Wounded Warrior’s Wives are not to be trifled with. Here are the top 5 reasons why:
5: We are ready to fight, just like our husband’s once were.
We know how to fight because we practice it every day. We spent years following our husbands across the globe, always ‘ready’ for his next mission. Now it’s our turn and we are taking the helm. We fight with doctors to get the proper treatment he deserves. We fight with Tricare, the VA and Medicare to get that treatment paid for. We fight with the VA to get the benefits he deserves. We fight with the DoD to keep his military records straight.
We fight for his rights as a disabled person with airlines, restaurants and any other business that is lacking in basic knowledge of ADA laws. We fight with creditors who harass us in illegal ways when we give up our jobs (and our incomes) to care for our spouses. We fight with big banks to stay in our homes, despite how many military consumer laws were ignored. We fight with people in our communities, our state representatives, and on a national level to bring awareness about the needs and fundamental rights of our spouses.
We fight to educate our friends and family when they get mad at us for cancelling at the last minute, or in the middle of, social functions. We even fight amongst ourselves when the going gets too rough. We fight to keep our kids on an even keel when his PTSD kicks in. Some of us even fight to keep custody of our kids after ‘concerned’ family members hear the words “PTSD” and assume our husband will end up in a clock tower someday.
Do you think for a second that we would hesitate to fight with a complete stranger who was totally asking for it?
4. We have popular blogs, use social media liberally – and all major media outlets are on our speed dial.
We are a verbal and opinionated lot, us gals. We share our lives through our blogs, through social media, and with each other. And, when someone pisses us off, we blog about it for the masses to read for all eternity, talk about it in social media until it goes viral…or we just call The Washington Post, Huffington Post or the New York Times. Some of us even write for these outlets. News travels fast.
Do you think for a New York Times minute that any wrongdoing on your part will go unnoticed?
3: We are social deviants.
We were real people once, and may find ourselves again someday, but until then we’ve followed our husbands to live in the middle of nowhere, far from the environmental triggers of a city (AKA urban jungle, kill zone, etc.), living in semi-isolation. We have cut off ties and disposed of the majority of our friends or family who refused to understand our situation or circumstances. We all suffer from the residue of PTSD, a term now called ‘secondary PTSD’. We deal with flashbacks, nightmares, disassociative episodes and bouts of depression (on both sides). We take care of husbands who are housebound, usually wearing a caretaker uniform of PJ’s and a ponytail, praying the VA will recognize the level of care that we give each day. We don’t go to the salon to get our hair or nails done unless someone else pays for it, which they don’t. There is no room (or time off) for such frills. We stay home with our husbands, caring for them 24/7, and carve out as much sanity as we can find.
Our lives are not like other people’s lives. Do you really want to make us angry? Or do you want to give us a really really wide berth and back away slowly because you’re scared of what we might do if we snap? Yes, you say? Heh…that’s a VERY good choice.
2. We are already angry.
We accept responsibility for marrying a military man, but we do not easily accept having a different man than we married coming back from war. Some of our husband’s do not remember our own children’s names. They don’t remember how to dress themselves, the route to take to pick the kids up from school, or how to cook a simple meal. Our husbands have no recollection of our wedding day, our favorite flowers, or even our birthday or anniversary date. We are not angry with THEM about these things: We are furious at the cards we were dealt and indignant that such a horrible thing had to happen to our husbands in the first place. We are angry about the loss of the marriage we were supposed to have, and we never truly stop mourning. We’re angry at the doctors who blow us off when we give our input, or the VA who puts him into a backlog while we wait for benefits that would keep a roof over our head or food in our stomachs. We hold a grudge against anybody who ever failed us as we tried to make sense of this chaos. We are also furious at ourselves, because we constantly feel like we’re not doing enough to help.
We are already the poster children of resentment…do you want to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
1. We are sleep (and, likely sex) deprived.
Some of us haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years. Between the stress, depression, anxiety, and the husband who wakes up screaming multiple times a night from nightmares and flashbacks, we’re all beyond exhausted. A nap after sex would help, but that’s not happening either. Between the two of us, whether it is our medications, depression, sleep deprivation and/or exhaustion, our libido is now GONE. Replacing sex with intimacy only goes so far…
We’re muddled and short-tempered and irrational and crazy. Like ax-murderer crazy.
