Volume 7, No. 24 ©SS 2015
FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 2015
Post-traumatic
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growth FINDING MEANING IN TRAGEDY
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
BY
BEV SCHILLING /Stars and Stripes
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COVER STORY
Turning stress into
strength
Soldiers’ ‘post-traumatic growth’ brings improvement to their lives BY M ARTIN KUZ Stars and Stripes
The noise jolted Joshua Fosher back to the moment he thought might be his last. The first lieutenant stood talking with a group of soldiers in a motor pool at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Across the lot, the crew of an armored vehicle began to deploy the massive collapsible bridge attached to its base. As the bridge unfolded upward and then eased toward the ground, the lift gear slipped. Tons of metal met concrete with the thud of a bomb detonating. Most of the soldiers near Fosher reacted by taking a step or two back. Some dropped into a crouch. Fosher moved toward the sound in a furious trance, hands curled into fists. “I felt this extreme strike of anger,” he said, recounting the scene from last spring. “It took me a couple seconds to remember where I was. I had to tell myself, ‘Breathe, breathe — let it go.’ ” In his mind, he had returned to Afghanistan, to the dirt hill where a bomb blast revealed the invisible distance between life and death. On the morning of June 10, 2013, Fosher led his Army platoon into a farming village in the eastern province of Ghazni, an area choked by the Taliban insurgency. Joining the patrol were his unit’s commander, Capt. Dusty Turner, and a platoon of Polish troops led by Sgt. Jan Kiepura. A handful of soldiers walked into a crop field and started ascending a slope. Fosher reached the top as Turner entered the field 30 feet behind him. Kiepura was midway between them when his foot landed on a short plank of wood buried in the soil. His weight triggered a homemade bomb that blew apart the earth. The explosion shoved Fosher onto his stomach. Straining to stand, he turned and
M ARTIN KUZ /Stars and Stripes
Capt. Dusty Turner, shown in Afghanistan in July 2013, had suffered a traumatic brain injury a month earlier in a bomb blast that killed a Polish soldier. His struggle to overcome the lingering mental trauma after he returned home intensified his appreciation of life. stumbled toward Kiepura. A medic tried in vain to revive the Polish soldier while Fosher retrieved pieces of the dying man’s body. Farther down the hill, the blast had slammed Turner on his back. He slapped his arms and legs, grateful to find none had been torn off. His head rang from a ruptured eardrum, and like Fosher, he suffered a mild traumatic brain injury. The two American soldiers flew later that day to Bagram Air Field, one of the primary U.S. bases in Afghanistan, to recuperate at the base’s TBI clinic. For the next week, they slept long hours to ease their nausea, headaches and dizziness, and doctors worked with them to restore their motor skills and shortterm memory. A month after the explosion, a Stars and Stripes reporter met the pair at Forward Operating Base Ghazni, where they were sta-
tioned with the 40th Mobility Augmentation Company, 2nd Engineer Battalion. By then, Fosher and Turner had made a second trip to Bagram after their symptoms recurred, and on the advice of doctors, their commanders pulled them from the patrol rotation for the rest of the unit’s tour. Both men had persuaded their superiors to allow them to stay in Afghanistan, and they talked with Stars and Stripes for a story about deployed troops coping with brain injuries and combat trauma. The death of Kiepura, a husband and father, had exposed them to war’s absence of order. “For some reason, I’m alive and he’s not,” Turner said at the time. “For some reason, God allowed me to be here. I have no idea why.” SEE PAGE 3
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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 2
The questions shadowed the officers during the last three months of the 40th MAC’s deployment and after returning to White Sands. Jagged memories of confronting their own mortality pierced the cognitive haze that sometimes still clouded their thinking. Doubts about their recovery mixed with frustration as the healing process proved gradual and uneven. Yet by last fall, as the lingering effects subsided, Fosher, 28, and Turner, 30, came to regard their experience in terms that might sound surprising, even irrational. They believed struggling with mental trauma changed them for the better. The hardship intensified their appreciation of life, deepened their bonds with loved ones. They had extracted meaning from the inexplicable, from a tragedy that neither would have chosen to endure but that evolved into a source of strength and motivation. “You learn to savor the moment more because you don’t know what the next moment could bring,” Turner said in a recent interview. He is the married father of two young children, a mirror of Kiepura at the time of his death. “When you’re so close to losing the people who matter most to you, you want to notice the small moments that he won’t get a chance to.”
