WARRIORS AND QUIET WATERS

I find myself reluctant to write this post. My friend Suzie, after hearing about my amazing experience this past weekend, told me “it sounds like your next blog entry.” I wanted badly to deny it. But I can’t. That's why it is now way past bedtime and I am struggling to write these words.

Last weekend I had the unique and blessed opportunity to spend a few hours with some men (it just happened that this weekend it was all men) veterans of the Afghani and Iraqi Wars. If you came to my blog to be entertained, please stop here and come back next week. If you came to my blog to perhaps learn something, maybe feel something you haven’t felt for awhile, maybe be touched like you haven’t been touched for awhile, read on. I hesitate to even honor my writing by suggesting that the words I write on the behalf of others might actually spur others to action but I need to write nonetheless.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit with my dear nephew and his wife Chrissy. Mikey (he is Mikey because his Dad is Mike) would have been a lifer in the military. He loved representing his country. He was truly good at it. He is open-hearted and kind and good. He looked great in the uniform. He has also been medically discharged from the military as 100% unemployable and 95% disabled from an IED that blew up in Baghdad under his Humvee.

My nephew is a victim of a fight for oil. “Strategic interests” is what the politicos have called it.  I am a pacifist, perhaps a genetic throwback to my Quaker grandmother. But I support our troops and I particularly support my family. My nephew is the oldest son of my oldest sister. That makes him the oldest grandchild of my mother, Geneva Marie Haas, born Geneva Marie Mathia, born of Victoria Thulin Mathia. That is really important. Geneva and Victoria knew how to run families and keep them together. They passed that knowledge on to the women of the family, one being my sister, Jennylynne Gragg, a painter and more importantly, the mother of my nephew Mikey.

When Mikey came home to us from the War, he was pretty beat up, disabled and desperate. My sister, her husband Big Mike, Mikey’s wife Chrissy and even my elderly Mom Geneva, played a big part in making sure Mikey lived beyond that first very important year for a brain-injured (Traumatic Brain Injury), PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) soldier. A Wounded Warrior. Trying to find his way home.

It hasn’t been easy. Chrissy, fortunately, is a soul that thinks with her heart quicker than she thinks with her head. She had already been schooled in being an Army wife. It’s a difficult life. But soldier spouses are the glue to keeping our soldiers safe in combat (something to live for) and alive when they get back.

My sister, Jenny, grew up with a Dad who struggled daily with the effects of growing up in extreme poverty during the Depression and then life as a soldier in the Pacific Theater in WWII. I believe he suffered from what we now diagnose as PTSD or PTS. He sought relief in a number of ways I refuse to go into in this blog. Suffice to say my Dad was troubled his entire life. In the War, my sensitive, intelligent Dad saw things that would be unimaginably difficult to live with. So in many ways on many days he chose not to.

My nephew's recovery has taken a different path. He has a strong Mum, my sister. She plows through stuff with all the finesse of a charging bull. When he needed help and wasn’t getting it quickly enough, she called and called and called and called and called and cajoled and argued and pleaded until she found the person who could help. She’s that kind of Mom. She learned that from our Mom who sometimes needed a little liquid fortification to shore up her determination, but who nonetheless would stand up to principals and any other scary authority figure who hurt her cubs.

Last weekend, I arranged to meet up with my dear (as in irreplaceable) nephew and his kind-hearted, shoot-from-the-heart wife, Chrissy, in Bozeman. My nephew and his wife had been invited by a small non-profit called Warriors and Quiet Waters to participate in a week of fly-fishing right in my ‘home territory’, Yellowstone. The focus of the program is to teach wounded veterans to fly-fish but it’s really about healing the wounded souls of our troops.

I believe in the power of nature to heal. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I came to Yellowstone partly to heal from an extremely difficult year of loss. I have a long, long history of heading to the wilderness to think through problems or decisions. I went to the wilderness to decide whether or not to have a child. I know how being in and with nature can provide an incredible peace followed by clarity of mind.

At the last moment, I was invited to attend the last night’s dinner for the six families that came to learn to fly fish and found themselves renewing their commitments to themselves and to each other. An East Coast veteran testified to his absolute desperation, his decision that the memories of war and the visions he still had in his waking and sleeping hours were so horrific that he had decided his only option was to check out, until he was invited to fly-fish. This city boy was hurting so much, his first angry response to the phone call that led him to fly-fishing and Montana - "What the hell is fly-fishing and where the hell is Montana?" Until you hear Frank's and other’s stories, you really have no idea the impact that the wilderness and the healing powers of nature can have on such wounded warriors.

Then to hear their spouses attest to the difficulty of staying in a relationship with someone so wounded and then express their deep gratitude for the healing powers of water….  I am not a person who cries a lot for myself but my heart was full of tears of compassion and gratitude and great hope that these soldiers could be mended by the waters of the Gallatin or the Yellowstone or other lakes and rivers in this beautifully blessed country. I prayed that their loved ones could continue to love and have the strength to live with a wounded warrior much like my mother continued to live with hers.

If I had not been working and living in Yellowstone, I would never had heard these stories. We all have paths in our lives and each one of us makes decision about the guideposts along the way. I am so grateful for the opportunity to hear the stories of the men who are learning to fly-fish instead of lashing out at their spouses, the world around them and most importantly themselves. I am incredibly humbled by the work of the leaders of Warriors and Quiet Waters for our wounded patriots, one brave soldier at a time. If we all concentrated on helping just one person at a time, what a wonderful place this beautiful blue planet would be.

I have never actually endorsed or offered a link promoting a product or a project on my blog. But I have felt the power of this program. In this past year, the small program has been able to bring less than one hundred service men and women to Montana to seek healing from its magical mountains and rivers. I feel compelled to provide you a link to a program that literally saves the lives of our wounded warriors. I don’t know how you can help, but I am certain someone out there, one of my readers can help. Their website is www.warriorsandquietwaters.org. Their Facebook page is Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundation. If you know of someone who needs help or who can provide help, please give them a call or send them a message or email.

The mission is simple. Take a wounded warrior to the waters and let the waters heal the wounded warrior. Please take a look. Think about how YOU might be able to bring our warriors back. Thank you for reading all the way to the end of this post. I love my nephew and I support our troops. I may believe that war is an over-used answer to difficult problems but I applaud those who believe so much in our freedoms that they literally put their life, and the lives of their families, on the line to protect them.

Can I be a pacifist and still support my nephew? Heck yeah. I am against war; not against the men and women who believe in joining the Armed Services. My greatest hope is that the value we place on our people will become greater than the value we place on proving our strength through war. The small part I CAN play and keep my values intact is to offer this information to my readers in the hope that someone, somewhere values the lives of the soldiers enough to help this program bring them home…fully home.