There are all sorts of studies linking sleep deprivation to psychosis and that would probably hold up in court if I decided to assault you. In my best Dirty Harry voice, I ask: “Do you feel lucky?”
Keep this all in mind the next time you fail to keep your opinions to yourself, spout out absurdities about how easy our lives are, or just plain don’t give a damn about our injured service members in the first place.
…and beware the Wounded Warrior’s Wife.
In an effort to keep our vitriol in a nicely contained space so everyone can be safe, I invite WWW’s to use the comment section to vent about the people (or things, or circumstances) that piss you off. Tell us what you said (or what you wished you had said) or rant away…I am pleased to be able to offer this public service to keep the rest of society protected.
Please scroll down and leave a comment - I love to hear your thoughts!
You can also join me on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook for sneak peeks and updates.
This post is brought to you by:
The nice little man who was going very, very slowly ringing up purchases in Target yesterday KNOWS EXACTLY what will happen if you break the camel’s back. I am sorry nice little man. YOU REALLY TORQUED ME and I should not have bit your head off.
I’ve done that too. Then I felt bad. Then I remembered that polite society isn’t a segment of the population that I need to adhere to.
“It must be so much easier now that you’re not working.” “Are you enjoying your time off?” And lately, I’m extremely irritated by people (even those who I KNOW have their hearts in the right place) who want to ask how he is doing. 1. How am I?? 2. If I escape the house, I don’t want to talk about it. Let me enjoy my respite time.
Epic conversation starters, eh? Geesh! I hear you!!!
The “not working” comment burns me up!!!! Not working, my heinie! The first year I continued to work, and I now wonder how in heck I did it. I can’t even find time to go to the bathroom. There’s always a call to make, an appointment to go to, an email to follow up on, and then there are all the people who are just starting this journey who ask questions that I feel I need to answer. Someone actually told me, “You don’t need to worry about them, just your family.” I snapped off on them! “I used to be that family that no one worried about. I remember what it is to feel helpless and not have anyone to answer questions. I will NEVER let that happen to anyone else if I can help it.” People need to live this life for five minutes, then they can figure out that more than 99% of them couldn’t hack it. Not working, yeah right!
OMG how about the pity factor. I get tired of pitty. Oh you poor dear grrrrr or at least you have the VA health care or money ya like either is a big help.
Sheri, you are so right! It couldn’t get any more insulting, even if they patted us on the head while they did it. Maddening! Thanks for your comment and for sharing!
A few months ago, we had gone out to a nice sit down dinner with friends….. and after visiting for a while and letting our kids play at the McDonalds down the street…. we started to all file out the door to our cars. This extremely inebriated man and his friend were stumbling in the doors just as we were leaving… took one look at Brandon limping with his cane in hand…. and said “Heeyy what’s up, HOUSE?” You know, like the show. Points for creativity, drunk guy. Brandon wouldn’t let me respond… because we were with friends… and in front of our kids…. but ooooooh man. After the huge PTSD flare up/emotional meltdown that followed that one tiny little comment, I WISH I had given that stupid man not just a piece of my mind… but unleashed my fury in a way he would have never forgotten. Like, how incredibly pathetic it was that a 40 year old man, covered in acne, was stumbling into a McDonalds on a Friday night with his equally pathetic friend. He’ll never be half the man my husband is.
AMEN!!! Sometimes it is best just to remain quiet. Some people are not worth the breath it would take to educate them! Good on you both for handling that so well. My husband was present for many insulting comments, either to him or to me, and he reacts in a more forceful way. One situation involved a plate glass window in a backwoods Waffle House…with a drunk man who thought I was fair game. I had first dibs on him. LOL!
PS. You summed it up into a neat little package: You are right…He never will be half the man your husband is!
My family was shopping at Walmart one day, and my husband has to use an electric scooter. Now, I understand he is 25 and doesn’t look like he needs it, but when a woman looks at him then says to her husband under her breath “I don’t buy that” she is just asking for it. Call it secondary PTSD or whatever, I turned to her and let her have it. “Excuse me! I apologize that you don’t believe my husband really needs this scooter, but he just had hip surgery after being BLOWN UP in Iraq to give you the freedom of speech to spout out ignorant comments like that.”
