Chris Papadopoulos is The Lost Son. He was raised believing in God’s Love because of the Greek Orthodox Priest he had known all his life in Salem Massachusetts. Chris was an alter boy and listened to all of the priest’s sermons, but it was what he did after the service was over that proved God’s Love. The priest stayed with parishioners after the service and gave them all the time they needed to talk to him. They walked up to him, clearly troubled by emotional turmoil. When they walked away from him, they were relieved.
As with most childhood dreams, growing up gathered more interests for Chris. He was high school basketball star and fabulous writer. In his senior year, he decided to go to college to become a reporter. He wanted to travel the world and reporting on things most people would never know otherwise.
His best friend Bill Gibson, decided to go into the Army after high school, like his Dad. A few years later, September 11th happened and Bill was deployed to Afghanistan. Chris was working for a newspaper in Los Angeles and managed to talk his editor into assigning him to cover the war so he could report on what was going on, and try to watch out for Bill. After all, he had done that since they were in the 6th grade.
Chris had PTSD from war, even though he wasn’t a warrior. He was a reporter doing his job, covering the news and what the troops were dealing with. He had it from a bomb blast that nearly cost him his life and left his body covered with scars. The one job he had that he was tugged to do, was over because of his wounds. He had it from his wife trying to kill him, and then stalking him. He saw his life fall apart because he didn’t understand what all that trauma did to him. He went from being a successful reporter living in a fancy condo in LA, to moving back to Salem, into a tiny studio apartment and writing greeting card messages because no newspaper would hire him after he was fired.
On Friday the 13th of September 2019, Chris was sitting on his bed, back in Salem with a gun in his hand. It was the 7th anniversary of the bomb blast in Afghanistan that could have killed him. He was wishing it had. Everything that happened after that felt like punishment to him for having survived.
The emotional struggle was causing him a major headache with one side of his mind saying he survived for a reason while the other was telling him he should have died that day and there was no hope for him. He put the gun down, headed to his favorite bar to get drunk enough to do it and then, miracles walked in the door.
Over the next 13 days, Chris went from being the lost son into celebrating how he had never really been a lost child of God, but one who had simply lost his way. God sent others to save him.
Most of us struggle to find a reason we survive while allowing some people to turn it into some kind of a contest. Some want to believe one trauma is worse than others, while some want to minimize all of them. I know because I survived over 10 of them. All of them could have ended my life and all were horrible. Some were worse than others, and the one that caused a rare form of PTSD in me, was when my first husband decided to kill me and then stalked me for a long time. By the time that happened, I had been surviving what other people did to me since the age of 5. I was only 22, survived him and was already divorced. I met my current husband when I was 23 and we’ve been together ever since.
We tell ourselves a lot of things after surviving. We tell ourselves a lot of things are not true until someone tells us what we need to hear to find hope again.
That is what The Lost Son is all about. Learning that we do have power to define ourselves as survivors, no matter what we survived. In the book, every cause of PTSD is covered because I got really tired of the rest of the population being left out of the reporting on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There are about 15 million of us but we have been forgotten.
This is from The National Center For PTSD
How Common is PTSD in Adults?
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur after you have been through a trauma. A trauma is a shocking and dangerous event that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others’ lives are in danger.
Going through trauma is not rare. About 6 of every 10 men (or 60%) and 5 of every 10 women (or 50%) experience at least one trauma in their lives. Women are more likely to experience sexual assault and child sexual abuse. Men are more likely to experience accidents, physical assault, combat, disaster, or to witness death or injury.
PTSD can happen to anyone. It is not a sign of weakness. A number of factors can increase the chance that someone will develop PTSD, many of which are not under that person’s control. For example, if you were directly exposed to the trauma or injured, you are more likely to develop PTSD.
Facts about How Common PTSD Is
The following statistics are based on the U.S. population:
- About 6 out of every 100 people (or 6% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives.
- About 15 million adults have PTSD during a given year. This is only a small portion of those who have gone through a trauma.
- About 8 of every 100 women (or 8%) develop PTSD sometime in their lives compared with about 4 of every 100 men (or 4%). Learn more about women, trauma and PTSD.
The Lost Son is written for the churchless children of God, like me and most of the people I helped over almost 40 years now. We believe in God and Jesus, but for whatever reason, we felt there was no place for us in the churches we attended. It has many bible passages that most of us no longer hear to help us heal. It also shows that God does still hear us and sends people to us to help us find our way back to Him. Miracles do still happen!
Remember, it’s your life…get in and drive it!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
