My First E-mail Response

I received my first email and would like to share my response,I am honored with your acknowledgment and inspiration. I encourage you who is reading this to e-mail me, comment on my articles good or bad, digg it, stumble it, your criticism is welcome and especially your stories. By coming together and sharing our passions, narratives, compassion, empathy and humanity we begin to heal what has been broken.

My response to my first e-mail:

I sure do appreciate your email and your interest in our veterans, they need our love and support. The soldiers that are in denial will have to figure out for themselves that they need help. The sad thing is that it will probably take years for their mental illness to progress to the point of prison, unemployability, divorce, addiction, homicide, and finally suicide. Giving them information and support will help, but they will not get help until they are ready to.

The whole soldiering thing trains us to believe we are self sufficient in matters other than survival and combat. You know the ad on TV that says an Army of one. As much as they drill team work on a firing squad, movement, and never leave a buddy; they instill this facade of invincibility. Most of our soldiers are at the age of ego development, where a good dose of identifying emotions and empathy would negate the aggressive side that young men feel. It is an evolutionary instinctual part of a boy growing into a man. In primitive cultures their are rituals that incorporate the aggression and identify it for what it is and integrate this "warrior" archetype into the complete person. Usually along the way an elder mentors them and helps them identify the emotions and differing parts of the psyche while instilling an integration of the differing selfs, mother earth, community and spirituality.

In the military this ritual just concentrates on the drilling and killing so that it becomes automatic, a reflexive response to aggression and survival. My point is that the focus is on how to kill and do that, not how do I deal with it after they go home to their community and family. They are left without a ritual of connection to community, family, and wholeness. Their formative connection is back in the field of combat and killing, they leave part of themselves there with their buddies who are not coming home yet and take with them the guilt of leaving their buddies behind. They feel that egoistic "warrior archetype" connection with the military and the battle buddy who has his or her back in the combat zone. In this type of mind frame when the veteran goes home; they become lost in a world that no longer makes sense to them because they have been taught to not process the five senses and emotional attachment to interaction. The hard wiring of the combat veterans mind acts as if their life depends on it. How do I live in regular society if I am stuck in this malposition?

Well did I just rattle of some stuff or what. No I do not even know what EFT is, but I will certinally research the approach and look into its value and techniques. As far as volunteering you do not need a degree. Just research different groups and decide which one appeals to you and offer your help. If they do not have the area of service you would like to help with, then organize it yourself. I am looking into groups who mentor young veterans coming out of the military to help with the process of reintegrating back into society and help them access and identify their new roles and other aspects of their intrinsic values and principles.

I am 40 and in school, I have seen many people in my classes who are in their 50's and older. Go to school and chase your passions, by doing so work becomes something other than a task. It becomes a part of you that connects with people in a way we were meant to be, a community of people supporting one another.

I would like to talk more with you and keep in contact by email for now. Thank you for your response to my blog I am deeply appreciative of it. You are the first to email me about it, again thank you. If you would, write some comments on articles that interest or touch you the most. Also, if you would subscribe, digg it, stumble it, email it to all your friends and tell of my mission and the epidemic of mentally ill veterans we will be faced with in the coming years.

You brightened my day,

Scott

(e-mail edited for clarity and fluidity)