Welcome Home Project helps veterans heal by sharing war burdens with the community
(Warning:Video clip contains explicit and graphic language.)
by Bill McMillan
Feeling frustration over the lack of connection we felt with millions of returning veterans, my wife, Kim Shelton, and I had the crazy idea of creating a program called The Welcome Home Project. We wanted to become more involved with veterans and to offer a way for the larger civilian community to actively participate in the return of our soldiers.
To support our work with veterans, we invited author, mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade to bring to the project his genius for working with myth, stories and traumatized communities. Michael joined us as a co-sponsor and facilitator.
On the afternoon of May 22, 2008, twenty three men and women, including five spouses or partners, arrived for a five-day retreat at the Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center in southern Oregon. Each was a veteran or war— Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, or other conflicts — or involved in marriages and partnerships dominated by memories of war.
These veterans came to the retreat with the hope of finding a new way to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). They sought a new way to understand themselves and who they had become. Each of them lived with PTSD. They felt nervous and uncomfortable in the new situation. They faced unknown people, an unfamiliar place, histories of inadequate approaches to PTSD, plus an unusual notion of working with the emotional trauma of war and its aftermath through stories, myths, song, and their own poetry.
Remarkably, they came to this retreat knowing that at the end they would be presenting themselves to the public in a large community “Welcome Home” ceremony. They came to the retreat knowing they would be the subjects of an intensely personal documentary film.
For the next five days, these courageous men and women formed what Michael called a “sudden community;” they began to explore what it means to heal from their experiences of war.
For the next five days, these men and women experienced deep conflicts and dark personal anguish. They experienced a slow coming together of men and women who felt understood and supported as only other veterans can understand and support each other.
The veterans listened to ancient stories about war and healing, and they began to tell their own stories. They listened to each other and began to unfold the beauty that — along with pain — lies at the heart of tragedy. To express this beauty, they wrote deeply personal poetry describing their reality, both in war and at home.
Finally, on Memorial Day 2008, the veterans presented themselves with their poetry, songs and stories to an audience of more than 600 men and women, many veterans themselves, who came to honor and receive these warriors back into the community, to truly welcome them.
This coming together of veterans and the civilian public has been missing in the media coverage of Post Traumatic Stress and the accompanying risks of suicide, divorce, substance abuse, and other expressions of inner torment. Without the wider community becoming open and willing to accept from veterans everything that comes home from war with them, millions of veterans and their families are destined to live in cold isolation, reminded only of the wars they fought, not of the wisdom they now can offer, wisdom the rest of us need.
Kim and I today are editing a feature length documentary film about the 2008 Welcome Home retreat and public ceremony. Here is a powerful clip from Voices of Vets:
(Warning: Film clip contains explicit and graphic language.)
Editor’s Note: Voices of Vets will be distributed to local communities around the U.S. to inspire similar events, greater awareness and a long overdue dialogue between warriors and the civilian public. To support their efforts, you can help by spreading the word, making direct donations to The Welcome Home Project, or introducing the co-sponsors personally to men and women of influence and means who may be interested. You also can become a fan on facebook. For more information, contact Bill McMillan at 541-821-4798.
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Bill McMillan is a licensed MFT who has worked with families, teenagers, substance abuse and trauma for more than twenty years. An active leader with Boys To Men, he has worked in schools in Missouri, Pennsylvania, California, and Oregon. He now devotes himself full-time to working on The Welcome Home Project and veteran’s issues with his wife, Kim Shelton. |
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P.S. Another worthy program for veterans by some MKP members is – is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
