|
Pathways to Peace
| HE suffered for your freedom. |
|
| YOU suffered for their freedom. |
I was that which others did not want to be,
I went where others feared to go,
and did what others failed to do.
I asked nothing from those who gave nothing,
and reluctantly accepted the thought
of eternal loneliness....should I fail.
I have seen the face of terror,
felt the stinging cold of fear,
and enjoyed the sweet taste of a moments love.
I have cried, pained and hoped ....
but most of all, I have lived times
others would say were best forgotten.
At least I am able to say
that I am proud of what I am ... a Soldier.
House of Purple Hearts
Post Tramatic Stress Disorder |
|
Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, 80,000 veterans have commited suicide, 75% have been arrested at least once, 15% of adult males in our prisons is a combat veteran, and almost three times as many American veterans of the Vietnam war are currently dying of drug overdose and exposure on the streets of our cities as were killed in Southeast Asia. Ravaged by their experiences fighting in a savage war, Vietnam veterans have to face not only their internal demons, but a society that wants only to forget, and a treatment system that either brushes veterans aside or keeps them drugged to oblivion in psychiatric wards.
MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND: "America, the Beautiful", "His truth is marching on".
(This is the "Welcome Home" speech that we never got. The parade that didn't happen.; The family that wants them to come home. This is the chance they never got.)
I. First of all, Welcome Home! You didn't hear THAT when you came home. This is a list of 20 dysfuntional traits, survivor guilt, mistakes made in the Fog of War, this is the forgiveness that they never received. I want to see you happy and successful and clean. Now really, don't we both want the same thing? a) My experience... b) How wrongly I dealt with it (compulsive-obsessive), c) Vet stats: prison, suicide, education, guilt
II.Your Experience, let me try to describe: a) Your experiences, b) List 20 dysfunctional traits c) Your past problems
III. What we offer:
a) Mind healing, we feel your pain.
b) Body restore, good diet, exercise, self-defense class,
c) Spirit Build foundation, to build a life.
MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND: "Green Berets", & "I'm proud to be an American" by Lee Greenwood.
_____________________________________________
Drug Rehabs.com 2 Major Annual Fundraisers:
On Veteran's and Memorial Days, we would like to stage an evening of songs, readings, drama, and poetry by and about service men and women. we will use a local producer, director, musicians and cast. It will be everything that an evening in the Theater should be --- it will unite the communmity in an issue which concerns us all, it will entertain and, to use an overused word, it will cleanse. It will cleanse because it will bring the hidden to light.
Freud wrote that the resistance is the neurosis; that is, it is not the traumatic even which causes mental imbalance, but rather the energy required to suppress the memory/truth/fact of that event.
An injustice was done to servicemen returning from Vietnam, and that injustice was compounded daily by the country-as-a-whole.
We, as a society, want to forget Vietnam. But, to quote Freud again, the only way to forget is to remember.
We will call the evening Sketches of War, will be to my mind, an act, on the part of the Community as a whole, of apology and welcome. Something suppressed will be brought-to-light, and we feel it will be a first step toward community healing.
Veteran's Poems |
