Its been awhile and I must apologize. I can't believe its almost Christmas already. This year has flown by. I've been in college full time as well as looking for a part time job here in the middle of "lay off and shut down land." This is not really the way I wanted this year to go, but it has been very busy.

I decided to take a year to get a certificate in HVAC-R so I can volunteer with the many organizations and projects that are starting to pop up to support wounded heroes and their families. This year would also give me the time I need to find out exactly what I have to do to be able to do what I want to do for the rest of my life. As always, I went in thinking I had done my homework only to find out that I hadn't.

This last June I was fortunate enough to set in on a conference that dealt with returning military and PTSD. As the only student among professionals I left the conference with mixed feelings. I can't believe that these professionals are so uninformed about PTSD. I had asked my advisor about taking the PTSD 101 course that is given by the V.A. online. I was met with resistance. So in my own stubborness I decided to learn all I could and make the topic of my research paper all about military related PTSD, exclusively. During the conference I realized the information that was given to these professionals was the same information I had found while researching for my paper. Yes, I was very disappointed to say the least. I had hoped I'd learn something more than what I had found, but that wasn't the case.

We finally have a deployed family support group at the college. We are also working hard to get a warrior to warrior support group going as well. Below is the website to read Mrs. Simpson's journal and to get the information needed for the support group. I heard today that the suicide rate among our OIF/OEF vets are at 18 each day. We as Americans are failing our warriors, our heroes. Just because the wounds aren't visible doesn't mean they aren't there. We must realize that PTSD is normal, its our brain's way of trying to rationalize the completely irrational events we survived. It won't go away, we can't expect to forget, but we can learn to process and deal with it so we can learn to live on. As civilians we can't possibly begin to understand what happened, so we shouldn't pretend to. The warrior to warrior support group helps our warriors work on their experiences together, talking with people who have the same experiences.

***** Please pass the following information to everyone you know, this is from Barbara Allison-Simpson and it is the information needed to start a Warrior to Warrior Support Group anywhere. http://journals.aol.com/ballisons/announcing-warrior-to-warrior-su/