Even then, it’s a good thing that my husband didn’t hear her and he was completely blown away by his tiny wife shaking, yelling across Walmart so that the ENTIRE store could hear and ensuring her complete humiliation.
That’s not humiliation. That’s worthy of a standing ovation! I had a similar situation recently, which I blogged about, where one woman had a hissy because my husband uses a handicap parking space. I reacted in just about the same way as you did! Read about it here and know you aren’t alone!
http://torreyshannon.com/2011/12/invisible-wounds-bring-controversy-in-every-community-even-ours/
Thanks so much for sharing your story. I find it inspiring.
Oh my goodness…THANK YOU! So many well-meaning friends and family have pissed me off without trying, and I always bite my tongue for the sake of preserving the few relationships I have left with the few people who haven’t decided that my life is too f-ed up for them to be a part of.
“Oh, he has PTSD. Are you guys safe? Do you need to stay here?” No, I don’t. Thank you. I appreciate your concern, but I never said that he was violent or aggressive toward us. I said that he has PTSD. Doesn’t mean he’s crazy.
“If he really loved you and your daughter, he would (or would not)…” No. Just…no. He DOES love us. Desperately. He just doesn’t know HOW to love us anymore the way that your husband loves you.
“He needs to get a handle on this.” Well, yeah, but if he could do it, we wouldn’t be in this situation, now would we?
“All those meds f*** him up. He needs to stop taking them.” Yeah, they do f*** him up. Yeah, we’ve dealt with horrible addiction to them, and yeah, I’ve had to lock them up and administer them myself for this very reason. But until you’ve lived in our home and seen how he functions (or, rather CAN’T function) without them, STFU.
“He doesn’t treat you right. You deserve better.” Believe me, if he knew how to treat us right all the time, he would. And he deserved better, too. I didn’t vow to be his wife only when things are good, and I’d rather have the hard times with him than the easy times with anyone else.
“One of you needs to be working.” You think I spent 4 years and a metric f***ton of student loan debt on my bachelor’s degree so I could avoid working and be broke? Believe me, we’d both love to work, and we both used to work. There just came a point where our family had to come first.
And don’t get me started on the neighbor who thought it would be a good idea to throw a handful of firecrackers down the stairs while my husband is painting in his man cave (aka, the one peaceful sanctuary he has). I am so thankful that he decided to run this fantastic idea by me first so I could tell him what an incredibly idiotic one it was and threatened him the ass-kicking of his life if he did it.
Kaete, WOW! You just shared so much with us that we can all relate to! Thank you!
PS. I wrote about fireworks being a danger to vets. If you haven’t read it yet, it may help to give it to that asshat that thought it would be funny. I am so glad your husband has you advocating for him. You represent all that us wives strive to be.
Here’s the link: http://torreyshannon.com/2011/07/holiday-fireworks-and-gunshots-are-a-real-danger-for-combat-veterans/
We could be friends cause I swear you are all over the place inside our world. My husband broke down a little while reading your response. Feels good to hear other people that get it. Wish we could get our friends/family on board too.
Teresa, I am so glad that you and your husband are both finding solace in knowing you are not alone!
Torrey Shannon recently posted..Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Never Piss Off a Wounded Warrior’s Wife
This really says it all! Mom’s feel this. Way too! Although my son is home physically the Son I sent off to Iraq did not come home on my heart I hope someday he will come back to me!
Frances, I already told Siobhan this, but I will say the same to you as well… I can certainly appreciate the role that MOMS have in the care of our nation’s warriors. God bless you for what you do. I am a Blue Star Mom now and it was a real shock to me that our son would choose a life in the military (yet so proud!) after all his Dad went through. It’s a fear, for sure, that something would happen to him. Your son is incredibly lucky to have a mother like you. The invisible wounds are so hard to deal with and your love will carry him through!
Amen! These can also apply to WW Moms, of which I am one. Been living this life for six months now. Keep strong! I know blogging for me has helped a lot and made some changes happen around here! http://www.walkingwithmywoundedwarrior.blogspot.com
More power to you!
