Firefighter helps veteran suffering from PTSD episode on airplane
FOX News
Michael Hollan
The firefighter is part of a specially trained support team that helps other firefighters deal with tragedy and PTSD. Capt. Davidson used his training to keep the other veteran calm and the plane was able to land without diverting its course.
Captain Bobby Davidson, who was flying home with his family from vacation, rendered assistance to the passenger and was able to prevent an emergency landing. (Burton Fire District)
Firefighters don’t just fight fire.
The captain of a South Carolina fire department helped calm a fellow airplane passenger down who was in distress. According to reports, the other passenger was a veteran who was suffering from a PTSD crisis.
Captain Bobby Davidson, who was flying home on an American Airlines flight from a family vacation on June 15th, rendered assistance to the passenger and was able to prevent an emergency landing, according to a Facebook post from the Burton Fire District. The firefighter was also able to keep other passengers calm during the ordeal.
The Burton Fire Department confirmed to Fox News that the other passenger is a military veteran and was experiencing a PTSD crisis. While the flight crew was concerned that the plane may need to make an emergency landing, Capt. Davidson stepped in to help. read more here
"The loneliest kind of lonely" is when there is no one else like you. I know that feeling because when I started working on PTSD, I didn't know anyone like me. It was lonely because we didn't have the internet and the only information I could find was at the library reading clinical books. Nothing strange about that since it was in 1982.
In 1993, I finally got a computer and then I found other people talking about PTSD. I started my first site on AOL, then it was on a website where I went by NamGuardianAngel. Back then, since I was unique, I had a lot of emails and phone calls. There were even more when I wrote my first book in 2002.
In 2006 I started making videos on PTSD on YouTube and in 2007, I started Wounded Times.
All that work was worth it even though it was never to make money. Sure I wanted to at least break even but the thing was, the work itself kept me going. Getting feed back and reading messages let me know, it mattered to the people I was trying to help.
In 2007 I posted a massive post about suicides hoping that someone with the power to do something would. Once all the groups started to pop up all over the internet and social media, the emails and messages started to go down. I was reading more and more about veterans suffering and very little being done to help them. The problem was, they were doing something about it by using them to make money.
I didn't give up and made more videos, posted more and tried to reach out as much as possible. It got lonelier and lonelier. In 2017 I started PTSD Patrol hoping that with PTSD in the title, I could gain control over the conversation again, and give veterans hope and families understanding.
Last year, it was too much for me, reading the reports of suicides going up in the veterans' community and within the military itself. My heart was breaking. I decided to stop focusing on them and started to open the work up to anyone with PTSD. PTSD Patrol passed 100,000 page views recently.
I do not follow anyone or take from anyone because I am too busy making my own "music" to march to! My work, has been stolen and copied for decades, but it doesn't bother me anymore. My mission hasn't changed because of them. The work was to offer hope and if others can reach more than I can...that's OK with me. I know that one day, they will get what they deserve for what they did with my work. I pray that those who go to their sites receive the help they were looking for and find the encouragement they need to #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD.
Wounded Times reached 5 million page views because people shared the work.
So, if you are doing anything for the right reasons, if you know that you have something to give the world, then give it freely. I am living proof that even if no one tells you that you matter, you do!
This is going up on Wounded Times and PTSD Patrol. Wounded Times is close to hitting 5 million page views. It still gets a lot of traffic no matter if I post on it or not. That tells me that the need is still there. I am retiring from work, but not this work. I am no longer under constraints from non-profits and their rules, so from now on, I will be posting on what I feel needs to be said. Some people will like it, but others won't. While I hope you like it, if you don't, there are plenty of other sites for you. From now on, I'll be posting on both sites, as I feel the need to say something and as always, I hope what I say helps someone.
There are many times we have conversations with someone, and we never forget them. Every once in a while I'll read something or listen to someone, and instantly be reminded of "that" conversation. Today was one of those days.
Years ago I was confronted by an angry veteran. I was at an event, enjoying the music, when he came over to me, glaring at the Chaplain patch on my vest. Pure hatred shot out of his eyes. Once he started to speak it was easy to figure out he had way too much to drink. To this day, I am not sure why I had so much patience with him instead of telling him to go away.
