction novel, they can manage to what all the clinical studies and real life stories can't manage to do. I am sure that if my Mom was still alive, she'd buy the book.

Shell-shocked: Jacqueline Winspear, Iraq vets, and the EPICON study
Jacqueline Winspear, England-born and raised, is the author of the award-winning, wildly popular Maisie Dobbs mystery books - whose latest installment is titled Among the Mad. In it, Winspear, with characteristic British practicality and compassion, explores territory few writers dare to tread - the psychic cost of war. The EPICON study, just released, explored the same territory in the lives of returning men of one troop exposed to multiple tours and higher levels of conflict. The EPICON study analyzed a cluster of murders in Colorado committed by members of this troop. According to the AP "The psychological trauma of fierce combat in Iraq may have helped drive soldiers in a single battle-scarred Army unit to kill as many as 11 people after their return home, the military said."

Specifically, study subjects said they "carried weapons with them because they felt 'naked' and unsafe and had difficulty transitioning to civilian life. Some said they felt 'weird' and didn't fit in, the Army report said. 'There, we were the law; here, the cops are the law,' one of the accused told investigators."

Jacqueline Winspear's books are set in post-World-War I England.

Shell-shocked: Jacqueline Winspear

Soft Spots continues to get rave reviews

ASU alum, Iraq War vet finds healing in his book, 'Soft Spots'
Clint Van Winkle, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, was struggling to cope with life after combat upon his return to the States in 2003. Awful memories and images of devastation, callous violence and mind-scenes that included burned bodies and dead children were impossible to erase, and help was hard to find. Although he didn’t know it at the time, he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A 2005 graduate of Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (B.A., English), Van Winkle found a small but important piece of the elusive healing process through his authorship of “Soft Spots: A Marine’s Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) a book that evolved from essays he had written. The critically acclaimed book is a detailed account of his service in the early stages of the Iraq War and, more importantly, war’s aftermath and his frustrating experiences upon his return home.

“This memoir of combat in Iraq, and the post-traumatic stress disorder that followed, contains more literary touches than most, and it’s an admirable effort…it presents a vivid picture of what many vets endure,” reads one review in Publishers Weekly. Another review, by The Washington Post’s Juliet Wittman, notes, “Nothing gets held back in “Soft Spots”…despite the author’s lacerating honesty, the narrative is dreamlike and surreal.”

Van Winkle was a Marine sergeant in Iraq, commanding an amphibious assault vehicle section while attached to Lima Company 3rd BN 1st He crossed into Iraq on the first day of the war and moved about the country constantly, encountering all the horrors of war as only a front-line combatant can. Among those horrors were “soft spots,” the term used to refer to a fallen Marine, killed in battle, and accidentally stepped on in the midst of rubble. Marines.
go here for more
http://asunews.asu.edu/20090601_iraqvet

Van Winkle offers view of PTSD

by
Chaplain Kathie
There have been many books I've had the honor of being sent to read. This is one I highly recommend. I brought it on the trip to Washington DC last week, but the trip didn't allow much time for reading. The rest of this week was playing catch up on the news and emails. Today, I had the time to finish reading it.


Van Winkle writes like master and commander of a remote control. He flips back and forth between events in Iraq and life back to what is supposed to be normal. He couldn't have done a better job because that is exactly what PTSD veterans go through all the time. Flashbacks take them back to where they were when their lives were in danger. Much like a remote control can change channels back and forth between programs, the mind performs the remote viewing on months, years and even decades in the past only this remote brings the smells and taste with the trip back into hell.

There have been compelling stories in the past from warriors but few have come close to the vivid imagery conjured up their creators.

From Barnes & Noble

Synopsis

A powerful, haunting, provocative memoir of a Marine in Iraq—and his struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in a system trying to hide the damage done


Marine Sergeant Clint Van Winkle flew to war on Valentine’s Day 2003. His battalion was among the first wave of troops that crossed into Iraq, and his first combat experience was the battle of Nasiriyah, followed by patrols throughout the country, house to house searches, and operations in the dangerous Baghdad slums.

But after two tours of duty, certain images would not leave his memory—a fragmented mental movie of shooting a little girl; of scavenging parts from a destroyed, blood-spattered tank; of obliterating several Iraqi men hidden behind an ancient wall; and of mistakenly stepping on a “soft spot,” the remains of a Marine killed in combat. After his return home, Van Winkle sought help at a Veterans Administration facility, and so began a maddening journey through an indifferent system that promises to care for veterans, but in fact abandons many of them.

