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Eagle’s Healing Nest
Staples resident Melony Butler started the Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Center, where promises made are promises kept.
Submitted photo
Eagle's Healing Nest helps veterans suffering from the invisible wounds of war
“I attempted suicide three times,” one veteran said wanting to be identified only as Jeremy. “The VA (Veterans Administration) denied me and two months ago I was referred here by the St. Cloud State University’s Veterans Resource Center’s director.”
Here, meaning Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Centre, a nonprofit organization committed to meeting the needs of veterans, service members and their families who suffer from the invisible wounds of war. Melony Butler and her husband Master Sgt. Blaine Butler started Eagle’s Healing Nest in June 2012. The couple reside in Staples with their son Preston, who is a senior at Staples-Motley High School.
Melony Butler has three adult sons — Cody, Mitchell and Michael — who all served in the Minnesota National Guard. Her family has gone through four deployments during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Butler has been on a mission for many years, advocating and helping veterans. She was a Family Readiness leader for 14 years, volunteers every year at the Great Falls, Montana, Vets 4 Vets Stand Down. She also speaks about supporting soldiers and families throughout the communities.
Melony Butler said one of her sons was suicidal when he came back from a deployment in 2010 and the VA turned him away. She said it took a general and his parents to help him.
“I knew that something had to change,” Melony Butler said on helping veterans. “In speaking with my stepfather, who was a Vietnam War vet, and talking him down from suicide — all they ever said was they just need each other.
“The general who helped him get into the VA said don’t come with a problem, come with a solution. So I enrolled in school and after two years, we were losing too many to suicide ... addiction, so I started to look for a place to start. I was looking for a little house in Staples to house 10 to 12 and God had something else in store and here we are.”
Eagle’s Healing Nest consists of 24 houses on 124 acres, with six houses that are renovated and occupied. A house can host between 14-25 veterans at a time and another house is expected to be completed by Nov. 1. The organization is run by all volunteers.
“We don’t have any big corporate sponsors; we don’t have any federal funds; we don’t have any of those things,” Melony Butler said, but later mentioned Minnesota-based My Pillow is a big sponsor. “We just created our own place built on love.”
Eagle’s Healing Nest provides housing and the veterans and the volunteers provide the resources. Melony Butler said they understand the veterans also need help from doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and others and the organization partners with groups for these services. They also work with Angel Reins Stables in St. Augusta, Minnesota, which focuses on healing with the love of horses and Project Delta of Minnesota, which focuses on healing with the love of dogs.
“Project Delta just placed their dog here with a veteran so they are training their own service dog or training the dog for others, so that helps eliminate cost and the veterans truly are just creating their own place to heal with honor,” Melony Butler said.
“Just as in the military, we consider ourselves a military family. When we go in, we all serve the parents, the spouses and children and so, essentially, that’s how the nest was created and with a really strong community support. They all get suicide intervention and prevention training, Mental Health First Aid, accelerated resolution therapy (a form of posttramautic stress disorder). Based on my experience and those who have taken (the PTSD therapy) they don’t have to relive the trauma. So it’s a pretty powerful therapy.”
One of the signs at the Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Centre, a nonprofit organization committed to meeting the needs of veterans, service members and their families who suffer from the invisible wounds of war.
Submitted photo
Melony Butler said veterans who live at Eagle’s Healing Nest help make meals, renovate projects and maintain the grounds. They also maintain a large garden, the barns and all the animals on the property, including fish, cats, chickens, ducks and peacocks. On the property, they also have a welding shop, a wood shop, an art studio and a gem studio.
Eagle’s Healing Nest is substance free.
“We make sure they are substance free, they have to be, to be ready to heal,” Melony Butler said. “We don’t care how long it takes them to do that. We don’t turn them away whether they can pay or not, because, unfortunately, it takes veterans a long time to get service connected and to be properly diagnosed. We help them through that whole process.”
The nonprofit organization has volunteers from several organizations who support its cause, including the Legion Riders, Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, auxiliary members, veteran organizations, such as the Wounded Warriors Minnesota.
“We work side by side with the veterans who have tons of skills, but they struggle with the fact that people in the clinical model tell them what they must do (to be better),” Melony Butler said. “And they don’t feel that they have a voice and really they just need a safe place to pull it all back together and be able to have strong advocates for them. And so we just network this whole group of people, to love them through that and support them through that, and help them achieve their goals and their dreams.”
