At the Vietnam Memorial in DC, 72 black granite panels cut deep into the earth. On them are the names of 58,320 Americans who were killed during the 20 year span that American soldiers were in Vietnam. Most of the time, we count war casualties as deaths. But for those who survive, there is the hidden casualty of trauma.
On this Veteran’s Day, I am republishing this tribute to my father, a Vietnam veteran and the enduring legacy of the insanity of war.
Originally published Oct 10, 2021. (Edited)
My father lives on a small farm in Northern Minnesota where he grows tomatoes and experiments with varieties of seeds from his travels. He raised chickens until last month when an aerie of eagles took every last one. I visited him last week for the first time in two years. “Bring some old clothes,” he told me. “We’ll be out in the fields.”
When I was a kid, when my parents were still together, my Dad would come home from work, lace up his army boots and head out to his garden. He was out there long after dark, heaving his weight onto the shoulder of a shovel and turning over endless rows of earth. To me, the garden was onerous. To him, it was a place where he could escape his ghosts.
PTSD wasn’t introduced into the medical lexicon until 1980 but it was present in our house for as long as I can remember. My father’s flashbacks were so vivid that he would not know if he was in Vietnam under mortar fire or at home with his family. He never told me or my siblings any of this, but I felt it. I remember a persistent uneasy feeling in my body. Like my father hiding in his garden, I found my own ways to escape the discomfort, mostly through books.
“When it’s painful to be ourselves, we often seek relief by withdrawing, numbing out or, by reaching for something that will make us feel alive, complete, or whole,” says Dr. Gabor Maté. Maté is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician, author and subject of the recent film The Wisdom of Trauma. “We can be addicted to anything.” Maté believes that all addiction stems from trauma. Trauma isn’t relegated to combat experiences like my father’s. Trauma, which is Greek for wound, stems from the stresses of our fractured society, income insecurity, political turmoil, and climate change. These past two years have contributed to a global epidemic of trauma which shows up in a host of ways: depression, anxiety, autoimmune disorders, violence, ADHD, addiction and suicide. “Trauma isn’t what happens to you,” Mate says. “It is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. It is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling and more defended.” Trauma is passed from parent to child. When adults are stressed, they are unable to provide the secure attachment that children need to develop. Like so many of us, I was born into trauma.
I believe pleasure has the ability to heal our trauma. Pleasure doesn’t erase the pain, so much as it embraces it and metabolizes it into a sense of connection to oneself, to others and to the planet. Pleasure isn’t a behavior, it more like a posture, a way of approaching the world, one that requires attention and practice. Pleasure demands gratitude and, in turn, it gives us a feeling of wholeness, a sense that everything is perfectly imperfect.
When I was in high school, the garden was no longer enough to contain my father’s pain. Afraid that he would hurt someone he loved, he checked himself into the VA Hospital. Among other veterans, he was able to talk openly about the secrets he had been guarding. He worked with different medications and modalities until he found a balance that worked for him. A few years later, he remarried and he and his wife bought 40 acres of land where he could farm and raise animals. “There is a wisdom in trauma,” Maté says, “when we realize that our traumatic responses are not ourselves. And we can work them through, and thus, become ourselves.”
I had never seen my father’s farm at harvest time. The summer’s drought had forced an early turn of the leaves, but the fields were still chlorophyll green. After breakfast, my father put on his flannel shirt and pulled a pair of old boots out of the closet. The canvas was faded by still distinctly army green. Five decades of wear and the leather still held its shape.
“Are those the boots you wore in Vietnam?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re built to last. And look at this,” he said. He reached inside and pulled out a nylon mesh liner. “This is original, too. It’ll prevent a metal spike from penetrating your foot.”
The boots were a perfect metaphor for my father. The Vietnam War isn’t some distant memory for him. It is with him when he tills the soil, plants seeds and coaxes the shoots from the ground. I asked him if he would change anything about his life. “There’s no going back,” he said as we cut ripe tomatoes off their vines. “We can only change the future.” He pointed to a bean that was nearly two feet long, a variety he found in Cambodia. “I get an unbelievable amount of pleasure out here,” he said. “There is always a chance to create something new.” At 83 years old, he still has night terrors but he speaks freely about them and he gets help when they persist. He still needs to be called in for dinner sometimes but he’s got a lot of other pleasures he wants to pursue. He’s an avid fisherman and he and his wife love to travel and ballroom dance. I definitely inherited some of his trauma and, like my father, I’m grateful for the wisdom that accompanies it.
How does the legacy of war affect you and your family? I would love to hear from you.
Thanks for sharing this xoxo
Thanks for sharing this. xo