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Transcript of a speech Quynn gave in Tucson, AZ in the spring of 2007
In any culture, there are two types of warriors. There are some men and women who are comfortable with being professional soldiers, let’s call them ‘career warriors’. My book “Accepting the Ashes- A Daughter’s Look at Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” is written specifically for “term warriors”, individuals called to duty for a time or a reason, and then they go back to civilian life as soon as they are able to. I wrote the book after my father’s death in 2004 because I realized there was, and is, a problem with the way our culture deals with our “term warriors”. While military culture might want to think otherwise, war causes some kind of trauma for almost every person involved, and this trauma doesn’t just go away once the experience has ended.
I was born 9 months after my father came home from his two tours of duty in the Viet Nam war. My father was a good man, but as time went on he mysteriously seemed to fall apart before the collective eyes of his family. Until I was in my early thirties, when I had an opportunity to reconnect with my father as an adult woman, I had always thought of him as an alcoholic, but I never had a clue as to why he drank. Only after his accidental death did I get to see into his world, how he was trying to ignore the fact that his experiences in war, when he was a young man, were with him every day of his life, and affected everyone around him.
It is important to say that each person is unique, based on their personality, circumstance and support system, and so how a person reacts after experiencing any kind of trauma is as individual as he or she is, but even if a person handles it “well”, the bottom line is that trauma does affect everyone.
If there is one thing our culture knows, it is trauma. Trauma can be caused by childhood experiences, rape violent assault, as well as many other ways. Many people feel that they are in the process of dealing with past trauma. Whether it happens chronically or once with lasting scars, we are a people with many generational layers of trauma. I have come to feel that a deep root of many kinds trauma is…war. Traumatic experiences are in every part of war, scarring those who are on the receiving end, as well as those who have to carry out such acts. These scars are always passed down through the generations.
In our culture’s recent past there have been many names for describing the change that occurs in a person (most often men) after coming home from war- some are “soldier’s heart”, “battle fatigue”, and “shell shock”. After the Viet Nam war, people began admitting in public that painful after-effects were quite common, thereby giving “it” a name, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”.
My father tried his best to hold his life together, and he did for the most part, until I was in my early teens. After my mother asked him for a divorce, he then tried to move on to a new family and focus on climbing the economic ladder of prestige. These things could not outweigh his heavy heart though, and his life fell apart, finally bordering on homelessness and suicide. The saddest part to me, looking back, is that my father was convinced that he must be weak to be depressed, letting down his children and continually wanting to self-medicate, so the elephant in the room was never accounted for.
Since everyone is different, there is no formula for how a war veteran will be affected, but as a culture, both nationally and worldwide, we need to finally admit that if we send someone to make and perpetuate war, that means we tell him to do, and see, horrible things. They will be affected, and that is our personal business.
I now understand that to experience after-effects from trauma is to be human. It is normal, and we need to treat it that way. I am pleased to see a change in language of mental health professionals, away from the label “disorder”. Honestly, I worry much more about the person who comes face to face with horrifying experiences, and then sleeps like a baby at night.
Many traditional cultures around the planet have specific ways to tend returning warriors after battle, to process, to heal and to purify the mind, body and spirit. This careful reentry back into society is seen as necessary because untended war energy is not good for any culture that values peace.
There is a statement being said often now, which is “We are over ‘there’ so that the war doesn’t come over ‘here’.” Hearing this saddens me, because no matter the details of the war, it is always brought to the most important, and fragile place in any society, home.
Even for the “greatest generation”, who fought the last wholeheartedly supported war, if you scratch just under the surface and ask many WWII veterans about their time in war, you will find sadness, fear, anger and tears. If you ask their loved ones, who are probably your loved ones, well, you will find more of the same.
If I have one message to share in my short little story, it is this. Strong men react to trauma, just like everyone else. Admit it, talk about it, demand the right to deal with it so that we don’t pass Post Traumatic Stress onto another generation without them even understanding what they have inherited.
To close, I would like to quote a passage from my book. “I would imagine that just about everyone has some unresolved issues with their father, veteran or not, so I feel blessed to have watched my father in his older years, learning to understand how a phase in his young life fundamentally damaged him and those around him, even though he didn’t want to admit it. In his last few years, I got to know him as a man and I realized the burden he had carried alone, without really knowing that he was carrying something. While I feel resolved with my father, I feel an immense sadness about how things turned out. I wonder, what if things were different, what if the culture supported, even insisted on, my father's healing, and all the others like him? So many what ifs…
So now he is gone, but there are many more men, and now women, like him who are in a far away land telling themselves that everything will be alright when they get home. Once home, they do the best that they can to get on with life. But what happens when the memories don’t go away? What then? What about the wives and the parents and the children who don’t know what to do with the intense feelings being displayed? How do we all deal with our loved ones when they have to come to terms with killing other human beings for our society? This is why I write to you, my father is one version of the future of your soldier, your loved one, your neighbor or client, or YOU, 30 years from now. Your soldier is my father. I am your daughter. We are all in this together.”
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