Edward Tick - Warriors Return: Restoring the Soul After War

ALSO BY EDWARD TICK

Nonfiction

Sacred Mountain: Encounters with the Vietnam Beast (1989)

The Practice of Dream Healing: Bringing Ancient Greek Mysteries into Modern Medicine (2001)

War and the Soul: Healing Our Nations Veterans from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (2005)

Poetry

The Golden Tortoise: Viet Nam Journeys (2005)

The Bull Awakening: Poetry of Crete and Santorini (2016)

To learn more about Edward Ticks pioneering work with veterans and to see the film Healing a Soldiers Heart, visit healingasoldiersheart.org and soldiersheart.net

For Kate Dahlstedt, my beloved, who never falters, whose work this is as well; and For all Warriors whose wounds speak truth

The descent to Hell is easy; Deaths gate stands open night and day; But to retrace our steps, to climb to the air above, Hoc opus, hic labor est, This is our life-work, this our labor.

VIRGIL, Aeneid

Contents

INTRODUCTION

A Call to the Nation

In Norse mythology the king-god Odin gave an eye for wisdom. What if this wound is the eye we pay for wisdom and the path to it? Can we understand traumatic wounding not as unjust and horrible occurrences that victimize us and should not have happened? Rather, can we understand it as a pathway to initiation and transformation that, in spite of our suffering, can become our great teacher and gift?

Our concern is the invisible wounding from war. The physical wounds are most visible to our veterans who deserve first concern. But in truth we are all wounded. Grandparents, parents, siblings, children, friends, neighbors, care providers, teachers, taxpayers are all caught in wars long and crushing tentacles. Our entire society reels in pain, exhaustion, despair, and debt. Look closely. All lives are affected and we all need be concerned.

Many civilians do not think war has touched them until they remember that their grandfather was in World War II, their nephew in Bosnia, or their neighbors daughter in Iraq. Or that the suicide in their neighborhood was by a despairing veteran for whom life should have been just beginning. Or that the national debt from the war economy squeezed the hope and finances out of their struggling familys meager resources. War touches us all. We must awaken to how.

Our challenge is this: how do we turn wars inevitable wounding and suffering into wisdom and growth that truly brings warriors home and benefits us all?

THE WARRIOR

The warrior is a foundational archetype in psyche and society. The warrior is the inner spirit and public persona that protects, energizes, motivates, and guides us. We steer ourselves toward its ideal. There are great variations in different societies warriors, but the archetype is universal. Each individual and culture, aware or not, develops the inner psychospiritual warrior as well as its outer military, political, and social roles.

Many individuals and classes throughout history and the world have striven after the warrior ideal, noted for qualities such as devotion, courage, strategic thinking, leadership, action, service, and sacrifice. Picture Minutemen, Spartans, Knights Templar, Zulus, Incas, Vikings, Samurai. Conjure the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, hobbits and dwarves trekking through Middle-earth. And think of warriors distortions, their shadow expressions, in quests for power, wealth, fame, land, or revenge. Think of the Nazi S.S. and Taliban terrorists, of Macbeth and Darth Vader.

The Warrior archetype is built into us and awakens as part of our psychospiritual development. It does not disappear as we age. Rather, it is meant to evolve, be integrated with our other core archetypes, and inspire and empower us throughout the life cycle. Without our inner warriors, we are incomplete and weakened. Our society and we are more complete and mature to the degree that we successfully embrace and develop our inner warrior and the moral and protective outer role meant to serve the best in a society.

Key practices necessary to nurturing the warrior and protecting its morality, strength, integrity, and beauty include Initiation, Restoration, and Return. Initiation is the process whereby our old self dies and a new, more mature, and wiser self evolves in its place. Restoration refers to bringing back the energies, beliefs, motivations, commitments, and loves of those who have been to war and may be depleted or disillusioned to the point of despair and brokenness. We restore spirit. Return refers not just to bringing troops out of harms way but to complete homecoming for the whole person in body, mind, heart, and soul with meaning, honor, respect, and reintegration into community. When we practice these arightand it is possiblewe fill our communities with honorable, noble, wise elders who in turn serve and mature the society and its most needy.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE WARRIORS GONE?

Many caring professionals, citizens, and institutions strive to respond to the needs of troops and veterans. In spite of these sincere attempts, the massive VA health-care system, and innumerable programs and techniques, we hear constant disturbing reports of ongoing, increasing, and abject suffering. We will examine these in depth; for now let us remember the astronomical suicide, substance abuse, divorce, child abuse and neglect, illness, and accident rates, and the unemployment, homelessness, and other life struggles that we hear about every day, that millions of survivors live with as their daily fare.

Warriors are meant to be strong, noble, beautiful, and able to serve for protection, enlightenment, and guidance all their days. Yet the American landscape is littered with victims suffering traumatic wounding we do not know how to heal.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused three major invisible wounds to service people at epidemic levels. These so-called signature wounds of our modern technological wars are Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Military Sexual Trauma (MST), and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). These three wounds, often occurring in combination, create such a complex of transformed and troubled thinking, feeling, perceiving, and behaving that the afflicted person can become lost for life with devastating personal, familial, and social consequences. Too often both veteran and family despair over any possible healing or homecoming, and the costs to society are astronomical. Far greater numbers of new and older veterans die from suicide, accidents, or stress-related diseases than were killed during their wars. These consequences will be examined in the opening chapters.

This is the ecology of wars invisible wounds: multitudes of disabling symptoms among millions of survivors; public ignorance about their causes, occurrences, and needs; government denial or resistance to diagnosis, treatment, and support; lack of wisdom or resources to address the wounds; and ignorance about and lack of success in how to effectively tend them. We are, in psychologist Paula Caplans phrase, a war-illiterate society. Everyone agrees that our troops and veterans deserve a return to productive and creative lives after service. The question remains: how?