You are absolutely right! As a Blue Star Mom (my son went into basic training this month …gulp!) I can certainly appreciate the role that MOMS have in the care of our nation’s warriors. God bless you for what you do. You are early into the process and so much has changed since my husband was injured more than 7 years ago, but I am definitely here for you if you EVER need anything. I also really look forward to reading your blog too! Writing has been so incredibly therapeutic to me. It’s so nice to have met you here.
Yesterday, we went to a restaurant and the sweet waitress was trying to explain how a certain dish tasted to my husband. After a few moments he politely told her “thanks, but I can’t taste anything anyway.” At first she didn’t understand then I took a small liberty and explained that he lost both the sense of smell and taste during a mortar explosion in Iraq. Her response 1) Oh, my ex-husband was in the army. 2) Well at least when you retire they have to pay you (Like it’s that easy sister). 3) “Well, if you can’t taste it then it doesn’t really matter!
Uh, it matters to him.
April, my husband has the same issues with his sense of smell and taste. Most of what I prepare has to be spicy so he can at least feel heat in the food. LOL! Oh, and let’s not even talk about how he can’t smell smoke when he catches the stove on fire. Thank GOD my son was home to use the fire extinguisher.
The waitress is just another example of people who SHOULD understand, but haven’t gotten there yet. [sighs]
This is amazing, THANK YOU!!! I am going to be following you from now on. I especially love, “like ax-murderer crazy”. Our collective insanity keeps me sane. Please check out http://www.PostWarMonologues.com for more rants and raves!
Keep it up!
Thank you Cristin Jolee! Glad you could appreciate it.
Will definitely check out your site too!
That sounds so much like my wife she took on a doc in the V.A. er one night when the doc said i needed to see mental health which I had been doing and still do for my PTSD. You don’t mess with our wives and get away with it .
David, give your wife a high-five for me. She sounds awesome!
We just got our rating and my mother: oh this is great,u just got that high percentage because u were on it and organized, I know u guys hate it but all his issue are all stress related, just wait till u guys are settled into new place in a couple weeks he is back to normal ..and then he can work and u and u guys still got the money. U see its all just stress. Or, he looks normal, I don’t see anything wrong with him,, or those assholes who in the mall stop him dea,d in his tracks and get in his tace saying…for what u need that dog, what’s ur disability or the mall cop, u cant park here, its for handicapped only, i advised him of our blue big handicapped sign. His comment…yeah right, u got that from ur grandma. I feel a lot of times in the need of bodybags,strong coffee and a shot gun
Hi Torrey,
The thing that irritates me is when people tell me how “lucky” we are that my husband received a 100% disability. I know they don’t mean it in an ugly way, but like I try to explain nicely, this is not the lottery we wanted to win. I’d love to be able to give it all back and return to how we were.
YES! I’ve heard that one too. I told them we’d gladly give back his Purple Heart and his disability pay if it meant he wasn’t injured any more. They stare at you with this blank stare….like a deer in headlights. They haven’t thought of that as the option we’d rather have!
Torrey Shannon recently posted..Swift Kick in the Butt Series, Week 2: Working Smarter, Not Harder! Finding time, energy and balance
The only thing I might add, is that even if our libido is fine, the brain injury can kill their libido. For us, there is no testosterone produced anymore. Trying to replace the testosterone leads to rages. Forget intimacy, there is no intimacy after all the PTSD incidences. You lose your best friend, but the shell is still there. When the symptoms of the PTSD are controlled and then come screaming back, you have to grieve all over again, and it never gets any easier. And the VA’s solution of the little blue pill doesn’t work because he has to take blood pressure medication to control the migraines from the blast injury. (Not to mention a friend says they only give you six pills a month, six, really?) And so to compensate, they give you a special compensation, about $96 a month. Please, that doesn’t even buy Energizers in this economy, not to mention, even if it paid for the supply, I never have a moment where I’m not at a doctor’s appointment, on the phone fighting with the VA, cajoling him to do something, or taking care of the kids. Who has the time, the energy, or the mindset for sex? I think at this point I might get more pleasure from beating one of those blowup dummies with a padded bat!!!! (Ok, so I’m a little disgruntled and deviant today.)
