The Family We Make

The Family We Make

One of the huge struggles facing veteran families is the loss of community experienced when they leave a military base or installation. It is suddenly going from a community of support out into the big wide world where civilians cannot possibly know the life you live.

It can be something as simple as the language used in military households, the terminology, the acronyms, the everyday shorthand that only someone who grew up in or has lived in a military house can understand.  Simple things like this can make a family feel isolated in their new community and make it difficult to build friendships outside of your common lifestyle.

These issues can be compounded 10-fold when a veteran leaves service with Post traumatic stress or a TBI. Both injuries can cause a change in personality that is not easy for the veteran, the spouse or their extended family to understand. This can often lead to a breakdown in what may once have been a solid relationship with in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins or siblings.

The service man or woman who entered the military is not the one that leaves. There is suddenly a new person to learn, and while the family may love the veteran, many times they find it difficult to build a new relationship with them on any deeper level outside of weather patterns and football scores. A cousin they spent their childhood summers with may no longer be comfortable around the veteran whose life prospective has changed.

This change can come in many ways, often times our service men and woman develop gallows humor. The ability to laugh at and make light of uncomfortable subject matters and events. What grew as a protection mechanism while in service becomes a barrier in the civilian world. And is often construed as inappropriate, offensive or lacking empathy when in reality it’s battle armor to protect their souls from the horrors of the world. If they can laugh at it, they can’t be hurt by it.

 Barriers between veterans and their non-veteran families can also pop up in other ways. A Father with PTS may experience hyper vigilance that extends to his children, a constant preparation for danger and need to be in control of a situation may make extended family members and friends feel that the veteran does not trust them with the safety of their children, when the truth of the matter is they don’t trust anyone.

Some veterans with a Traumatic brain injury may exhibit symptoms closer to what could be found on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum. An obsessive nature that drives them towards certain subject matters. My husband obsesses over politics and policy - If you want to speak with him its best to have some background in this, or some time to sit and listen to a lecture. It’s what he knows and I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, it’s what he wants to discuss. It’s a safe topic for him.

Other times family members may find themselves at a loss on what they can talk to their veteran about – After the military some veterans will find themselves in a place where they no longer care about what they would consider trivial things. An emotional numbness can make a veteran seem callous and lacking empathy or excitement. This could lead to family members no longer wanting to share life’s important events with a veteran.  When a graduation, an engagement, the pending arrival of a child does not always inspire in them the excitement one would hope for when sharing good news this line of communication can also tapper off.

 Because of entertainment media and dramatizations some family members may be scared around a veteran, they may be worried that they could set them off in a way that would result in an explosive outburst so find themselves backing away instead of learning the best ways to communicate. While some veterans do have explosive outburst in certain situations most of them are aware of their triggers and if asked in a manner showing genuine concern and not just a need for gossip fodder will be accommodating in telling you what to avoid.


However, despite the best of intentions this disconnect in a family will often lead to estrangement and will exacerbate the isolation of a veteran family. So, many of us build our own.  We are incredibly lucky that Jim’s family is one we can count on when we need them and we are doubly blessed to have been able to create our own family by surrounding ourselves with men and woman who understand the path Jim has walked, because they’ve walked it themselves, or are prepared to get to know the man he is now, and love and accept him for that, gallows humor, obsessive compulsions, inappropriateness and all.


Several Years ago, we had decided as a family that we would in an attempt to bring our family closer to God and began to attend church. I didn’t expect much to come from it, an hour on Sunday morning, and we could feel good in the fact that we did our Christian duty. God had other plans and placed us in a church full of the most wonderful humans I have been blessed to meet. I didn’t hold out much hope when we joined of building any sort of long lasting relationships with these people we sat beside in the pew.

But from the very first day they made us welcome. Jim has a hard time meeting new people, especially people who don’t understand his injuries or the personality traits he now has. When we were invited to begin attending Sunday school and life groups at our church I was apprehensive to say the least. These people don’t know Jim, they don’t know his story, they don’t know what he’s like or how to handle him.