He wanted to know why I was wasting my time on something that didn't exist. Yes, he meant that in his mind, God wasn't real. Like a lot of veterans who had seen way too much horror in the world, he said, "If there was a God, He wouldn't let all that happen. He wouldn't just sit back, let us destroy each other." At one point the thing that haunted him the most popped out. "Little kids starving and getting blown up while that so called God sits back and watches!"
I asked him why he joined the military. He said to serve his country. I asked him if he loved the country or hated it. Naturally he got ticked off then snapped, "I love it." I asked him if he still did and he said he did. I asked him why he still loved it. He responded with, "Because of what this country tries to be. They sent us to defend the people of Kuwait. We did."
I asked him if that was a good reason or a bad one. He said it was a good one.
When people see so much evil, it is hard to understand how a loving God could allow all of it to happen. They forget that He allows freewill from all humans, to make their own choices, to listen to what He says or not, to believe in Him or not and to follow where He leads, or walk away.
We also miss the fact that if they can still care, then God was there all along. It is easy to not be bothered by something if you do not have the heart to feel anything. It is not easy if your soul is being crushed by it. The very fact that veteran still cared about total strangers proved that. God was closer than he thought.
He was inside his soul. Goodness does not come out of evil. Caring about others does not come out of evil.
When we talked a little longer, I tried to get him to understand that. Over and over again he came back with blaming God. I told him that God was there, because people like him risked their lives to save others and would have dropped their weapons if the enemy dropped theirs. I told him that God was there because he was. He cried and walked away. I decided to not try to follow him because I knew he was drinking too much and I never saw him again.
When all you see is evil, that is all you think is there, but when you change what you focus on, you are able to see so much more. I remember the terrible things that happened to me, but I remember those who came to help me more. I remember feeling lost and alone, but I remember what it felt like when I was "found" and knew I wasn't alone in this world. So instead of only seeing what evil thing someone did to me, I focused on what others did for me because God was there.
Today the featured video is Bette Midler, From A Distance. God is watching us, but not from a distance. He lives in all of us and has an active part in all of our lives. When we listen, miracles happen.
If you have PTSD, I am always talking about taking care of your mind, body and spirit...your soul. I hope this fed your soul so that the next time God is trying to get through to you, you will listen.
Everytime you stand by someone else, do something for someone else out of love...God is there!
Northwell Health Nurse Choir: Gets the GOLDEN BUZZER with their EMOTIONAL Performance!
PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
May 24, 2021
(from my other site)
Today the featured video is one I did back in 2012. Alive Day with Donna Summer, I Will Live For Love. I created it when I was working with veterans and their families. It was a few years after I started posting on Wounded Times about the rise in suicides within the military and among veterans. Back then it was thought that there were 18 veterans committing suicide everyday and it was my effort to get them, along with the members of the military to think about PTSD in a different way.
All humans need to think about PTSD and mental health in a different way.
Why you didn't see Post Bulletin footage of a suicide attempt? was the headline from The Post Bulletin by Jeff Pieters (May 21, 2021) about a repoter capturing the moment when a suicide was prevented by Police Officers. The reason they made the choice to not release the footage is something that all of us should pay attention to...and oh, by the way, I totally approve!
News reporting that informs you sometimes can hurt vulnerable people. Here's how one coverage decision was made.
As humans in society, we have an interest in our fellow people, the different ways they live their lives, the things that they achieve, and the fates that sometimes befall them. We expect, in our free society, to be informed. And yes, there will be hard and unpleasant stories in the Post Bulletin from time to time.
But when there is a cost to the subject, we have to weigh that against the public's desire to know. Does someone who has a drug addiction deserve to be spotlighted for his or her fairly minor misdeeds? Should the sight of somebody having their worst day — a mental health breakdown on a highway bridge in Rochester — be put on display to thousands of pairs of eyes?
And, as Gayle reminded me, sometimes it's more than the individual who bears the cost of the stigma and shame. "There's so little awareness of the impact on families," she said. "The hidden, invisible and innocent victims."
In the end, after much thought and discussion, we made the choice. We would not publish or post our images of what happened on that bridge.
It is never just the one with PTSD or any other mental health condition, but their families as well. I know what it is like to be "family" as well as what it is like to be the "one" dealing with depression so sever I was praying that God would let me die. It was after my daughter was born and I had walked around with an infection for months before it took over my body. I was in the hospital and so sad about things that I just didn't want to do any of it anymore. (Long story but you can read it in For The Love Of Jack) My husband came into the room when I woke up. He had our daughter in his arms. I looked at her and I knew I couldn't leave her. I decided to live for love.