Growth through pain The recovery of Fosher and Turner illuminates a concept that behavioral health researchers call post-traumatic growth. The idea counters the dominant perception of post-traumatic stress disorder as an irreparable condition that forever holds the mind hostage. PTSD affects an estimated 20 percent of the 2.6 million troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and common symptoms include acute anxiety, flashbacks, insomnia and social isolation. Many combat veterans with the disorder also exhibit a constant state of heightened alertness that carries over from the war zone. Rising awareness of combat trauma over the last decade has led the media, with ample reason, to examine the link between PTSD and violent behavior, substance abuse, depression and suicide. But the coverage has obscured reports from the National Institute of Mental Health and other public health organizations that show most people overcome the condition. The study of post-traumatic growth builds on the theme of resiliency, offering evidence that survivors of a life-threatening event can resurface with a renewed sense of purpose. Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun,
psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, pioneered research into severe mental trauma as a potential catalyst for personal change. In a 1995 survey, they interviewed 600 trauma victims and found that the majority believed their lives had improved in a handful of areas over variable periods of time. The men and women related that they now derived more pleasure from daily life and enjoyed closer relationships with others, and possessed greater self-confidence and stronger spiritual beliefs. The two clinicians dubbed the phenomenon “post-traumatic growth.” “It’s important to understand that people don’t choose growth over emotional pain,” said Tedeschi, repeating what he has told military and veterans groups across the country. “PTSD and post-traumatic growth share the same foundation and can coexist. The growth results from processing the emotional pain and coming to terms with it, even when they’re continuing to deal with symptoms.” Tedeschi and Calhoun determined that trauma survivors who experience growth typically pass through a stage of “intense reflection” that may last several months or longer. Serving in Afghanistan provided little chance for Fosher and Turner to untangle their thoughts. They set aside introspection amid the havoc of war. Two months after Kiepura’s death in June 2013, a roadside bomb killed a pair of soldiers from the 40th MAC, Spc. Kenneth Alvarez, 23, and Pvt. Jonathon Hostetter, 20. Five days later, insurgents breached the unit’s base in Ghazni after detonating two vehicles laden with explosives outside its walls, the violent prelude to a six-hour firefight. The attack killed Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis, 24, of the 10th Mountain Division. “I knew I didn’t entirely comprehend what was going on in my mind,” said Turner, a native of Center Point, Texas. “But I also knew our tour wasn’t over. It wasn’t time for a long walk on the beach to figure it out.”
Unseen wounds
M ARTIN KUZ /Stars and Stripes
First Lt. Joshua Fosher, shown in Afghanistan in July 2013, realized after coming home that his mind required further care to subdue his memories of the blast that killed another soldier.
The 40th MAC flew back to New Mexico that October. Both men had told their wives a sanitized account of the explosion that killed Kiepura soon after it happened, omitting details that might provoke even greater concern. They offered a more complete version after arriving home, yet while they could describe the blast and its physical aftermath, the full scope of their mental trauma remained beyond their understanding. Nalani Fosher noticed her husband’s unseen wounds within days of his return. Conversations seeped from his memory after an hour or two. SEE PAGE 4
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COVER STORY
Courtesy of Joshua Fosher
First Lt. Joshua Fosher poses with his wife, Nalani, and their infant daughter, Kai, born in February. Fosher was open about needing help after he came home from Afghanistan. “If I tried to hide or ignore what happened, then it was going to rule my life,” he said. FROM PAGE 3
At the gym, she needed to explain how to use a piece of equipment long familiar to him. On hiking trails, he obsessively removed rocks, chunks of wood and other small objects as if he were in Afghanistan searching for evidence of buried bombs. Fosher realized early last year that his mind required further care. He talked with Turner, who shared that his own problems persisted, and with the support of his commanders Fosher began working with an occupational therapist at nearby Fort Bliss in Texas. He approached the weekly sessions with the belief that regaining his cognitive acuteness would help him subdue
the inner tremors wrought by the explosion. “If I tried to hide or ignore what happened, then it was going to rule my life,” said Fosher, who grew up in Exeter, N.H. “I lived through it, so I couldn’t be scared of it. I had to learn from it and move forward.” Around the same time, Turner started visiting a psychologist at Fort Bliss twice a month. His wife, Jill, had glimpsed fissures in his placid personality. His anger spiked over minor matters and he grew anxious in public. During a family outing to a pumpkin patch, he walked away from the entry line, worried that the crowd would block his escape if an attack occurred. “He wasn’t the same when he came back
‘ If I tried to hide or ignore what happened, then it was going to rule my life. I lived through it, so I couldn’t be scared of it. I had to learn from it and move forward.
