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Today we have two guests. Helen Garland experienced the trauma of PTSD through the experiences of her husband, Joe Garland, respected author of 29 books. The last book, Unknown Warriors his his own story chronicling his experiences in WWII. Joe was, himself a victim of PTSD. Our second guest is Susan Deak, CEO of the Wellness Center of Ashtabula, Ohio, who has made it her mission to make alternative therapies, providing healing, to people in her community.
Tuesday June 12, 2012
Hours One & Two
Helen Garland
Unknown Soldiers is a book about surviving war, but returning from conflict, wounded in ways not visible to the eye. This has been the fate of soldiers for eons. Today, it is not just soldiers who are impacted. It is all of us, impacted by the war made on us by our own government.
Joe Garland, the author, wrote a book which told his own story, using it so we could understand what he faced during war and in its aftermath.
Woven into the narrative is also a love story told through letters written from the field. The woman about whom he wrote, the wife who was with him when he died, will be with us today to talk about the book, about Joe, and about the wounds which never healed.
This is a book about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Joe was very aware of how different he was after he returned. It never changed for him or for his friends. The fear and pain remained with them. Joe died late last year, having written 29 books, this the last and only book about his experiences.
On the website for the book, Wounded Warriors, you can hear the voices of Joe Garland and his friends, now gone, talking about experiences which stayed with them, reframing their lives in ways none of them imagined when they joined, moved by love of their country.
The paper in Gloucester, Massachusetts closed down to honor Joe when he died. He was the man who wrote history, making it immediate and real.
Below is an article which ran in the Gloucester this last Memorial Day.
MEMORIAL DAY 2012
From Helen Garland
Dorothy Nelson and the Writer's Center asked that I read from Joe Garland's book about his World War Two War - "Unknown Soldiers."
Reviewing Joe's book, three themes emerged.
The first on page XV of the introduction entitled "Up Front" reveals the burdens of Post Traumatic Stress, Guilt and the age old confusions of Fathers and Sons. Joe refers to his long held fear that his medically connected father had intervened to prevent Joe frombeing sent back into action after his hospitalization in Italy.
"Thus the letdown of my buddies back on the front, thus the "guilt," thus the book."
The second theme emerges throughout his book as he refers to my role as a war time pen pal and his letters to his parents. That is, the effect of any war on generations of family and
of visions of Love and Real Life as a balance against the fears and horrors of his war.
The third theme emerged when Martin Ray and his family visited soon after Joe's death in the hope of finding the right words to express why Joe's book exemplified both the nobility of service as well as the dangers. We decided that if the purpose of any war is noble, then the manner in which the war is conducted must be equally noble, otherwise, the results include the destruction of whole generations.
Then hauntingly, a poem on page 6 brings all these themes home for Gloucester. Joe quotes his father's stunning skill with the written word, taught him at his school on Dale Avenue opposite the Post Office at the turn of the century and in l915 at Harvard. Dr. Garland was contemplating the carnage of World War I when he wrote:
"A sovereign speaks a word; princes command,
And war, black as the plague, spreads through the land
You are the pawn, moved by a mightier hand;
You are the Christian martyr, living brand
That lights the kingly orgy of that king
To whom YOU homage bring.
This is your lot, oh Common Man; is it your choice?
When war takes all do YOU rejoice ----
Father and brother and livelihood,
Leaving all evil where was once all good?
Another commands your destiny.
Are you less fitted for that task than he?
Freedom and life are offered you; now choose,
Not overlong debate, nor yet refuse,
And when the stricken land raises its head,
May you, rising from burial of your dead,
Stand by your brother, teaching him to see ---
YOU the director of your destiny."
Finally Joe back again on page XV relates again to Gloucester and the third theme of WAR itself.
The Gloucester Town meeting of December 15, 1773 voted as one "for freedom from a distant, contemptuous, arbitrary and rather stupid emperor across three thousand miles of ocean" saying:
"If we are compelled to make the last appeal to Heaven, we will defend our resolutions and liberties at the expense of all that is dear to us"
And so we must consider both the ends and the conduct of the means.”
PTSD has always been a cost of war. Today, we consider it as a means of controlling us.
It might have been Edward Bernays who noticed returning vets from World War I were far less able to confront authority than others who protested injustice, or this strategy could have occurred to one of his replacements after Vietnam.
Bernays wanted a complacent population and PTSD has become a means of obtaining this end.
The conditions of war, the emotional trauma and uncertainty, constant fear, have become endemic here, on our own shores through the war waged on us by government and corporations economically, socially, and through the constant attrition of fear. TSA, monitoring, police brutality, the loss of homes, jobs, the lack of medical care, and the hope of justice.
We must take action. Action begins with understanding. Helen Garland, Joe's wife, tells a story of survival which brings hope. Her story is touching, powerful, and needs to be read. Don't miss it.
Site: Unknown Soldiers
Hour Three
Our second guest today is Susan Deak. Susan is the founder of the Wellness Center in Ashtabula, Ohio. She is active locally, working to ensure those in her community have therapies which work to improve their health and well being.
WTLC's approach to wellness is founded on John Travis's Wellness Model. This model is based on balance and John's twelve indexes offer you an opportunity to measure your own wellness. Each of you is encouraged to develop your own wellness plan that is customized to your particular needs. Because each person's plan is unique, people use WTLC in varying ways. They make use of one or more of the center's six major focuses that facilitate learning, healing, growth or other transformation.
Site: Wellness Center
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