Jeremy’s story
Jeremy has been at Eagle’s Healing Nest for a couple of months. Prior to that he was living in the St. Cloud area, attending college, when “just everything with the military” got to him and he had a mental health breakdown. Jeremy also was being treated in an acute psychiatric hospital, but that treatment was short term and he needed more longer term care.
Jeremy has been at Eagle’s Healing Nest for a couple of months. Prior to that he was living in the St. Cloud area, attending college, when “just everything with the military,” got to him and he had a mental health breakdown.
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Jeremy didn’t feel comfortable talking about any details of his experience while in the Army.
“Eagle’s Healing Nest is a healing and treatment board and lodge for veterans and it is more than three hots and a cot,” Jeremy said. “That is a pretty common thing to say in the military, three hots and a cot. Basically it’s not like that here, you just don’t come here to eat three meals a day and go to sleep. We are required to be active after 8:30 every morning. We have morning meditation meetings in the house I live in with about 10 guys.”
Jeremy participates in programming that is run by the residents at the house and also has outside professional care teams who help him with his mental health illnesses, such as meeting with a psychologist, a psychiatrist and his primary care physician. He also works with counselors on suicide prevention and intervention.
Outside of the counseling treatment, Jeremy said residents are not allowed to be in isolation, which can be a challenge for some.
“I used to isolate myself for about a year,” he said. “Following the issues with what happened with the military. And I just kind of fell to the wayside just staying in my bedroom or I slept a lot in my living room with my roommate when I lived on campus at the university. So coming here one thing that I really focus on is a lot of social interactions. I probably have on average about 10 hours of social interactions throughout the week ... just hanging out, watching movies and stuff.”
Michael Neumiller and Devin Wakefield
Michael Neumiller and Devin Wakefield with their son who 14-month-old at the time of the Sept. 25 interview. The family is staying at the Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Centre. Neumiller was deployed in 2005 and was in Iraq for two years and he struggles with posttramautic stress disorder.
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It’s been a long road, but staying at the Eagle’s Healing Nest with their 14-monthold son has been healing for Neumiller and Wakefield, who plan to get married on the property in December.
Neumiller was deployed in 2005 and was in Iraq for two years.
“I came home and I pretty much struggled with PTSD,” Neumiller said. “I didn’t know what it was at the time. But apparently, I don’t know, but I ended up in prison four different times. I haven’t been able to really get any help or treatment or anything because I get out and I’d go right back in, and I guess I ended up meeting Devin back in 2015. And we became friends then and basically stayed in touch, until December of 2017 and that’s when we started dating. We moved to Menahga in 2018 and we still have a house there now. We’re actually going home this weekend, but we’re probably going to be here at the Nest for a while.”
Neumiller first came to Eagle’s Healing Nest on his own because he needed to focus on himself, but after about a month Butler realized it was “better for him to have his family and it was better for his family to have Michael,” Wakefield said. “Melony made room available for our son and myself and it’s just been, it’s easier for Michael to focus on his recovery and all of that and for us to heal as a family.”
Neumiller said he had been seeing someone at the VA as an outpatient to deal with his PTSD. He said he was taking some medication and when the coronavirus came, there was a mistake on his medications as he had multiple doctors on his case — and he got a medication that was not his. “He (the doctor) wanted me off some of my other medications in order for me to be able to dream and stuff,” Neumiller said. “And I just got extremely hyper vigilant and paranoid and I actually had like a PTSD-related blackout. I don’t really remember multiple days of time. And, yeah, I actually ended up getting some criminal charges and ... in my experience I automatically usually would have just given up, but I didn’t and it’s because of Devin.”
The auditorium at the Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Centre is adorned with numerous American flags.
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Neumiller struggled for years with his medications, but since he started living at the Nest he has one doctor who takes care of it. He also is doing his counseling and therapy with a counselor from Cook Counseling Services in St. Cloud, who comes to the Eagle’s Healing Nest to help him.
