In 1982 after surviving many life threatening events, I head the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Back then, we didn’t have computers or cellphones. The only way I could learn about this was at the local library. The only books I found were clinical ones I couldn’t understand. I only had a high school level education. I had to use a dictionary to understand what I was reading.
The research was all centered on war veterans. The majority of them were, appropriately, Vietnam veterans. They were the generation that fought for all the research and funding older generations came home with in silence. The more I learned, the more I understood that veterans and family members needed to be made aware of what the experts had found.
I spent all my free time at the library, learning more and gaining enough understanding that I was able to explain it to veterans and other family members. A lot of them decided to fight back and went to Veteran Centers, since they will didn’t fully trust the Department of Veteran Affairs. Sadly, some of the veterans I knew refused to seek help and continued to suffer instead of heal.
By 1984 I knew enough to start writing about it in local newspapers. I believe the more people knew, the sooner veterans would get help. I continued to write opinion pieces until 1993 when I got online with my first computer. Relieved to see there were so many others doing the same thing across the country, it filled me with hope.
In 1999 I wrote my first book, For The Love Of Jack and it was self published in 2002 because I wanted to offer it as a warning to other families of what they could end up facing with the war in Afghanistan. It helped a lot of people and helped therapists gain more understanding of what PTSD does to families as well as veterans.
In 2006 I started to do videos on PTSD and started Wounded Times soon afterwards because reports on PTSD were all over the country but there was no one source putting them all together.
I started PTSD Patrol in 2017 to change the conversation from doom and gloom to hope of healing. First someone had to clear all the nonsense out of the way so that readers could understand how much power they had to defend their own lives as survivors.
After the pandemic hit, I was explaining what trauma did to my adult daughter. I used what happened to me with my ex-husband after he tried to kill me and then stalked me for a long time. I told her everything it did to me and how it all followed me from Massachusetts to Florida until one of my cousins sent me a copy of his obituary notice. Everything I had been suffering from stopped. She pointed out that was exactly what I explained PTSD was.
I survived over 10 events going back to the age of 5, which gave me a great understanding of what trauma did to others, but I didn’t realize what all of it did to me. That was when I opened up the work I did to every survivor so they could find hope, understanding and healing with what works.
Therapy works! I saw two therapists over the years and while they did not see PTSD in me, they helped me deal with some of the things I survived.
Addressing your body works because you need to get of the adrenaline rush and learn how to relax again.
What worked better than anything else, was the spiritual needs being fed. I became a Chaplain in 2008 because I knew it worked as one of the most powerful tools to help survivors.
What worked all along is what works now and sadly I am still saying the same things I said 40 years ago! I wonder how many more, just like me, are dealing with PTSD instead of healing it and defeating it. That is why I wrote The Lost Son series. Look for the links to Amazon for The Lost Son, Alive Again and Stranger Angels. If you survived trauma, the cause of it is probably covered in these books so you can read about others just like you and what is possible for you to achieve!