Part of the reason why I stopped working exclusively with veterans and families was the fact that somehow the desire to expose the fact suicides were going up among veterans and members of the military, so that someone would do something to prevent them, was replaced by people making a lot of noise and money off the fact they were doing it. Prevention efforts were drowned out by the ever crowded growing numbers of people wanting fame and fortune instead of saving lives. Suicide prevention was replaced by suicide awareness. As more and more people were committing suicide, the focus and funding was all about veterans. I thought it was time that all us humans were worthy of living.
Maybe that is why most people decide to fight to take back our lives from whatever we're fighting. The people will love are worth fighting for. That is why I Will Live For Love is the featured video today.
Let it be your alive day and live for those you love by healing and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
Remember, it is your life...get in and drive it!
Dream-a-Lot’s Theme (I Will Live for Love)
Donna Summer
There's got to be a way that I can dream
Simply close my eyes and see
The worlds I've never known
What places that my soul has been
Sometimes I need to run away and hide
And soar above the clouds and ride
I sail along so high
Till nothing's in my sky
Except the stars that fill my eyes
And I will live for love
Where ever it may lead
It's written from the start
I know it's face by heart
I will live for love
I'm searching for the one who holds the key
To all this crazy life I lead
Through galaxies in time
A solitary star that joins
Sometimes I need to close my eyes and breathe
Inhale what life's been given me
A passion to ignite
A flaming heart a' flight
I close my eyes
I breathe
I'm free
And I will live for love
Where ever it may lead
It's written from the start
I know it's face by heart
I will live for love
The poet must have known
A lover of his own
"Cause that is when he wrote
Everything I felt for love
And I will fight for love in life and life in love
And I will hold to things above
I'm strong enough to slay the dragon dead and there
(This is from my other site for everyone with PTSD. I thought it was important to share it here too!)
Most people start singing a song whenever they hear it. They can't help it. It makes them happy to sing it. It is as infectious as it was when it was released in 1965! The song, naturally is the Beatles HELP! It was so popular, they even had a movie with that title. So why is it so much easier for everyone to sing that song, than it is to do it?
If PTSD had an anthem, it should be HELP! How much clearer does it have to be? Why the hell should anyone have a problem asking for help when they need it but have no problem, if they can carry a tune or not, to sing this song loud and clear? Has that ever dawned on anyone?
"And now my life has changed in oh so many ways"
Isn't that what having PTSD is like? Your life does change in so many ways. The thing is, getting help can change your life for the better. Wouldn't it make more sense to actually ask for help to be happier, than it is to settle for being happy singing this song for a few minutes?
Common sense needs to come back into the conversation we've been having about PTSD because we're all tied of hearing the doom and gloom. All that has done is tell us that we should never expect to be happy again. Where is the hope in that? Someone said that asking for help is a sign of weakness but all that meant was the hope the had was weak and they wanted everyone else to be miserable too!
Isn't it time to stop singing the same tune and start asking someone for help in real life? Someone who can actually help you? Asking for help is normal. It is human. Won't you please, please, ask for help when you need it?
Remember, it is your life...get in and drive it!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
HELP
The Beatles
I need somebody
(Help!) not just anybody
(Help!) you know I need someone
Help!
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)
(And now I find) Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me?
And now my life has changed in oh so many ways (and now my life has changed)
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure (I know that I)
I know that I just need you like I've never done before
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me
When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)
(And now I find) now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, ooh
This is from my other site, PTSD Patrol where I post daily now. If you risked your life for the sake of others, there is a special video below for you.
PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
March 16, 2021
Are you fighting people who are trying to help you? Are you fighting God? Are you fighting yourself? You know you are not the way you want to be, not the way you used to be and nothing looks the way it did before. What are you doing about it? Are you trying to find someone to blame for the way your life is? Then maybe you should start with yourself because for whatever reason, you ended up believing you are a lost cause.
Time to start believing you are a worthy of better days.
Most of the time, survivors left the church because they did not find what they needed there. At least that is what some say but the truth is, what you needed was the foundation the faith was built on. That foundation is Jesus. Personally I don't attend church anymore and became a Chaplain so that I could care for the needs of fellow churchless souls, much like Jesus and His disciples did. They went to where the people were and tended to their needs, giving them reason to hope for better days, learning a better way to live and know they were loved.
