Memorial Day, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 08:35AM Dear Friends and supporters of Veterans and their families,
As we all know, Memorial Day is a time for remembering. Certainly it is a time for remembering the sacrifices of the men and women who have given their lives for this country, whether through the draft or through the choice to enlist. More importantly, I think it is a time to remember that their sacrifices touch all of us in personal ways, large and small. Most of us can’t come close to relating to a combat experience, but we can all understand loss, sacrifice and trauma from our own lives. That is an opening, and an invitation to look more closely at the experience of the returning veterans in our midst. We do not need to run from their experience out of fear that we will say the wrong thing, hurt feelings or set off the potential time bomb of PTSD. They are people. We can relate to people.
We can all do something, and doing something is not a badge of honor - its just the right effort to make. Read more about the issues, ask the people you know who have a family member in their service how their loved one is doing - and then ask how they are doing with this experience. Connect.
Yesterday the New York Times had an article titled the Unexpected Perils of Coming Home (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29soldiers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
The brief descriptions of several of the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are personal, touching, and basically pretty distant. As with most of the coverage of the wars, we are asked, if we are asked at all, to observe from a distance what is happening with some people “other” than us. Understandable, but articles like this one tend to create the impression that this is happening to someone else, that it is sad, maybe even moving, but not personal to me. Its a VA problem.
We can ask more of ourselves. And contrary to what seems to be the conventional wisdom that most of us couldn’t “take it” or “understand it” if we are told the truth, we have seen audiences willingly step into the pain shared by the vets and their families and embrace it and them with wide open arms.
We civilians are capable of much more than the media apparently believes. All that means is that we are all human, more alike than different.
Contact us if you would like to see the film or bring it to your community. You can see the trailer here: http://www.thewelcomethemovie.com/trailer/
THE WELCOME will be shown at the Ojai Foundation today at 7:30 in Ojai, CA.
It will also be shown at SOU in Ashland tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 at the Commuter Resource Center. It will be followed by a discussion that will include both veterans and the audience. This will be in honor of Graduating Veterans, a chance to show your support by joining in the emotional truth of if all.
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