Girl, you’ve got me rolling and I know it’s no laughing matter. I just know who you are in ‘real’ life to know what you go through each day already as it is. I LOVE your sense of humor despite it all. The ‘Energizer in this economy’ comment is what got me. LOL!
How, exactly, does the VA determine that we are entitled to getting laid six times per month? Is there some sort of survey they did when I wasn’t home to answer the phone and give my input? Geesh.
Oh, yes…let’s not forget that filing a claim for impotence is really not an optimal situation for any of us. First you have to be evaluated. Men do not like the visual of what this may entail, let alone traipsing into the VA to announce it to strangers…or put it in writing to be reviewed by God knows how many people? Yeah, right! And then factor in the time it takes to get the rating back before you can potentially get compensated for it? Years.
By then we’ve all purchased blow-up dolls of some kind.
I am crying but it is a happy cry. I feel like laughing but can’t. Just another part of being a WWW; unable to keep my own emotions under control.
Your emotions are like waves when you are a WWW. You have waves that crest and troughs that go deep. Somewhere in the middle we find out that laughing is what keeps us all sane. That, and venting.
Hang in there Tiffany. You are NOT alone!
I was really moved by this post and all your comments. I really felt the laughter and the tears in your sharing. I’m not the wife of a vet, but I am close to people with “invisible” conditions–from Asperger’s to MS–and they too have experienced similar indignities. People so grudging–like Amber’s story of the woman who muttered the comment about Amber’s apparently healthy husband in the motorized chair–Was Madame feeling a little tired and needed a sit-down? Did SHE need that chair? Did she think he had stolen it from orphans?
Helen W. Mallon recently posted..Jess Row, of Best American Short Stories, 2011: On Spirituality and Writing
We are honored that someone outside the military WWW community could empathize and relate. Thank you Helen. You totally made me smile!
I’ve been dealing with PTSD for 35 years. 35 years. I’m not angry anymore. I’m just plain worn out.
Debra, it’s no damn wonder you are worn out. Vietnam era veterans were shat on in every way possible, getting no support for decades. The wives got even less support! I have been very angry about this, long before Dan was even injured. His family members served in Vietnam and the dysfunction ran deep. I have often felt guilty as a Post 9-11 caregiver for getting help because I know it was never given until now. I challenged our Senator and ended up in the paper over this issue. By golly, if we can get you recognized on the heels of our own recognition, we will. Until then, know that we admire you SO much for sticking through this for so many decades. You are not going to be dismissed amongst this crowd at all.
See more about my rant with the Senator on behalf of prior-era wives here:
http://torreyshannon.com/2011/07/resident-asks-udall-to-help-fill-the-gap-in-veterans-needs/
Here’s a bit of a transcript of that news article:
“The caregiver law that passed more than a year ago took more than a year for me to get an invitation for that benefit,” she said. “There are caregivers who give more than full-time care that are being denied benefits. Not only do we have to wait for more than a year to apply, but also it’s only for this generation’s caregivers.”
However, it does not address previous caregiver generations, such as Vietnam veterans, whose spouses have stuck by them for 40 years and have struggled with no back up resources.
“I consider myself fortunate, but now I am stuck in a back log,” Shannon said. “I don’t hold out much hope when I see people who have priority and have to wait for care.”
She said she saw caregivers whose spouses, sons and families who have visible wounds that are being denied and this does not include the ones with nonvisible wounds.
“Now we (caregivers) have recognition, we’re still getting dismissed by the VA,” Shannon said.
At that point, Udall pledged to continue to push for streamlining the VA’s response to caregivers’ needs and the commitments that have now been made to support them.
My “favorite” lately has to be when I was sort of venting to a non-military wife friend about feeling overwhelmed with everything lately and her “advice” was to just leave him, that it just sounds like so much work. After I picked my jaw up from the floor, I explained to her that that would be the chicken way out. That I took my vows seriously the day a married my husband and that I prayed her husband would always be healthy and whole so that he didn’t have to suffer alone when she “just left him” when it became “too much work.” Serves me right for trying to talk to someone outside this circle…My husband and I have worked so hard just to get where we are today. I don’t stick around because I love the drama, as I have been accused, I stay with him because I love him and I want to be the one to fight with and for my husband to ensure that he gets the care he not only needs but, at the very least, deserves!