There is no way of knowing why you survived and others did not. The only thing you can be sure of, is you did and it is up to you to define what you will do for the rest of your life. If you are blaming God that is because you think He judged you and wanted you to suffer...but those are your thoughts and not His.
PTSD strikes the emotional part of your brain and that is where your soul lives. If your soul has a strong emotional core, then you feel things more deeply. That means you love more deeply and feel pain stronger than others. What you may not be aware of is how powerful that soul of yours is. Everything you need to heal is already there. The purpose of getting help is to help you find it within yourself. One more thing you may not be aware of is that Jesus, the Son of God, had no problem asking for help when He needed it. He couldn't have done what He was sent here to do, alone.
This is why today the featured video is Goo Goo Dolls, Better Days. You may think it is about Christmas but if you remember what church services were like, it was all about that one day when He came into this world, and the day He left all His love behind for all of our days!
Better Days
Goo Goo Dolls
And you asked me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
'Cause I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And designer love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
So take these words and sing out loud
'Cause everyone is forgiven now
'Cause tonight's the night the world begins again
I need some place simple where we could live
And something only you can give
And that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive
Happy Valentine's Day! Since it is a day to celebrate love, this is a special one for those who serve and suffer for it. There is no greater love than to be willing to sacrifice for those you love. Suffering is not part of the deal and it doesn't have to be, if you consider the reason you are hurting.
The desire to serve was engrained in your soul. It comes from a place of courage and deep devotion. It is what drove you to endure the hardships that came with the job you were among the few willing to do. So why are you paying a price for it? Because the power that enabled you to do what you did, holds the same power to harm you. It is a strong emotional core that caused the desire and to feel the pain even more, but it also holds the power to help you heal PTSD.
If you were willing to die for those you love...be willing to heal for the same reason and LIVE FOR LOVE!
Read his story and learn more about this image that a lot of people thought was fake.
Never regret what you did out of love, no matter how others treated it or you. That is not your problem. It is theirs! Most of the time, they lack the ability to love as much as you do, care as much as you do, and they also lack the ability to feel all the good emotions as deeply as you do.
Use that same strength inside of you to heal for those you love and then, live a happier life because of what you did for love!
Remember...it is your life...get in and drive it!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
I Will Live For Love
Donna Summer
There's got to be a way that I can dream
Simply close my eyes and see
The worlds I've never known
What places that my soul has been
Sometimes I need to run away and hide
And soar above the clouds and ride
I sail along so high
Till nothing's in my sky
Except the stars that fill my eyes
And I will live for love
Where ever it may lead
It's written from the start
I know it's face by heart
I will live for love
I'm searching for the one who holds the key
To all this crazy life I lead
Through galaxies in time
A solitary star that joins
Sometimes I need to close my eyes and breathe
Inhale what life's been given me
A passion to ignite
A flaming heart a' flight
I close my eyes
I breathe
I'm free
And I will live for love
Where ever it may lead
It's written from the start
I know it's face by heart
I will live for love
The poet must have known
A lover of his own
"Cause that is when he wrote
Everything I felt for love
And I will fight for love in life and life in love
And I will hold to things above
I'm strong enough to slay the dragon dead and there
I am writing my 4th book and needed address something in the first chapter so that I could move onto the rest of the book, based on PTSD Patrol. The thing I needed to address was the "strange changes" I had gone through, from survivor, to advocate, to expert and all the way back to denial. I wasn't denying the reality of PTSD. I was denying I had it. You can read it on I didn't really escape surviving unscarred.
That is why today the featured video is, David Bowie, Changes. This is going up on PTSD and Wounded Times because most of the time when you have mild PTSD, you can stuff it, push it out of the way, ignore it by keeping busy, but it is still there. When you reach retirement age, it can hit you like a ton of bricks because while you convinced yourself that you were unscarred, it turns out you just let the scar fester.
It is OK to be surprised it happened, especially if no one told you it could. It is not OK to be ashamed of it, because there is nothing wrong with being a survivor. I'm OK with admitting it and you should be too.
So it is our turn to face the strange changes in us. To use all our knowledge to do what we always did without noticing...surviving this change too. We know that life comes with many changes and challenges. You don't get to reach retirement age without them. Let's face it. Just considering all the changes our bodies go through...this is just one more change.
