Military Trauma

A short story from my Medical School days.

A brutal ex-assassin soldier. A gentle monk. Both unprepared for each other. Their forbidden love—raw, cathartic and devastating. Ex-Command weapon Elias was trained to kill, not to feel. After a failed mission leaves him severely wounded, he finds refuge in a forgotten monastery tucked beyond Command’s reach. But mercy isn’t part of his programming. Brother Lorne—gentle, devout and disarmingly human—unravels everything he thought he knew about silence, obedience, and desire. This is not a love story. This is what comes after the fire. Sanctum is a dark M/M dystopian military man ...

No matter what you've been through, you don't have to sit in the darkness – discover how you can heal, and not only survive, but thrive. Up to 20% of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan experience symptoms of PTSD each year. The same is true for 12% of Gulf War veterans and 15% of those who served in the Vietnam War.

A brutal mission. A dangerous prisoner. A bond forged in fire. Enemies by duty. Lovers by defiance. In the ashes of a broken war, Lieutenant Tom Sayer is assigned a final task: escort a volatile prisoner across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Mace—codenamed "Monkey"—is a government-forged weapon of war. Controlled by voice, caged by chains, haunted by what he’s done. Tom wears the cloth of faith. Mace wears the scars of command. But when survival becomes shared, lines begin to blur. What begins as obedience becomes obsession. What begins as penance becomes rebellion. And love—raw, ...

June 1967. Joseph Ward watches his nineteen-year-old son board a bus to Fort Polk, Louisiana. It's the last time he'll see Daniel as a boy. For the next nineteen months, Joseph fights a war from his driveway in Kokomo, Indiana—checking the mailbox twice daily, watching Walter Cronkite count casualties, drinking alone in the basement while his son screams through nightmares eight thousand miles away. This is not another soldier's story. This is the war nobody writes about: the fathers who stood helpless while their sons walked into the jungle. The mothers who slept in empty bedrooms. The ...

The Combat Trauma Healing Manual provides spiritual tools for those who struggle with Combat Trauma, PTSD and TBI that combine insights from the medical and psychiatric communities with the timeless principles of God’s Word. It is a workbook best used in a group setting for support and encouragement.

After losing her husband to a terrorist attack in the Middle East, Tessa West is left to raise their daughter alone, clinging to the memory of a love that was supposed to last a lifetime. Haunted by a battlefield promise and his own scars, Kasen Monroe has spent years protecting Tessa and her daughter from the shadows, never believing he's worthy of the life his best friend left behind, but feeling guilty for wanting it anyway. In this slow burn romance of second chances, two broken souls must learn that opening their hearts to a new future isn't a betrayal of the past, but a beautiful way ...

November 1967. Central Highlands, Vietnam. Six men walk into the jungle on a routine patrol. None of them will come back the same. Sergeant Hargrove carries the weight of a brother who came home in a box. Jefferson walks point, running from a secret he's never told anyone. Delacroix reads the jungle like his Louisiana bayou, counting the days until he sees his wife again. Chen carries the radio and the unbearable weight of coordinates that turn men into smoke. Kowalski is nineteen, writing letters to a girl in a yellow dress, terrified of becoming what the war needs him to be. And Tran, the...

In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life. Seamlessly combining important psychological work and brilliant literary...

In 1978, a VA hospital clerk named Thomas Crane made a discovery that would change everything. While processing the personal effects of James "Rabbit" Morrison—a Vietnam veteran who had died alone in Richmond's VA hospital—Crane found something extraordinary: forty-seven letters that had been written but never sent. These weren't ordinary letters. Hidden in Morrison's footlocker were confessions that five soldiers from Firebase Charlie had carried in secret for a decade. Letters to fiancées explaining why gentle farm boys had become efficient killers. Letters to parents confessing to ...

The groundbreaking work on trauma that remains a “classic for our generation” (Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score) Trauma and Recovery is the foundational text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a political frame, psychiatrist...

David W. Powell enlisted for a tour of duty in April 1966 with the US Marines after receiving an imminent draft notice. Believing he would be able to leverage his existing skills as a computer programmer, he never thought all they would see on his resume was his Karate expertise. Even less that he would wind up serving as a Rocket man in the jungles of Da Nang and Chu Lai for a 13 month tour in hell. David's journey from naive civilian to battle-hardened combat veteran shows us all how fragile our humanity really is.

A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM. A SECRET THAT REFUSED TO LET HIM DIE. Michael “Mick” Delaney was supposed to be another name on a casualty list. Another body pulled from the jungle. Another flag folded in silence. Instead, he woke up. Gravely wounded during a catastrophic Vietnam firefight, Delaney survives injuries no man should. Shrapnel that missed his heart by inches. Blood loss that should have ended him in minutes. Organs that should have failed but didn’t. While the war moves on without him, Delaney is quietly removed from the system, rerouted through paperwork he never ...

As I travel in a metal cylinder going about 500 miles per hour, living in hotels, eating strange foods, and meeting hundreds of thousands of emergency responders, I’ve noticed something. Tattoos are increasing on us; including me. I’ve also noticed something else. Many people have little knowledge of the historic correlation between tattoos and mental health. But not just mental health, the many different reasons people have been getting tattoos for thousands of years. Considering this, "Tattoos and Trauma" is a book to help educate others about how tattoos can assist emergency ...

Ty Stone never wanted to be anything but a soldier. While in Afghanistan, an operation under his command goes horribly wrong, ending his military career. Ty is thrust back into civilian life, stuck working as a security guard at a truck stop. To make matters worse, he struggles every day with the demons that followed him home from the war. His new job is routine, even boring, until a young girl is abducted while he’s on duty.

Rich, Bret, Ken, and Josh have dedicated their lives to ensuring that people can grow in the aftermath of trauma, and live great lives — filled with Posttraumatic Growth. This remarkable book harnesses the power of all their experience, and the incredible true stories of combat veterans and military and veteran family members who have transformed loss into gain and pain into purpose.

Tom Murphy is a retired Navy Captain, a combat veteran, an Olmsted Scholar, and served as a U.S. Navy SEAL for 25 years, rising through the ranks to become the Commanding Officer of two different SEAL commands, including the much-publicized SEAL Team Six. This is his story. The Navy SEAL Trident.is one of the proudest military insignia a man can wear. Embark on an extraordinary journey through the life of this U.S. Navy SEAL as he transcends the depths of trauma to explore the essence of spirituality in "Beyond the Trident."

Military sexual trauma impacts thousands of both female and male United States service members every year. In the last decade, those numbers have been recorded and they are on the rise. This book is just one story from one female and her journey from her experience in the military and years of struggle before she found hope and healing.

From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a brilliant re-examination of post-World War II America that looks beyond the victory parades and into the veterans’—and nation’s—unhealed traumas In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and...

"I don't think I've ever read a book that paints such a complex and accurate landscape of what it is like to live with the legacy of trauma as this book does, while offering a comprehensive approach to healing." --from the foreword by Bessel van der Kolk A pioneering researcher gives us a new...