Give an Hour - Free mental health counseling to US Military personnel and families

Give an Hour is a non-profit organization asking mental health professionals nationwide to literally give an hour of their time each week to provide free mental health services to military personnel and their families.

This is 'news' to me, something I hadn't heard about yet, and I wanted to do my small part in helping to promote it as a resource. I'd like to give a shout out to visit their website to learn more about Give an Hour. The material and informtion at their website is well organized and self-explanatory.

I learned of Give an Hour in reading at diary at Daily Kos - jimstaro, a member of Veterans for Peace, that also has a brief video Helping warriors find peace of mind , which gives a bit of explanation about the concept of the organization, Give an Hour. The video features U.S. Army Col. James Bradley, Chief of Pyschiatry, at Walter Reed Medical Center making the statement that 'really what we are dealing with is normal reactions to abnormal circumstances'. the video also features Dr. Barbara Romberg, Founder Give an Hour. It is useful to both take a look at the short video, and then take a longer look at the Give an Hour website for additional and concrete information.

At a more local level, here in Washington state, I recently encountered a non-profit organization, The Soldiers Project Northwest, which is a group of mental health care providers in Washington is offering free help to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families who either can’t or don’t want to go through traditional channels for care. The Soldiers Project Northwest is a chapter of and modeled after a similar effort in Los Angeles, The Soldiers Project, where volunteer therapists since 2004 have seen clients without charge for help with their war-related problems.
(Read more at article, A New Source of Mental Health Care, for veterans in Tacoma News Tribune)


At a personal experience level, my son-in-law is deployed in Iraq again, in his second 15 month 'stop-loss' extended deployment. He will have 30 months in Iraq, but it is a higher number of months that he is away from his family as there is a 3 month lead in before he deploys, where he is away from his family training 'down-field' before he deploys. And then even when he is home, there is the ongoing training with a 'down-field' month of training about every quarter.

So overall he will have been absent from his family (wife and three children - my daughter and grandchildren) for about 40 months or more of 72 months since the war in Iraq was initiated. In this second deployment he is struggling with the fullness of the reality of it all - combat, extended absence from his family. My daughter is also having a more difficult time with him gone in this deployment. These long absences take their toll on both of them.

Their marriage continues to stand strong, but the absence is getting to both of them. The little ones, who are now 6 and 7 were only 1 and 2 when he left for the first deployment, so for most of their formative years, he has been gone in deployments in Iraq. He has stated how aware he has become of how much of their growing up years he has missed. These are years he and they can never get back. (As an aside, I have to question how the supposed 'family values' party can call their values 'family values' when they support this war and the impact it has on families on all sides.)

I also well remembered the Vietnam era, retuning troops with PTSD phenomenon, which actually gave us the name PTSD - previously named Battle Fatique or Soldier's Heart (see Frontline 'The Soldier's Heart'). I thought our country also remembered, and that what is well known in the professional mental health industry would have mental health therapists stepping up to the plate, knowing what we could expect with returning troops. I rather thought, perhaps erroneously, it was kind of a 'civilian duty' during time of war.

I'm so pleased to see the formations of these kinds of organizations reaching out to offer professional therapy help to military and their families

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Washington state Reps Reichert, Hastings, McMorris vote no on troop withdrawal; still with the President's stay the course failed Iraq war policies

"We have to allow the professionals to do their job," Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., said, referring to the commanders.

Reichert joined Washington's two other Republican House members, Doc Hastings and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, in voting against setting a withdrawal deadline. (quoted from Seattle PI article)

Reading the article at the Seattle PI today, and I guess I really am amazed that our Washington state Republican Representatives seem to have moved not an iota from their position of sustaining the daily scores of our U.S. troops in Iraq. Didn't they get the message that June was the deadliest month for the deaths of soldiers from Fort Lewis?

Newshour with Jim Lehrer episode (link) 'Fort Lewis Memorializes Fallen Soldiers From Iraq War' - Lee Hochberg, Correspondent;

'Last month was the deadliest month of the war for Washington state's Fort Lewis, the nation's third-largest Army post. Twenty soldiers from the post lost their lives in Iraq. In June, there have already been 13 more deaths, 30 percent of all the U.S. military deaths in Iraq this month.'

The link provides the interview, the video, and I feel so humbled as the names of each are remembered and memorialized.
photo is the weekly vigil held every Tuesday at the Federal Building in Seattle, WA
the poppies and ribbons carry the names of the soldiers connected to Washington state


What and how is this in the 'support the troops' meme readily used by Republicans whenever any Democratic legislation is introduced.

My son-in-law goes back to Iraq for his second 'stop-lossed', 'extended' deployment in a few months. He, along with all the other troops deploying right now are 'automatically stop-lossed' and 'extended' to serve 15 month deployments before their boots ever touch the ground in Iraq. He tells us he is being told to let the family know it could be 18 months or longer. It's a good guess that once he and his unit get to Iraq, another stop loss will be added to lengthen the tour - once they are there, in Iraq, already, and can't do a thing about it.