His anxieties had transferred to me, and with what I considered a stroke of genius at the time I decided to write the associate pastor of the church an email. Because in my mind, this group of what I assumed were judgmental civilians needed to be prewarned about my wonderful, incredibly intelligent, often inappropriate husband.  The email, still saved in my outbox read as follows.

B, 

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about the life groups this morning, we are very interested in joining the one you hold next week. I did want to take the opportunity to first let you know a little about my Husband Jimmy. I have found after nearly 7 years of marriage and care giving it is easier to prepare people in advance instead of on the spot about Jims disabilities so that there is no awkwardness around some of his quirks. 

In 2004 while in the infantry Jim was deployed to Iraq and was caught up in combat shortly after his unit arrived in Sadr City. Jim was shot between the eyes by an Iraqi insurgent and as a result of this Jim suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress and a Traumatic Brain injury. 

Because of the TBI Jim as a very bad short-term memory, some people can take this as rudeness if they are not aware of it. He will not remember names, and may have to be reminded a dozen times as to who someone is even if he has met them several times before. He will eventually store it in his long term memory, but it is a lengthy process. 

Jim also processes social queues a little slower than other people and he can sometimes express a response to others emotions that is taken poorly by those around him. For instance, in a situation where he should express sympathy or empathy he may instead inject (sometimes awkward) humor into the conversation or redirect the subject to one he is comfortable discussing. 

Jim is highly intelligent but the damage to his frontal lobe can sometimes cause him to become fixated on one subject and he has difficulty deviating from it.  

Most of the time he is very good at bluffing his way through social events but we like to warn people in advance if they are going to be in a situation where one on one conversations will arise in hopes they will be a little more understanding of his sometimes awkward behaviors. It has in the past been a road block to him forming personal relationships with people and we are currently working to find ways around that. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. 
We look forward to seeing you next Sunday.

Sincerely

Pretty clever, right? Prepare them in advance, the response I got from B was a quick note, thanks for letting me know, I didn’t notice anything different with Jim, but I appreciate the heads up. We will pray for him.

Over the last several years I have often thought about how silly that email was, because first if there is anyone I can trust, I can trust B to take no nonsense from Jim, ever, he will call him on it every time despite never having been in the military and second this group of people I now call my family don’t see Jim as a diagnosis. They never did. I did. It was me that didn’t trust people. I was the barrier, in my desire to first protect my husband and second protect what I saw as delicate civilian sensibilities I forgot to trust the good in the world. I forgot to trust God to put the people we needed in our lives. We built our fence, we closed our curtains, and we peaked out the windows and saw only ignorant civilians instead of human beings willing to learn and that was our blindness not theirs.

When I started writing this blog I have planned to tell you about the families we have created for ourselves from other military families. The friendships and brotherhood and sisterhood we have forged from a common past. I was going to tell you about how my work with the Coalition to Salute Americas Heroes has given us a family bigger than what we ever thought possible, because these people get us. And they do! They get us. If I’m struggling help is just at the end of my phone line, a dozen other caregivers would call me in minutes if I needed help.

A veteran for Jim to speak with is a text message away. We have built a family in the Coalition that is prepared to drive half way across the country to support each other and it’s a wonderful amazing thing and one I wouldn’t trade for the world.

 But …. The truth of the matter is, we can build our families out of more than those who we share a common past with, if we trust in humanity and tear down that barrier we helped build. If we tear down the wall that has “us” on one side and “Them” on the other we can experience love and community and acceptance and then we can educate and in the end, the acronyms, and the shorthand and the inside” you’ll only get if you’ve been a soldiers wife” jokes don’t matter anymore. I promise, if we can just open the windows, and answer the phone, and attend the life group, you will see there is a world of people out there, with a world of love to give who want to, desperately want to, find a way to connect with us that isn’t just a quick “Thank you for your service’ in the Walmart checkout line.

After note - While publishing this blog and adding some pictures I came across an unexpected conundrum. We had too much family to choose from for just one image. Every picture here represents a group of people who love and accept our family. Some of them are biological, some are biblical, some have walked the path he has, and some walked it long before he thought of walking it, and all we had to do was open the door.