The good news is, we have plenty of time to do something about it. Our kids are grown. We don't have to get up early and go to work and then come home exhausted after trying to keep up with younger workers and traffic jams. This is supposed to be our time to "enjoy the fruits of our labor" and not pay for having survived this long.
Spend time learning the rules of this road the same way you leaned how to drive your vehicle back in the early days. Remember what it was like to feel that sense of freedom when you were in the car for the first time by yourself? It was great...mixed with some nervousness. This is like that too but just as you became more confident in control of that vehicle...you'll be more confident in control of the vehicle you life on.
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.
In all the times I survived traumatic events, the dreams started. Vivid, strange dreams that made me think I was getting worse. After a while, they started going away. With COVID-19, they are back but now I have a better understanding of them. Instead of letting them haunt me, I laugh at them knowing they will go away again.
Insomnia and Vivid Dreams on the Rise With COVID-19 Anxiety
Smithsonian
By Theresa Machemer
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
APRIL 23, 2020
“One of the earliest patterns that I noticed was people associating hugging with danger or menace,” Gravley tells NPR. “So there are a couple dreams where the dreamers described that someone wanted to hug them, and it made them very frightened, even to the point where they would yell, like, you're hurting me; you're going to kill me.”
An ongoing study by the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center has found a 35 percent increase in dream recall and a 15 percent increase in negative dreams. ( Nuca Lomadze / EyeEm via Getty Images)
A novelist recalls a trip to a comic store with Ronald Reagan, who swipes his wallet before he can make a purchase; someone else remembers escaping a collapsing building by climbing into a pilotless plane, where he hid in a toilet; and NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly says that one night, she broke into a colleague’s apartment and stole from a hoard of toilet paper—and then she woke up.
As parts of the United States enter their second month of stay-at-home orders, people’s day-to-day lives are becoming paired with an increasingly strange and vivid dreamscape. And a growing group is experiencing insomnia, an inability to fall asleep, as Quartz’s Amanat Khullar reports. Both seem to be symptoms of stress, part of the shared anxiety surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Common dream scenarios collected by a group of psychoanalysis students in London, called Lockdown Dreams, include the dreamer running away from something or discovering that they’ve done something wrong.
“These are typical anxiety dreams. It’s very pedestrian stuff in that sense, but it’s acted out with such vivid imagination, it becomes very strange,” Jake Roberts, a spokesperson for Lockdown Dreams, tells Donna Ferguson at the Guardian. “Everyone’s quite shocked by the fact that they’re having incredibly vivid dreams. That’s so interesting because our material waking lives have become, in a way, more dull.”
The London-based group is not the only research project tracking the pandemic’s parallel rise in strange dreams. In France, a group at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center began a study on dreams and dream recall in March, National Geographic’s Rebecca Renner reports. And Bay Area resident Erin Gravley and her sister have begun a website called “i dream of covid” that asks visitors to share their recent dreams.
For those who find their vivid dreams unsettling, the good news is that the phenomenon will probably fade with time.read it here
UCF Restores Program Offering Coronavirus Mental Health Help
My News 13
BY JUSTIN SOTO ORANGE COUNTY
APR. 12, 2020
"We thought this was a good opportunity to reach out to the community in general, talk about stress, talk about how to manage stress and give us an opportunity to see if we can help people during this time when a lot of us may be feeling kind of shut in and alone," Beidel said.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Starting Monday, the University of Central Florida will be bringing a new mental health resource geared towards helping people manage stress during these uniquely challenging times.
UCF Restores will post video sessions on Facebook page twice a week
Sessions aimed at providing tools to help deal with stress
Learn more at UCFrestores.org
The University of Central Florida Restores program is working to help you and your family deal with the stress the coronavirus pandemic can bring.
UCF Restores is a clinical research program that regularly helps veterans, active duty personnel, and survivors of mass shootings or sexual assault through post-traumatic stress disorder. read it here
A couple of years ago, I interviewed Dr. Beidel about this progam.
Dr. Deborah Beidel delivered a message that veterans and responders need to hear. You can fight to #TakeBackYourLife. It takes a lot of work, but there are a lot of people out there who are ready, willing and able, to fight right by your side.
PTSD Patrol
Cross Posted on Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 23, 2020
Four years ago, I wrote Residual War. It was the first fiction book I wrote as a way to tell some stories that were factual mixed with stuff my mind came up with.
