So I just spent three days at a conference out at Smith College that was titled "Combat Stress: Understanding the Challenges, Preparing for the Return". It was amazing - they covered just about every area that you could think of. Instead of running down the whole thing I thought that maybe I would just give you some highlights. Before I do that though I want to talk about the book "Final Salute" that I read during the conference. The book is by a reporter who turned a bunch of newspaper articles into this story with the subject being mostly Major Steve Beck. Really though the subject is what Major Beck does which is notify the families of the men and women who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is an amazing book but incredibly sad and when I say sad I mean I had to stop reading the book in public because I was close to sobbing every time I picked it up. Why would I want to put myself through that? Because this is an important part of what is going on and everyone should see how it is handled. If you've seen any of those pictures that have gone around the Internet of the coffin being loaded off of a commercial jet while people look through the windows or the picture of the woman laying next to her husbands casket so she can spend one more night with him - those are from this book.
Read it - please.
Here are my highlights:
* They spent a ton of time on self care and secondary trauma. This is especially important to the therapists and social workers who are going to be working directly one and one with veterans (from any war). You can't help them if you are mired down in their stuff and can't process it properly.
*Jonathan Shay was one of the keynote speakers and he was fabulous. He has written two groundbreaking books: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. He was hysterically funny and spoke to us about his work in a way that we could all understand. I highly recommend his books an going to see him speak if you are interested in this subject matter.
* A World War II vet who is a Pearl Harbor survivor gently reminded us that 2,350 men were killed on December 7th 1941. He wasn't downplaying the number of deaths in Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan or Iraq - as I said he was just gently reminding us that Iraq isn't the whole war that have caused suffering.
* Tons and tons of speakers that have published and are completely accessible if you need to follow up with them. One of them is the head of the social work school at the University of Georgia - I'm going to look at that school for a possible transfer my second year.
* The best part of this whole conference is that it wasn't political. Everyone was there with the same goal - which was treating veterans. At one point someone tried to get political but was quickly shut down and I was glad. This was not the place to talk about who you were going to vote for, what you thought of the war or whether you thought the war was illegal or legal. There was a higher purpose - and pretty much everyone stuck to it.
* The conference was free if you are active military so we got to hear a lot from them and from their perspective. It was fascinating.
* Lt. Col Carl Castro. He was the first speaker. He was funny, down to earth and brutally honest about the military's shortcomings. He is in the military obviously and is working within the system to help make changes. It was a great way to start off the conference.
OK that's it for now - more on regular life later. I'm off to watch the rest of the race.