’
1st Lt. Joshua Fosher
from Afghanistan,” she said. “I could see pretty quickly that he wasn’t just going to bounce back and be happy or involved in stuff. He needed space and time.” As he groped for meaning in Kiepura’s death, talking with the psychologist yielded less insight than his casual discussions with an Army chaplain at White Sands. The chaplain confided that his faith had wavered during multiple combat tours. For Turner, the revelation served as a kind of permission to re-examine his religious beliefs and to consider his uncertainty a normal aspect of spiritual maturation. “What he said made me feel like I could still be confident in my faith even though I was taking a step back from the way I had always viewed it,” said Turner, who was raised Protestant. “I was trying to figure out how I should view God when somebody who was no different than me ended up dead. What I eventually accepted was that it’s OK to not always find comforting answers. That’s part of faith.” SEE PAGE 6
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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 4
‘A natural progression’ The American Psychiatric Association recognized post-traumatic stress disorder as a clinical diagnosis in 1980, five years after the Vietnam War ended. Public awareness of the condition spread slowly until the last decade, when coverage of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan explored how some struggle to leave war behind. Tedeschi and Calhoun published their study of post-traumatic growth in 1995, and their thesis has received occasional criticism from behavioral health providers. Author David Morris, a former Marine who covered the war in Iraq as a journalist, described one reason for that skepticism in his book “The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” published earlier this year. In talking with leading PTSD clinicians, Morris writes, “Part of the undisguised disgust I encountered was no doubt due to the fact that the idea of telling someone that trauma might be good for them seems morally outrageous.” His own misgivings about post-traumatic growth dissolved as he delved into the science and literature of PTSD. He pursued the book project, in part, to decipher the psychological fallout of his reporting trips to Iraq, where he narrowly survived a bomb blast in 2007. He contends that focusing on the cause of trauma has blinkered many clinicians to the potential for people to learn from their anguish. “The pendulum has swung too far toward the assumption of PTSD,” Morris said in a phone interview. “By encouraging people NOT to dwell on the things that are upsetting, we miss a lot of opportunities to look at what might be gained from the experience. “I saw that growth wasn’t simply a trend thing. It’s a natural, personal progression.” Fosher’s memories of the bomb blast receded as summer gave way to fall last year. His therapy took the form of training one of his two dogs for skills competitions and exploring the wilds of New Mexico with Nalani. In February, she gave birth to their first child, and raising his daughter reminds him to savor the present instead of marooning himself in the past. “You can’t have that split second control
M ARTIN KUZ /Stars and Stripes
Capt. Dusty Turner suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan two years ago. His wife, Jill, noticed a change after he returned. “He wasn’t the same when he came back,” she said. your life,” he said. “Was that split second awful? Absolutely. But you’re still here for some reason, so you try to use that experience rather than allowing it to destroy you.” Last summer, Turner drove from White Sands to Columbus, Ohio, to enroll in a master’s program at Ohio State University. He visited a few family members and friends while wending his way north, and as the miles rolled past, he felt as though he were floating up from the ocean floor. “You don’t specifically think, ‘OK, brain, it’s time to sort yourself out,’ ” he said. “But just having nothing to worry about helps recharge your mind.” Jill joined him in the fall with their young son, and the couple welcomed a daughter into the family in February. He will earn
his master’s next spring before beginning a three-year teaching assignment at West Point Academy. Remaining in the Army without juggling the daily rigors of running a company of soldiers has enabled him to set down his internal burden. He has come home at last. “I’ve always felt that people who suppress or avoid thinking about what happened to them are the ones who end up angry,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of old soldiers who are just not right. “I never want to forget what happened in Afghanistan. But I don’t want to live the rest of my life like I’m still there.” kuz.martin@stripes.com Twitter: @MartinKuz
‘ I’ve always felt that people who suppress or avoid thinking about what happened to
them are the ones who end up angry. I’ve seen a lot of old soldiers who are just not right. I never want to forget what happened in Afghanistan. But I don’t want to live the rest of my life like I’m still there.
’
Capt. Dusty Turner
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MILITARY
PHOTOS
BY
J ENNIFER HLAD/Stars and Stripes
Chief Petty Officer James Payne is greeted by his daughter, Julianna, 3, and his wife, Chandie, after the USS Sampson returned to San Diego from a seven-month deployment Monday morning.