Heroes do not think. They react to someone in danger. The Army was Amanda Leverage's life and she was willing to die to save the two lives she ended up blaming for spreading misery and suffering. She never needed to think of why she was willing to die but needed help finding something worth living for. She found it within a group of outcast heroes with their own history of selfless acts being punished for what they did wrong but protected for what they did right. PTSD, survivors guilt, homeless veterans, dishonorable discharges, flashbacks, nightmares and yes, even suicides were part of their lives but so was redemption.
Since I was supposed to be starting an Out Post for female veterans, here in New Hampshire just before the COVID-19 virus hit, it has been very depressing for me. I was offered room at the local American Legion to meet, but it is too dangerous for everyone now.
Experts say that the worst thing a veteran with PTSD can do, is to isolate, but now it is more dangerous for you to be out, and even worse to be in crowds. I needed to think outside the box on this to give you some comfort and fill up some of your time. I'll be reading this book on video, with a bit of a twist to it. I am setting a timer of 3 minutes. Whenever it goes off, whatever word I am on, that will be the end of the video.
We will then play a game as to what that final word means to you. If the word is "and" reply back withy something like "me and" or "and then" or whatever you think about. Should get some interesting replies on that.
It will pick up on the next word in the next video. You can cheat since Amazon has it for free on Kindle and apparently, for whatever reason, you can also read it on their preview page for free.
I am also opening up my YouTube and Facebook pages so you can share your thoughts and to answer questions from 12:00 pm eastern to 1:00 when the first video goes up this week. You can always email me at woundedimes@aol.com too.
Check back tomorrow for the official announcement on PTSD Patrol when the first video will go up!
Please share this since word of mouth has been the only way this site was able to be viewed over 4 million times!
Of all the things you have been hearing about lately, you may have received the impression that it is all new stuff. Peer support...not new. Healing of mind-body and spirit...not new. Suicides and attempted suicides...not new. None of what you hear about today is new, but most of it is not an improvement on what had already been done without the glow of reporters covering stunts.
This weekend I was in Buffalo for the Point Man International Ministries conference. Dana Morgan, the President of Point Man for longer than I have been involved, has stepped down and is taking on leading an Out Post instead of the whole thing after over 20 years.
Want to know what works? Listen to these speeches and know what the rest of the groups should be doing because if you end the video and are not awakened to possibilities...not much else will open your eyes.
There will be a few more videos up tomorrow but they will have to wait until I get back from work.
FINDING HOPE: Boise Fire Department coping with suicide death, fighting stigma of mental illness
KIVI News By: Karen Lehr Jun 25, 2019
"New firefighters saw veteran firefighters break down, and they talked about their feelings and how they were feeling that day, and really that has changed the stigma around it," Doan explained. "Other firefighters are seeing it's okay to seek treatment, that it's okay to not be okay."
BOISE, Idaho — Tuesday, May 21 is a day most Boise firefighters will never forget. Early that morning, firefighters at Station #6 discovered Senior Firefighter Charlie Ruffing died by suicide while working overnight.
It was known within the department Ruffing was facing struggles with his mental health. He was undergoing counseling to deal with post traumatic stress injuries as a result of incidents witnessed on the job over the course of his 20 year career.
A recent bill - passed this legislative session - will soon allow those working on the front lines in Idaho to file for workers compensation to cover the cost of treating psychological injuries incurred while on the job, but Boise Fire is doing even more to make sure this never happens again on their watch. read more here
Caps anthem singer Caleb Green’s military quartet was a hit on ‘America’s Got Talent’
The Washington Post By Scott Allen June 19 at 4:00 PM Caleb Green, a regular singer of the “Star-Spangled Banner” before Capitals home games for years and a well known face to D.C. sports fans, burst on the national scene this week with a stirring performance on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent.”
Green’s a cappella quartet, “Voices of Service,” which is composed of veterans and active duty service members, delighted the studio audience and all four celebrity judges with its rendition of Katy Perry’s 2016 hit “Rise” on Tuesday’s episode of the popular talent show competition, now in its 14th season.
“The song, your voices, your ability, I can’t thank you enough for all of it,” judge Gabrielle Union said after the group received an extended standing ovation. “Thank you.” read more here
Voices of Service: Military Members Cover Rise by Katy Perry - America's Got Talent 2019
America's Got Talent
Published on Jun 18, 2019
Wow! The singing quartet of veterans and active duty service members perform “Rise” by Katy Perry like you’ve never heard it before.
