(This photo shows a life-sized sculpture of the Kuan Yin, the goddess of compassion. I love how she appears to be engaged in intently listening to someone she's in deep conversation with in this pose. We should all be a little more like Kuan Yin ;-).
Well, "WELCOME HOME" gets all the "publicity" as the #1 thing veterans -- especially the unfortunately way too marginalized Vietnam veterans wish someone had said to them. They fought in a brutal war, and came home to added heartache: no one to welcome them, oftentimes outright hatred on the part of non-participants in, and protesters against the war, and a general sense that they ought to put the war behind them as fast as they could (ha! try doing that!) because frankly, no one wanted to know about it, except in the most manipulative and excoriating of ways -- the "how many people did you kill?" variety of questions.
(Read a previous entry, linked here, about one Vietnam veteran's expectations of Home-Sweet-Homecoming and how they were miserably dashed.)
The hardship of Vietnam veterans, as a group, being made to become EXILES in their own country, because they fought a war in Indochina, is really outrageous, and profound, and numbing to those who experienced that reaction. We had more mixed feelings about Vietnam as a society than the wars which bookended it on either side, but really, it's always a mixed experience to be a veteran -- and they wonder, does anyone really understand? Or care, for that matter. Most, sadly, do not. Hence why veterans experience even further marginalization from the mainstream of society -- especially ones without families. They clearly suffer the most, though most also suffer intensely.
"WELCOME HOME" it's said, is what they wanted to hear. You can still tell Vietnam veterans that -- a little too late, of course, because it's been 40 years now -- I'm not sure how they managed to hold up all this time.� But they still appreciate hearing it, so go ahead and say it, if you mean it, because it still means something to them, that's for sure.
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If you look in the literature of something like suicide-- an event that far too many veterans who struggle with feeling exiled from the mainstream of love and family and country contemplate, at far too great a rate -- you find that there are also other kind, loving questions that can make a difference in someone like a veteran's mental health. And they are VERY SIMPLE QUESTIONS. The challenge for those of us who have combat veterans in our lives, particularly those with PTSD, is not whether the questions we should ask are complex enough (they're not)-- it's whether we care enough to ask them, and to stick around to hear the answers. I guarantee it will start an interesting conversation.
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Here's an amazing quote, but with the usual academic preamble I just can't tear myself away from. Skip down to the questions, if you must; then back up to the explanation, if you want to know the context.
"Even though I know that each suicidal death is a multi-faceted event -- that biological, biochemical, cultural, sociological, interpersonal, intrapsychic, logical, philosophical, conscious and unconscious elements are always present -- I retain the belief that, in the proper distillation of the event, its essential nature is psychological. That is, each suicidal drama occurs in the mindof a unique individual. An arboreal image may be useful: See the tree; that tree. There is a chemistry of the soil in which the tree lives. The tree exists in a sociocultural climate. An individual's biochemical states, for example, are its roots, figuratively speaking. An individual's method of committing suicide, the details of the event, the contents of the suicide note, and so on, are the metaphoric branching limbs, the flawed fruit, and the camouflaging leaves. But the psychological component, the conscious choice of suicide as the seemingly best solution to a perceived problem, is the main trunk.
The implications of this psychological view are quite extensive. For one thing, it means that our best route to understanding suicide is not through the study of the structure of the brain, nor the study of social statistics, nor the study of mental diseases, but directly through the study of human emotions described in plain English, in the words of the suicidal person.
The most important question to a potentially suicidal person is not an inquiry about family history or laboratory tests of blood or spinal fluid, but "Where do you hurt?" and "How can I help you?"
-- The Suicidal Mind, by Edwin S. Shneidman. London: Oxford University Press (1996).
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Not all combat veterans have PTSD; not all are suicidal (obviously). But even as an exercise, to expand our consciousness AND our compassion -- would it not be a good, even a refreshing, opportunity, beyond saying, "Welcome Home!" (no matter how many years after the fact...) in your communication with a combat veteran to ALSO ask, "Where do you hurt?" or "How can I help you?"
My expectation: both sides of that conversation are going to come away refreshed and renewed, and with a deeper understanding of suffering human nature that could expand us all. This week: try it.