USS Sampson returns home to California BY JENNIFER HLAD Stars and Stripes
NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO — The USS Sampson returned home Monday after a 212-day deployment to the AsiaPacific region, a mission that included search-and-recovery efforts for the AirAsia plane that vanished in December with 162 people aboard. Alexis Payne, 10, was practically oozing elation as she stood on the pier with her mother and two sisters holding a handmade sign to welcome her father home. “I’m feeling really, really, really excited,” she said. Her father, Chief Petty Officer James Payne, had deployed before, but this was the longest time away that Alexis could remember. Payne, the sailor who got the honor of “first kiss,” said that while the crew was able to keep in touch with family and friends, nothing compares with being home. “Facetime doesn’t really do it justice,” he said. “Live and in person is always best.” The guided-missile destroyer left San Diego on Halloween and made stops in Japan, Singapore, Guam, In-
A sailor embraces his wife after her return and, right, Seamus Walter, 2, cuddles with his daddy, Lt. Kevin Walter. donesia and South Korea. The crew of more than 300 was in Singapore when the call came to assist with the search for AirAsia flight 8501. “We sped up, headed down to the Java Sea” and helped find the miss-
ing plane, said Sampson Cmdr. Steve Foley. The ship also worked with several partner nations and participated in a live-fire training exercise with Japan. Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Laufman, who
served as the ship’s “air boss,” said the deployment was a busy one. Flight crews flew 135 hours in support of the search-and-recovery mission, he said, and recovered some aircraft wreckage. But the best thing for him, he said, was the quality of the maintenance and the integration between the air assets and the ship’s crew. “It made us better and it made it more enjoyable,” Laufman said. Petty Officer 3rd Class Samantha Shier said the deployment, her first, was “long but enjoyable” because the ship visited several ports and the sailors were able to experience other cultures. Petty Officer 2nd Class Alexander Alvarado also enjoyed visiting the ports and showing others what the Navy can do. “We did a lot of good stuff out there,” he said. “That’s why I joined the Navy — I wanted to help people.” It’s hard to deploy and be away from home, Foley said, particularly over the holidays, but the crew stepped up. Now, though, he said, “The USS Sampson is glad to be back.” hlad.jennifer@stripes.com
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MILITARY BY TRAVIS J. TRITTEN
guished Service Cross. He was a business owner in the Bronx, N.Y., until he died in 1973.
Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON — They were among the bravest who fought the Germans in the hellish War to End All Wars in Europe, but for nearly a century their legacy has been obscured by discrimination. Sgt. William Shemin and Pvt. Henry Johnson finally received the country’s highest military award Tuesday when President Barack Obama bestowed each of the World War I infantry soldiers with the Medal of Honor during a ceremony at the White House. Shemin, a 19-year-old Jewish platoon sergeant, and Johnson, a member of the all-black Harlem Hellfighters infantry unit, both were wounded while repelling German forces and protecting fellow soldiers during an Allied offensive in 1918 that led to the end of the war. Shemin, who died in 1973, was given the Distinguished Service Cross after the war. Johnson received a Purple Heart 77 years after his combat. For years, Jewish and AfricanAmerican groups said the men deserved the Medal of Honor. “They both risked their lives to save the lives of others. They both left us decades ago, before we could give them the full recognition they deserve,” Obama said. “But it is never too late to say thank you.” Shemin’s daughter Elsie Shemin-Roth, 86, of Webster Groves, Mo., worked for 13 years to have her father honored with the medal and was helped onto the stage from her wheelchair for the ceremony with Obama. Her sister Ina Bass, 83, joined her onstage.
