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Vision Healing the Wounds of War
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Veteran Healing Experience Film
Links
Vision Healing the Wounds of War
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Veteran Healing Experience Film
Warrior writings
Soldier's Heart
What is a soldier's heart? It has become a foundation structured from the work of Dr. Ed Tick and his book War and the Soul. His work is about helping combat soldiers reconnect with their own identity. The identity is the spirit of an individual and is seated into the depths of the ventricles in the heart. It is the "Being within"? the core of your very existence. In a soldier's heart, the very relationship with this light is gone. The stethoscope still reverberates the thumping from its chambers and all seems fine. All is not fine, however, because the Being and human are no longer connected. This part of a soldier's heart, estranged from its soul, must weep in the darkness. Veterans come home after combat and endeavor to live a normal life. Then later, well after the war has been fought, they realize that something is wrong. Their memories haunt them and make them strangers to the rest of the world. Nobody seems concerned how they feel or what they dream about at night. They think that nobody cares. They try to live a normal life, but it isn't normal. It's a life without an identity. Doctors describe it as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), but the disorder was there way before the diagnosis was given. The syndrome can be seen in all veterans. Dr. Tick calls it a post terror soul disorder (PTSD).
Soldiers come home and are influenced by their cultures and spirituality. Their reception from the community dictates their "welcome home." Greek and Native American, even Vietnamese soldiers were given high regards from their societies following battle. Culturally they were honored for their duty. Spiritually they were honored for the deity that lives within them. Sins were forgiven. They felt very welcome to come home and knew that their nation cared. Honored as warriors, they felt a kinship with their very own soul. Most did not experience post terror soul disorder. The "welcome home" was the vital component the soldiers needed to retrieve their souls. It made the difference between a normal life or a self-tortured life.
Besides the retrieval of the soul, however, there is another part to a soldier's heart. It's something that doesn't go away, no matter how well the warrior is able to sleep at night. It's the part which shudders at the sound of fireworks on the Fourth of July, the part which sheds tears during a war scene in a movie, and which feels the horror of combat when another K.I.A. is announced on the news. This aspect of the soldier's heart is different from the rest of the population, except for other soldiers. This has become the brotherhood that soldiers/ veterans/warriors feel for one another. This kindred connection is because they all know the difference within their hearts.
And this brotherhood is world wide, including veterans from all wars, historic or modern. On a recent trip to Vietnam, several American veterans, some with PTSD, met their former enemy. The Vietnamese warriors welcomed their former foes into their arms with celebration and ceremony because they shared the bonds from war. South Vietnamese, Lao-Hmong, Australian and Korean allies to the Americans during the Vietnam War are also within the brotherhood. The difference within their hearts that they have in common keeps them from ever being estranged from each other. They all experience the part of the soldier's heart that keeps them from ever forgetting, even if the light of soul has been retrieved. It is the part that still cries.
