Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Healing PTSD Stamp has issues...

The USPS 'Healing PTSD' Stamp Will Raise Money for Veterans


Military.com
By James Barber
3 Dec 2019

The United States Postal Service has just issued a "Healing PTSD" semipostal stamp that will raise money to be distributed to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for the National Center for PTSD.
The First-Class stamps will sell for 65 cents, a ten-cent premium over the standard price. A semipostal stamp is one designed to fund causes in the public interest and in this case that interest is post-traumatic stress. The extra money will be donated to the cause.

The "Healing PTSD" stamp features a photo illustration of a green plant sprouting from ground covered in fallen leaves, symbolizing the PTSD healing process. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp with original art by Mark Laita.

After an unfortunate first-day computer glitch that delayed early sales of the stamps on December 2nd was corrected, the "Healing PTSD" stamps should be available at all post offices nationwide. You can also order them in sheets of twenty directly from the USPS at their website.
read it here
Linked from Task and Purpose

Considering the track record...maybe this time there will be some accountability but, as for me, I am not buying this!

Veteran Navy Corpsman returned home to shocking event

Veteran surprised with thousands of Christmas lights, decorations


FOX 13 News
By Kimberly Kuizon
December 4, 2019

SARASOTA, Fla. - A local veteran got quite the surprise when he returned home to find his house totally decorated for Christmas on Tuesday.

Volunteers with Florida Power & Light decorated veteran Chris Scott's home with thousands of lights. After untangling all the lights and preparing a big surprise, Chris and his family arrived.
Chris served eight years as a fleet marine force corpsman attached to the 3rd Battalion 2nd Marines. In 2008, he'd been injured in Iraq, but he continued serving. He was deployed to Afghanistan and Haiti before he medically retired in 2012.

For the last two years, he's fought stage three lymphoma cancer. He's now clear, but putting up Christmas decorations can be a difficult task.

"They wanted to get lights up so we were going to start to try and work on it this week. I haven't been feeling too good lately so this is helps out a lot," he said.

Volunteers didn't disappoint, making sure their house shines bright.
read it here

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Real help vs others helping themselves

Getting wrong kind of help worse than none


PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
December 3, 2019

If you are wondering why I could not post on this site for a while, it became impossible to be upbeat and share anything encouraging when we were being tortured for trusting the wrong people.

There are people we think we can count on to help us get to where we want to go. It can be devastating to discover we were wrong.

My husband and I decided to sell our house in Florida so that we could move closer to our daughter in New Hampshire. We turned to "friends" we had known for 15 years to sell it. Worst mistake of our lives!

I found a buyers agent to help us in New Hampshire. Catherine Allen was a stranger turned into a blessing. Our house was not getting much attention and she took a look at the listing. Catherine said the pictures were the biggest part of the problem and so was the price.

When I told our "friend" what Catherine said, that was the last time she took my phone call and would not respond to emails. I had no clue what the hell was wrong with her but what made it worse was what it did to us personally knowing that "friends" would treat us like that. 

Monday, December 2, 2019

#MissingVeteranAlert Florida veteran with PTSD

update Daughter launching community search to help find missing veteran with PTSD


read it here

Police searching for missing Florida veteran who suffers from PTSD, depression


FOX 51 News
By Stephanie Buffamonte
December 1, 2019

SANFORD, Fla. - The Sanford Police Department says that 73-year-old Robert Ford is missing.
According to police, his daughter said that Ford was last seen overnight on Nov. 29, between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. He left his residence while his daughter, Catherine Ford, was sleeping.

“It’s unreal. Every hour that goes by, I keep realizing that he’s still gone. I don’t have anyone to take care of right now,” Catherine said.

He was reportedly last seen wearing dark-colored shorts, a dark-colored shirt, and an unknown color jacket. Police say he has a small beard, hazel eyes, weighs about 160 pounds, and is about five-feet, seven-inches tall. His daughter says her father walked out without shoes, phone, or ID.
read it here

Mel B furious another veteran committed suicide

Mel B angry over lack of help to ex-bodyguard who killed self


Gulf Today
December 2, 2019
Ash was in the defence forces for 12 years and apparently suffered mentally after leaving the Marines.
Mel-B-750 Singer Mel B poses for the photographers. File photo/AFP

Singer Mel B has said that more needs to be done in order to help those in the forces dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the death of her former bodyguard, Corporal Ash Nickles (31).