Making it right Henry Johnson, who earned the nickname “Black Death,” was not so lucky. He joined the allblack 369th Infantry Regiment in 1917 and a year later was shipped off to France, where Europe had been locked in a terrifying form of mechanized war for years. Most black units were used for labor and kept CARLOS BONGIOANNI /Stars and Stripes from combat. But the Elsie Shemin-Roth, center, and her sister, Ina Bass, U.S. gave command of receive the Medal of Honor on behalf of their father, Johnson’s unit to the Sgt. William Shemin, at the White House on Tuesday. French military and sent the men to the Argonne Forest in northeastern France for the Allied offensive. Johnson and a fellow soldier, with their French helmets and weapons, were put on late-night guard duty by their French superiors, according to an account by the Smithsonian Institution. In the night, they came under sniper SGT. WILLIAM SHEMIN PVT. HENRY JOHNSON fire that soon became a full-out German assault. The German forces — at least a dozen — cut the perimeter wire and flooded in, gravely wounding the other soldier. Johnson lobbed grenades until he ran out and was shot in the head, lip and side. He fired on the Germans until his rifle jammed and then used it as a club in handto-hand combat until the stock splintered. The German troops knocked JohnInfantry Division and was sent to the him die knowing that a part of you will son down with a blow to the head and Western Front to fight in the Second die along with him,” he said. “William Battle of the Marne, part of a massive Shemin couldn’t stand to watch. He ran tried to take his wounded fellow soldier. But Johnson rose up and attacked, offensive by France, the United States out into the hell of no man’s land and killing an enemy officer and a soldier. and Britain. dragged a wounded comrade to safety He dragged his comrade to safety as In August 1918, his platoon was and then he did it again, and again.” American and French forces came to locked in trench warfare with German The fighting lasted days, killing ofthe rescue. forces across a 150-yard stretch of ficers and noncommissioned officers Johnson spiraled into alcoholism no man’s land — the ground between in the unit and leaving Shemin to take after the war. He died destitute a two opposing trenches — in northcommand. He reorganized the platoon’s decade later at 32 and was buried in ern France. Shemin watched as his squads and led rescue missions for the Arlington National Cemetery. fellow soldiers were mowed down by wounded during lulls in combat. “America can’t change what hapmachine-gun fire and the stretch of During the battle, Shemin was shot pened to Henry Johnson. … But we barren earth became a “blood bath,” through the helmet by a machine gun can do our best to make it right,” Obama said. and the bullet was lodged in his head Obama said. “Those still in the trenches were behind his ear. He was hospitalized for left with a terrible choice — die trying three months but survived the war. tritten.travis@stripes.com Twitter: @Travis_Tritten to rescue your fellow soldier or watch In 1919, he was given the Distin-
‘It is never too late
to say thank you’
Overlooked black, Jewish WWI soldiers receive Medal of Honor
Couldn’t just watch William Shemin was a talented athlete who played semi-professional baseball as a teen in New Jersey. He joined the military in 1917 — although he did not meet the age requirement — months after the United States entered the war in Europe. “Too young to enlist? No problem. He pumped up his chest and lied about his age,” Obama said. He became a rifleman in the 4th
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War-front battles leave scars on the home front
MILITARY
Report: Maintaining ships L overseas growing problem BY WYATT OLSON Stars and Stripes
Reports of degraded or outof-service equipment on U.S. Navy ships have doubled during the past five years, with the condition of many overseashomeported ships deteriorating faster than those based in the U.S. Maintenance for some overseas ships has been repeatedly delayed, leading to degraded conditions, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office. Making matters worse, the Navy has not come up with a long-term plan to deal with needed maintenance, even as it has come to rely more on homeporting vessels overseas. “With combatant commanders’ demand for forward presence at historically high levels and growing, the Navy has chosen to make several near-term decisions, including extending deployments and assigning more surface and amphibious ships to overseas homeports, to meet presence demands with its existing force structure,” the report said. If the Navy does not develop an operational schedule that balances demands and longterm sustainability for ships homeported overseas, it risks incurring higher operational, support and infrastructure costs, and potentially exacerbating strains on its fleet and shipbuilding budget over the
Friday, June 5, 2015
long term, according to the report. Demand has grown by combatant commanders for forward presence in responding to crises, deterring adversaries, building trust, creating allies and building partner capacity — but there’s not enough Navy to go around for it all. The GAO report said the Navy reported meeting about 44 percent of the requests from combatant commanders around the world for Navy support last year. The Navy said it would have needed another 150 ships to fully meet all those requests. During the past decade, the Navy has roughly doubled its number of overseas-ported vessels, from 20 in 2006 to an expected 40 by October this year, which would represent about 14 percent of the Navy’s fleet, the report said. Twentyone of those vessels are homeported in Japan, with an additional destroyer expected to homeport at Yokosuka by 2017. Even without full maintenance, vessels based overseas cost more to operate — the GAO calculated that the cost of operating a surface or amphibious ship overseas for one year was 15 percent higher than similar ships based in the U.S. Overseas-homeported vessels are maintained differently than those stateside, the report said. The Navy expects that U.S.based cruisers and destroyers