From riveting scenes of combat violence, to the gallows humor of soldiers fighting a war that seems to make no sense, to moments of tenderness in a civilian life ravaged by flashbacks, rage, and doubt, Soft Spots reveals the mind of a soldier like no other recent memoir of the war that has consumed America.
Soft Spots by Clint Van Winkle

A Wound in the Mind

In Print : A novel of turmoil, war, and humanity
By Jack Shea
Published: May 28, 2009
"A Wound in the Mind" by Francis J. Partel Jr. Fiction Publishing Inc. 129 pages. $19.95

The 1960s, particularly the later part of the decade, was a blur of action, events, tragedy, liberation and the emergence of the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll mentality. Recently, personal books about the 60s have been rolling off the presses from Tom Brokaw's bestseller, "BOOM!" to locally authored, "In My Life," by Tom Dresser. Now comes "A Wound in the Mind", a short novel of combat-related stress disorder penned by Chappaquiddick summer resident Francis J. Partel Jr.

For some authors, 60s books may be a way to understand what really happened. Others, such as Messrs. Dresser and Partel, seem to know. Mr. Partel was a young naval officer who served in the Southeast Asian naval theater in which his book takes place.

Mr. Partel's novel reminds us that Vietnam wasn't just a poorly executed war. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an almost invisible pathology in 1968, was also unleashed. As we've since learned, the effects of PTSD are viral, deadly, and continuing.

"Wound in the Mind" has an autobiographical tone. It tells the story of the real-life court martial of a United States Marine corporal Juan Cachora, accused of breaking the jaw of his commanding officer in a spontaneous melee that began after a string of firecrackers exploded behind him when he was on shore leave during the Vietnam War.

He did it, according to witness statements. However, witnesses, many of whom are shipmates, are equally clear that Cpl. Cachora was not drunk or disorderly, nor did he have a grudge against his well-liked superior.

The military disfavors striking officers and the law is clear. Cachora faces five years in brig time. The defense team becomes aware of early research efforts into PTSD and argues that the Marine, who has received The Navy Cross and The Purple Heart, needs therapy, not jail time.
go here for more
A novel of turmoil, war, and humanity

Shaking your dust off my feet

LUKE 9:5-6

5 And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.
6 And they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and healing every where.

I've been doing outreach work with Veterans since 1982, long before some of my readers were born. In 2000, my book, For The Love Of Jack, was finished and in 2001, I tried to find a publisher. This was long before all the press coverage of PTSD. No one was really interested in what Vietnam veterans were going thru, almost as if they had nothing to learn. When September 11, 2001 came, I knew there would be a lot more veterans suffering from PTSD, who up until that point, coped with it. 9-11 brought a "secondary stressor" far too few psychologists address. I gave up trying to find a publisher, realizing the urgency of providing the information in my book, I decided to self-publish. I received very little help but if you look online there are a lot of links to this book still up. The book is online for free from this blog on the side bar. It opens in Adobe.

Think about how much this book could have helped families back then, before the media finally decided that it was an important story. 18 years of our life are that book covering how my husband's PTSD was mild when we met, but the secondary stressor sent him over the edge. A secondary stressor is like giving un-addressed PTSD a shot of steroid. It happens that quickly. It also contained 18 years of researching what I had learned. Most of the studies they are doing right now, have already been done. What if the researchers had bothered to check with the families already living with it, coping with it and used their experiences to help the new generation? Think of how many lost years could have been spent on new research.

I am not a powerful person. I am not a rich person. I am just like every other average American trying to make a difference to a lot of hurting people. While I know a lot of powerful people, very few of them had faith in me, my knowledge or my experience. I asked them to help me help the veterans and their families. While they said they would, they never did.

I was asked to become certified with the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists years ago but I said I wanted to stay right by the side of veterans and their families as one of them. In my mind there were enough professionals at the time but the veterans needed someone to show them the way on a equal level. I knew I would be able to charge people for what I did had I opted to become certified, but that was not what the veterans needed. So I worked a regular job and did the outreach work in my spare time.

As the numbers of veterans were growing and too little was being done, no one with the power to address it was listening to people like me. Letters to Senators and Congressmen were responded to with a form letter telling me they cared about the issue but they did nothing. I was never asked to speak to them, inform them or offer all those years of experience with my own husband and hundreds of veterans at that point. I was screaming about the growing need, but no one heard me.

In 2006 I came up with the idea to reach veterans the way the new veterans where they were, on Google and YouTube. I started doing videos on PTSD, combining music, pictures and a message, so they would not have to read too much but get the point that PTSD is a wound, is a normal reaction to abnormal events and that there was hope in healing if they reached out for help.

Over twenty videos later, thousands of hits on videos covering all forms of trauma, videos for Vietnam veterans, veterans families, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, along with others living with the aftermath of trauma, still these powerful people will not listen. I've traveled with these videos but considering the need out there to share information with the veterans and their families who still don't know what PTSD is, especially the National Guards and Reservists, I've been turned down on doing presentations. People will watch the videos, come up to me and ask me if I would be interested in doing another presentation and when I agree, I never hear from them again. Churches have turned down my offer to help their congregations understand what PTSD is so they can help the veterans and their families.

What I do, which is taking up 16 hours a day, I do for free. I ask for donations but the people who can afford to donate, use my work without feeling any need to donate, yet the people who have very little money will donate what they can. With this, there is no money to spend on advertising my work. I have to trust word of mouth to spread the videos and the kindness of strangers who value it enough to pass it on. I deeply appreciate everyone who has taken the time to help me with this work.