Wakefield said it was a rocky road to start with the healing process, as they did not trust the government system and “he was so used to being thrown away by. It took him a long time to realize that this isn’t the same system and once he was able to trust it it’s been a lot better. Since that’s happened he’s had that revelation ... and we’ve been able to just be a family again.”
An American flag hangs around a cross at the Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Centre.
Submitted photo.
“Yeah, I was kind of fighting it for the first month,” Neumiller said. “It just seemed too good to be true that someone would help me and my family.
“Ever since I got home I jumped into drinking right away and my family noticed. My uncle, who was in the Navy for 17 years was trying to get me, you know, to go to the VA and I didn’t trust the government at all because I was extended in Iraq twice. I had to find out over the TV over there, while I was eating breakfast that I was going to be there for another six months. It was rocky. I trusted nobody and I was afraid it was starting to affect Devin ... I think Melony calls it exposure therapy.”
Neumiller, who has many struggles, is getting the help he needs. He said the Eagle’s Healing Nest is helping him learn how to handle things in a safe setting and helping him learn how to prepare for the world.
“You have to trust, you have to give a little bit of trust in order to see if it’s worth it or not worth it,” Neumiller said. “We actually went out yesterday. The counselor here took us out to a public restaurant to see how we would do. We struggled. He wouldn’t let me pick the table in the corner. We got to sit next to the corner, but ... you know, things were going on all around me and it was a chance for me to see if I was able to do it. It was good for us because we don’t go out to eat because of me. It’s not good for my family to have to tweak their life and focus just on me. It’s unfair to everybody.”
Neumiller said he started his own group at the Eagle’s Healing Nest for veterans who have mental health and addiction struggles who had been incarcerated. He said there are not a lot of resources/ programs out there for people like himself.
“‘I’ve been fighting for so long that I have forgotten how to live,” Neumiller said. “All I know how to do is fight, and I mean it is good to fight, but some battles aren’t worth fighting.”
A statue of an eagle sits alongside this silhouette cutout of a soldier kneeling at the cross at the Eagle's Healing Nest in Sauk Centre.
Submitted photo.
Neumiller met a veteran from Texas who experienced a lot of the same things he did, who has been helpful in his recovery.
Neumiller’s advice to veterans who are struggling is: “Don’t stop asking questions and don’t give up on trying to find help. As hard as it is to find help there is help out there.
“It’s hard to accept help when it is offered. You know you feel like ... you don’t want people to be disappointed in you.
You don’t want people to see that you’re weak or that you can’t take care of yourself or anything like that.
“A lot of people, like me ... I have survivor’s guilt. Almost my whole squad was either physically wounded or killed in action over in Iraq. I have been ashamed to talk to all of them, except one, since I’ve been home and him and I would use drugs together. I had been trying to get him help for a long time, but he got discouraged ... and he gave up and you can’t do that. That’s what I did and ended up in prison for nine years of my life.
“For a lot of veterans, they are not home mentally. They are still there. They’re still at war in their mind, even though they are home. That is one of the biggest, biggest things that needs to be focused on is them being able to come home from the mental war.”
Neumiller said Butler doesn’t allow veterans to have excuses to give up on life. She will find a way to help anyone and fight for them.
Neumiller said finding employment also is tough for him because of his criminal record. He said veterans will be in a treatment program when they get out of the service and have a hard time finding a job.
“If they can’t find one right away they get discouraged and then the depression and anxiety begin which can contribute to substance abuse,” Neumiller said. “The sad part is a lot of places won’t hire people who just came home or have PTSD because they’re ‘unpredictable.’”
Behind the nonprofit
Butler heard about the property in Sauk Centre that could be an option for the Eagle’s Healing Nest site. Butler said when she left her home in Staples to go to Sauk Centre eagles flew alongside her the entire way there. Then the first weekend they began renovating the building, a pair of eagles built a nest on the property. Thus the name was born.
According to the Eagle’s Healing Nest website — the eagle represents the past, present and future military strength, independence, pride and honor; the nest is full of meaning such as home, family, brotherhood, safety and security and the hands cradling the nest represents the many that will wrap their support around and give services to the veterans and military members to help reintegrate them back to their families and into their communities.
The organization’s vision and hope is to never have those who served in the U.S. military to live in darkness, but to bring them into the light to soar and fly free, to help restore the honor, dignity, pride and purpose each deserves.