I'm real tired of the politics governing the lives of all our young servicemen and women. Their graves are not marked Republican or Democratic - they are smote by the hand of this Administration who would rather engage in partisan power plays than react to the reality that has become the failed policies of Iraq occupation/war. The external and internal wounds of returning troops are not labeled Republican or Democratic wounds - they are wounds - many untreated and untreatable. The anxieties of the families of the troops, who are among the first military families to experience multiple deployments of their loved ones, may have some things to say to both parties - Republican or Democratic. It might sound like this 'Enough is Enough' in sound decibles from respectful disagreement to shouting from the rooftops.

I don't favor Democratic Congress over Republican Congress, but I do favor helping both parties find the internal courage to 'get real' about our troops and the Iraq war. You are destroying our families with this nonsense about an 'all volunteer military' in the face of this first time phenomenon of repeat combat deployments, two, three, four, five and more times. No other war, no other warriors, no other military families have faced this kind of warfare with a 'forced volunteer' military doing multiple combat deployments in modern times; I'd hazard to say in the history of the United States of America.




Seattle PI article; Washington's House Democrats vote for pullout

By CHARLES POPE P-I WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WASHINGTON -- Embracing national frustration rather than President Bush's plea for patience, Washington state's House Democrats joined their party members in declaring the strategy in Iraq unworkable.

All six House Democrats from Washington voted yes on a 223-201 party-line vote for legislation that would require U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq within 120 days after the measure becomes law. The state's three Republicans opposed the bill.

The vote came only hours after the White House released an interim report detailing unsatisfactory results by Baghdad to reconcile political differences and improve security.

'If the president can find progress in this report, he has a different set of standards than I do,' Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., said, echoing a theme voiced by many Democrats during the daylong debate.

The showdown in the House was the first of a series of Iraq-related votes Democratic leaders have planned to put pressure on Bush and Republicans to change what they insist is a doomed course in Iraq. The goal, they say, is that continued dark news from Iraq along with pressure from the approaching 2008 election campaign will begin to break down Republican opposition.

On Wednesday, McDermott was even more blunt in a speech speech from the House floor. "There is no credibility left in this administration. None," he said. "This White House cannot whitewash the truth any longer. The American people are exasperated by a commander in chief who is blind to what's happening in Iraq. U.S. soldiers have not failed, but this president has. U.S. commanders have not failed, but this administration has."

On that point the public seems to agree. Only 23 percent of people contacted in a July 2 poll by CBS News approved of the job Bush was doing in Iraq.

Republicans dismissed the House measure as a political ploy that would take authority from military commanders for decisions about troop levels and priorities. They also said that it's too early to form hard judgments about the success or failure of Bush's "surge" strategy, which put about 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq.

"We have to allow the professionals to do their job," Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., said, referring to the commanders.

Reichert joined Washington's two other Republican House members, Doc Hastings and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, in voting against setting a withdrawal deadline.

Reichert said he would be willing to defy the White House if he determines the surge policy is flawed. That point has not arrived, he said, adding that he would like to see quicker progress. "A majority of Americans want to see this war end. I'm one of them."

The House debate, however, was defined by its sharp edges.

read more at Seattle PI article Washington's House Democrats vote for pullout: "Washington's House Democrats vote for pullout


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Tip Toeing thru the tulips this year!

Those first tulip bulbs I planted last Fall came up this spring! I'm excited. I know lots of people grow tulips, but these are my very first, where I planted the bulbs and watched expectantly in the spring for them to pop their shoots up out of the cold ground. Woo hoo - I have tulips.

Now I'm inspired to want to make a 'tulip garden', but it will be more like a bed of tulips. Just not enough space on our home plot to create my vision of lavender fields, tulip fields and daffodil fields. We lived in Mount Vernon, and Samish Island in Skagit county, Washington (state), so I got spoiled seeing the daffodil and tulip fields every year. I loved our time living in Skagit county.

Then a few years ago, we paid a visit to Port Angeles, Sequim, Hurricane Ridge (Washington state)and got my first glimpse of lavender fields a bloom. Oh, how I would love to have my own lavender field. I have planted lavender in my beds, and I have only just begun, but our home plot is just not anywhere large enough to permit me to create an illusion of any kind of blooming 'field'.

This year though, we had a speaking engagement in Eastern Washington, so we took a trip via the White Pass route. It was perfect timing, and I had no idea that Mossy Rock (Washington state)has a nursery growing fields and fields of tulips. So now I've found a mini version of Mount Vernon closer to my backyard and will make an annual trip in April to Mossy Rock to see the daffodil and tulip fields in bloom.

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