For a long time, I could not understand why the people with the power to help me wouldn't. I've never been wrong because I pay attention to all of this as if my life depended on it, simply because it does. All the warnings I tried to give have been proven to have come true yet leaders of many different groups would not provide me with the time of day to share the information before it all came to pass when something could have been done to prevent the suffering of thousands and their families.

Now I think I finally figured it out. It's not that I don't know what I'm talking about or have trouble articulating any of it. It's not that any of the information is wrong, because it's all supported with research and links. It's because they are blind to it all. The VA only sees what they are shown. They are dedicated people but they will not spend this kind of time researching any of this. They do not talk to people across the country and the world. They only talk to the people who come to them or read whatever the VA puts out. The service organizations also know they have a problem but they are reluctant to act to address it and when it is presented to them, they take offense as if they are being attacked. I've had many arguments with them over the years and when I do, I tell them that what I do would not do anyone any good unless they were there to treat, diagnose and assist the veterans with their claims. I need them where they are but I also need them to open their eyes and know what is coming and what they can do to get ahead of it for a change.

I know that if I happened to be a Republican, I would have all the support in the world. This is not a baseless claim. I've seen it when someone will watch one of my videos, call me a hero online one day and then slam me the next when they find out I'm not one of them. I've tried to help out on message boards and get involved with some of the military groups online, but have been turned down.

None of my PTSD videos are political but politics constantly plays into this. I help all veterans no matter what political party they happen to be in because they have my heart and tug at my soul. I fully support them because they are willing to risk their lives for the sake of this nation and it's not up to them where they go. They all need help and to avoid someone who happens to be a Democrat who can help them with this devastating wound is an injury to them. It would be one thing if they disagreed with my political view but supported my work but they will not even bother to notice that when I address PTSD, there is nothing political involved because PTSD does not care what political party they happen to be in.

When I come out and slam a politician it is not because of their political party, but it's because there is an assumption only Republicans support veterans, when their voting records prove that to be a false assumption. I slam John McCain because he claims he supports veterans but his record proves he does not whenever he's had the chance to prove it. He made the claim that he doesn't need lessons on what veterans need because he is such a supporter of them. This claim was allowed to just stand when he has an abysmal record on proving it.

What the Republicans do not see is that I will slam anyone who does not do the right thing for veterans, just as I did when Bill Clinton was president and would not address the backlog of claims or the issue that congress passed a stupid law that allowed the VA to collect for "non-service connected" treatments never once considering that any claim not approved was tagged as "non-service connected" even if the veteran had lost a leg to a bomb. No approved claim meant they would have to pay until a claim was approved. The ramifications of this rule had such far reaching affects that veterans have been suffering not just financially but feeling betrayed by the very same country they were wounded while serving.

As I said, I know a lot of powerful people who will not give me the time of day when it comes to this. They look at me as if I am not worthy of their help to help veterans, as ironic as that sounds. So now I'm shaking the dust off my feet when it comes to all of them. I'm done trying to get them to put politics aside and focus on what the veterans need and what can be done. I'm tired of acting as if they are more important than I am in this just because they have received the support to get them into the positions they are in. When people put politics first someone suffers. The veterans have been suffering needlessly because of this.

I will still go where I'm asked to go, but I'm done trying to be invited. I will no longer send updates on videos that I do to help to organizations who have failed to share them. I will no longer contact anyone or support any organization that cannot put the needs of the veterans above what political party I happen to belong to. I will no longer put up with being viewed as someone who is less patriotic or of lesser value than they are.

Above all I am done being hurt by people who question my faith because I take the words of Christ so seriously that I cannot take the easy road agreeing with people who are not following His word and treating people the way He said they should be treated. I am so serious about being a Christian that I was the head of Christian Education for a church for two years and became a Chaplain so that I could be of service the way Christ was. He helped all people no matter what faith they belonged to. Chaplains are not supposed to be about evangelizing. That is the job of the clergy and it's high time the evangelizing got out of the military and they returned to taking care of the spiritual needs of all no matter what faith they hold or if they hold no faith at all.

This also gets me slammed by the far right as well as other Christians who cannot understand that if one branch of the Christian faith is allowed to evangelize, that leaves them out. Do they ever stop to consider how many branches there are of Christianity? Do they notice that all Christians do not hold the same doctrine? If they noticed these glaring facts, they would have a problem with evangelizing in the military as well. It's also another reason why I'm asked to help a certain group one day and the next ignored.

I know this was a long rant but it's taken me a lot of years of frustration to reach this point. After 26 years doing this, you'd think that I would have had a lot more support than I do and I'm tired of fighting them wasting time I could have been just fighting for veterans.

NOTE: You know who this is addressed to and you have only yourself to blame. You would not help me to get the information I have to the veterans needing it, so all the veterans who contacted me when they are suicidal, remember there are many more who never found my work in time.
Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com

http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/