Kristin, this is definitely a touchy topic. There are so many people that I saw leaving their husbands while we were at Walter Reed. They cleared out the bank account, took the kids and were GONE. That shocked me. And yet, there I was…I was sticking by my EX husband and ended up remarrying him after it was all said and done! I think ours was the only marriage that was repaired as a result of combat injury.
That’s not to say I didn’t entertain the idea of leaving when things were just. so. hard. But I didn’t. And neither did he. We stuck it out and reminded ourselves that everything in our marriage was worth saving. We had done it before and we weren’t going to go down that road again.
At the same time, there are wives who truly have to leave, with good reason. I know how hard it had to be for them to leave, how hard they tried, and they are all the better for it. I admire the strength it took for them to make that choice.
Each marriage is like a fingerprint. What is right for you may not be right for me, and vice versa.
I’ve been told so many times that I would be better off without my husband. I’ve had my own family tell me that my husband ‘ruined my life’.
It’s what *I* believe that matters.
Same for you. And same for everyone else.
All I can say is.. You are in my heart and prayers….not only are your Husbands amazing Heroes but so are each and every one of you who have chosen to Stand by your Warrior and become one yourself. I am sure that the road you have taken is not only Hard and Difficult but also heart wrenching on a daily basis. It is a shame that so many people outside of the Military (and they also could do so much more ) do NOT Recognize and Acknowledge these Brave Heroes who have done all that can be expected from them for their Country…..a Country who also does NOT treat these Heroes with the Respect , Admiration and Financial Security they so truly deserve. I Thank each and every one of you and your Warriors for having the Courage , Dedication and Commitment to Stand up for your Country and Each Other. Many Hugs and much Respect for you all.
Thank you so much. You probably will never know in full how much your words have a positive impact on us. That means so much coming from the outside world. We don’t get that very much. Thank you.
Well said Torrey! I often felt that I was in this caregiver role alone and that I felt awful for the days and days of PJ’s and pony tail hair and you have totally summed it all up nicely and now I know that I am not the only one that has lived life in that manner. I would do it all over again for my husband was well worth all I have gone through to care for him. He was my love, my hero, my life and he is dearly missed. He just came home too broken and the doctors just couldn’t fix him and put him back together right again. I just wish I could’ve helped him more. I’d give anything if I could’ve kept him and kept him from hurting so much. I love you Coy!
Your love for your husband is eternal and it shows, but I am so sorry that he’s gone. You are my hero.
um..ya… i did okay reading the post.. it made sharp pains in my chest, i was able to push them back and laugh a lil..the comments that followed.. those made me see this IS my normal. I cant hide it anymore.. i cant say “it will heal in time” or “go away”. it’s been 8 years now. and I am JUST NOW facing it. yep..im selfish like that. Now i feel so scared, alone yet not. i feel like a failure, like im weak for breaking down. not to mention i was raised by a vet. vetran who sufferes SEVERE PTSD. I grew up with tinted windows, guns and barracades (sp?). so my husband’s actions became normal to me very quickly. i fell into it easy. but that meant i had to again, push all who was me out like i did as a kid. im scared to leave the house because of it all. and i never realized it until i read all this. im lost now.
Don’t be lost. You are in good company. I hope you’ll continue reading, sharing and being the awesome person that you are. Because you are.
(Background: Husband, 100%disabled in 2008, PTSD/TBI) Few days before Veterans Day, I facebooked a link for military members/vets to get free meal at Olive Garden. My “sister-in-law” (who is an RN) proceeded with “Does he REALLY deserve that? What else do you EXPECT from the government?” She said that PTSD is a “crap diagnosis”, he has “no excuse for being antisocial” at family get-togethers, and OUR family (whom SHE married into) was better off without his lazy free-loading ass. (O.o) Oh HELL NO! Unfortunately didn’t get her deleted/blocked and the messages erased before my husband saw them. Which deeply hurt him. And spiraled him into a major relapse & depression that we’ve barely began to crawl out of after 3 months and changing meds. I have disowned this “sisterinlaw” and refuse to attend anything she’s at, because so help me God, I will scratch her drunken eyes out, tie her to a tree and torch the bitch.