Corporal Ash Nickles, an Afghanistan war veteran, was found dead at his home wearing his ceremonial blues uniform along with his medals on November 22, reports dailystar.co.uk.

It is reported that the former Marine sought help from two different medical centres for his PTSD, but both allegedly turned him down.

And this did not go down well with Mel B.

She said: "It was a damming indictment of lack of help for those suffering from PTSD, who are in such desperate need. I talked a lot to Ash about PTSD. I suffer from it as a result of an emotional and abusive marriage and he suffered from it as a result of what he went through and what he saw in war zones.
read it here

Sunday, December 1, 2019

After two months, Wounded Times is back in operation

Wounded Times is back


Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 1, 2019

After two months, Wounded Times is back in operation...although right now, I do believe only part of my brain arrived in our new home.


September 30th was our 35th anniversary. It was also the day we closed on our old home and headed up north. When the movers closed the door to the truck, we got into the car without a clue where we would end up living.

We headed to a La Quinta because they allow dogs and then I thought about how strange life was. It was our anniversary and I was unemployed because of the move. We were also basically homeless since the house we thought we were going to buy did not do well on the inspection. We had to start the search all over again.

The thought of all of this should have freaked me out but I cracked up laughing. Then I blurted out,"35th anniversary...I am unemployed and homeless! Yahoo! Road trip for our second honeymoon~We knew we had to do this so that we could live closer to our daughter.

I had to leave my job at Fidelity National Title and everyone on our team in Timeshares. After 5 years it was very hard leaving them since they were more than coworkers...they were family too.

Here is the catch up.

Our first real estate agents in Florida sucked big time! The house was over priced and they were not interested in earning their commission. (Never deal with people you think are supposed to be your friends.) The pictures were horrible and they stopped returning my phone calls. Long story short, I had to get a lawyer to get them to cancel the contract. We lost two months with them.

We got another agent Wes Garrison of ReMax and he knew what he was doing so well that he sold the house in less than 2 weeks. He also managed to keep me from losing my mind. He had a professional photographer show up with a drone and the pictures were so good, I was amazed our house could look like that...and we lived there for 15 years.

We lost count on how many people came to see it, but the best part of all is that the buyers were actually people we knew and very glad to know they are in the home we loved.

After we signed the agreement, Hurricane Humberto was going up the east coast, so we had to wait to fly to New Hampshire to find a house. We thought we found a great one just across the Maine border, made an offer, and flew back home. 

The inspection turned out to be lousy and we had to walk away. Since we had already agreed to sell our house, we did not want to go back on our word, so we started packing...and sweating it out.

On the move side we had Catherine Allen of Keller Williams Coastal Realty. Moving over 1,600 miles away is hard, but after the mess the first selling agent put us in, Catherine was a true blessing! She got me through all that with some sanity left, got me through the inspection on the house in Maine killing the deal and then when it was time to search again, she had what we wanted all lined up. 

We spent the first week of October on the road. Then we stayed with our good friends for two more weeks. We started looking the second week in October. Some houses were OK but not what we wanted. 

This house had just listed a couple of days before we saw it and we offered their asking price. They said "yes" and mortgage broker Brad Kelly of Annie Mac and his team were able to get us to the closing table early in November in less than a month after we saw it.

Murray had to be boarded and we missed him so much that we picked him up and went to the Governor's Inn in Rochester. 

All of the staff made the stay memorable. It was amazing how people can be so nice that you can feel as if you are home. I was so comfortable there, I started walking around the grounds with just my socks on to have a cigarette. 

Murray started barking at the guests as if to say "get off my property" and I had a table in the bar for dinner every night since we had to eat in shifts so that Murray was not alone in the room.

It took two more weeks for our things to arrive from the movers and we are still unpacking.

Coming soon is an organized office so that I can find stuff again. Also coming is that Point Man has decided that I will start the first Out Post for female veterans in the area, especially since I am near the border of Maine. Hopefully I will find a location soon and I'll let you know when and where.

During all of this I have kept track of what has been going on with our veterans and I am more pissed off than ever! The news is terrible but too much is being accepted when none of what is going on should be accepted by anyone! With the national media and social media not paying attention to any of it, people run their mouths off with lies and slogans going unchallenged. The truth will only be known if we get as serious about sharing it as the liars have been for far too long.

Plan on daily updates as much as I can while we are still in the process of getting settled...and my brain resuming normal operations again, or at least as close as that can be.