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will spend about 60 percent of their time dedicated to training and maintenance, the report said. Meanwhile, cruisers and destroyers based in Japan will be dedicated to maintenance only 33 percent of the time, with no dedicated training period included. “Maintenance officials told us that the focus for ships homeported overseas is on mission readiness, so overseas-homeported ships place priority on the maintenance of combat systems, for example, while systems with the potential to reduce ship service life — such as fuel and ballast tanks that require extended in-port periods to properly maintain — are subject to maintenance deferrals in order to allow the ship to sustain a high operational tempo,” the report said. Amphibious craft are a particular problem, with overseas vessels maintained “at a rate that is both much lower than what is required and much lower than what is executed on U.S.-homeported amphibious ships,” the report found. For example, after the amphibious assault ship USS Essex returned from 12 years of homeporting in Japan in 2012, the ship “required the costliest depot maintenance work in surface Navy history,” the report said. olson.wyatt@stripes.com Twitter: @WyattWOlson
This publication is a compilation of stories from Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military community. The contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Defense Department or the military services. The U.S. Edition of Stars and Stripes is published jointly by Stars and Stripes and this newspaper. The appearance of advertising in this publication, including inserts or supplements, does not constitute endorsement by the DOD or Stars and Stripes of the products or services advertised. Products or services advertised in this publication shall be made available for purchase, use, or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, physical handicap, political affiliation, or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user, or patron.
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ike many military Spouse magazine in 2008, couples, Corie Weaththe Military Spouse of the ers and her husband, Year is selected annually by a Matt, an Army chapcombination of social media lain, experienced their toughest voting and judging by panels trial after Matt’s first deploycomprising representatives ment. During that deployment, from Armed Forces Insurance, several of Matt’s fellow soldiers Military Spouse magazine, were killed, and many were Joint Chiefs of Staff spouses injured. and senior enlisted spouses. “My husband came home The well-connected title definitely with combat stress, carries clout and visibility. Finalists and winners, includon the line between combat stress” and post-traumatic ing Corie, receive White House stress disorder, Corie said. invitations and television “There was a lot of his experiinterviews. ence that I couldn’t relate to, Corie wants to use this because I wasn’t there and I platform to increase awareness didn’t share those experiences of the mental health needs of with him.” military spouses, advocating On the homefront during that for those who need a voice, and deployment, Corie was using highlighting organizations that her own expertise, counseling reach out to serve them. and supporting the spouses “Spouses of the killed and injured and SPOUSE CALLS carry a huge others, as well as being the sole burden of caregiver of the couple’s two feeling they young sons. need to be “I had my own experiences the strongest that [Matt] didn’t know how to one in the process,” she said. “We now home and to call them sacred moments. hold down There’s no way for each of us the fort,” she to understand what the other said. went through; because we can’t Corie said understand it fully, we have to spouses respect those sometimes Join the conversation with Terri at spaces.” defer their stripes.com/go/spousecalls Reaching own needs that underfor fear of standing retaking attenquired Corie and Matt to learn tion away from their servicehow to communicate their member, who may also have feelings to one another. mental or physical wounds. “Soldiers and veterans need “There’s so much power in the attention they’re getting,” saying it out loud,” she said. said Corie. “I’m definitely here “For me to verbalize how mad to promote that cause too, but I I was that I was so tired, and want there to be an equal light when my husband came home, on spouses so we can realize I couldn’t just jump back into that spouses have a stigma too. dual parenting immediately. They are afraid if they get help That was a difficult transition.” that they’ll appear weak.” Corie and her husband Corie said much of what often lead military marriage she does, both as a counselor retreats, using their hardand alongside her husband, is won knowledge to help other influenced by her experiences. couples work through similar That first reintegration was a issues. Corie also draws from her personal experiences in her turning point. work as a professional counsel“It was a new normal,” Corie or. She is a volunteer for Give said. “We had to start over in a an Hour, a nonprofit organizanew way. We had to repurpose tion that mobilizes counselors and re-envision who we are as to provide free services to a couple. We both had changed. meet the mental health needs … It changed our marriage. We of military members, veterans don’t regret that. We’re better and families. for it, and we use our story in In recognition of her work our marriage retreats to norin support of the military malize and validate what other community, Corie was named families go through. the Armed Forces Insurance “I didn’t want to feel alone, Military Spouse of the Year for and I don’t want anyone else to 2015. Developed by Military feel alone.”
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