Hey, we both have evil ‘sinister-in-laws’ as I call them. Sad, but true. We moved to the middle of nowhere for a reason. One of mine actually used to live across the street from us. It’s no small miracle that I am not in jail for manslaughter. LOL
I can’t believe your SIL is an RN, of all things. How cold (and uneducated) can one be?
Great post, is nice to get some humor and be able to apply it to such a serious situation! The media listens to the wifes of (and people who were) victims of such horrible things too their voice is amplified”
marian recently posted..Spend some time watching tv
Love Conquers All. Throughout the past five months I have grown only closer to Aaron. Deployment kicked our asses and we were going to need some help when he returned.
Elisabeth recently posted..weve got the best deals
SHAMED for those heartless people…. I sure respect a SOLDIER!!! you don’t know what they are going thru and the fact that they are away from their family, so you don’t have the right to say any words that may let them feel if as if they are useless after they came home from war…….. you don’t even have the guts to just enroll in an army class…….
Oh! crack me up! there’s something true on this article.. got your point guys..
A soldier’s wife is the most strong woman of all (including mother’s with especial child), they surely know how to fight and be strong for their love ones. So, for those who have nothing good to say to them (wounded soldier), just shut your mouth or else you’ll be sorry you even open it. I will always admire women like you!
Michelle recently posted..security guard resume
Gals, don’t worry they (women who looks to your husband as a useless one) never will be half the woman you are! Be proud! You being there beside your HEROES will give them strength and inspiration to have a life with you once again. Your support will make them realize how much they are loved and definitely will return that love to you.
Mae recently posted..armed security guard
Just yesterday, we went to a Roger Waters concert with the Wounded Warrior Project. One guy in front of another warrior is standing when no one else is. I tell him to sit down because the guy next to him can’t see. The guy of course being a wounded warrior with a cane to walk. The guy goes “then he should stand up to!” … then the music started playing and I wasn’t able to say… He’s a wounded combat veteran! WHO ARE YOU?
Sleep Deprived, stressed from fighting the VA for 3 years. Memorial Day weekend is close! How many Americans are really recognizing the sacrafices that have been made by our Vets? Or the sacrafices made by us caregivers? I am sick of all the damn flag wavers who turn there backs the moment the reality has hit them! I am tired of wondering each day whether this month we are going to make it through it!
Tired and exhausted and just plain fed up!
Is it just me or is there other military spouses out there who may feel this way too? I know it is almost a given that most typically people see a housewife and think oh thats someone i can walk all over! HMMM!!! But it feels sometimes to me that people actually see me as a military spouse and think HMMM Oh dummy! Even worse it appears that they challenge it even more so because of it! Is it just me or is there others that feel this same way? Its like they underestimate us, like we wont investigate things or look into them! Or question your motive even more so then most! I am so sick of people challenging me because I am a wife of a disabled Vet. People get a clue, Or I will unleash my wrath on you and u wont like it when i am done!! HEE HEE HEE! Im sure i am not alone on this comment! Beware the Military spouse who carries the broom! It might end up somewhere u wont like! I am having one of those days guys!
We have been underestimated for a long time. Military wives are the strongest people I know.
My husband and I live in Canada. His PTSD is a result of witnessing a terrible accident on a construction site.
I feel ashamed and guilty for thinking that my husband’s experience is nothing compared to those of your husbands because my husband’s pain and suffering are real. My living nightmare is real.
I can relate to so much being shared here.
My heart aches. Literally. I am actually feeling very overwhelmed with emotion that I can’t even express myself properly right now.
Lisa Fraser recently posted..Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Never Piss Off a Wounded Warrior’s Wife
Lisa,
Don’t ever feel ashamed or guilty! A traumatic event (or events) should not be compared to justify ones PTSD levels. It is very real to those who lived it, and for those who give care in support of their recovery. I am glad you could relate to so much of this post. The goal was to have a tongue in cheek look at the reality of our lives. Thank you for commenting, sharing, and visiting!
Torrey
I’ve just recently gone on a search for others in a similar situation to mine, spouses of combat PTSD vets who have so little left to go on but love for the person our husbands used to be… I love this post. It so clearly explains a small part of what we have going on! Thank you for writting it.