Special Veterans Day Message

In April 2007, I came home from Iraq, physically the same guy—but in every other way? Not a chance. The next six weeks were spent mostly in a bar, living out what I’d missed, numbing what I couldn’t understand. I was lost. And when I tried to fit back into civilian life, it just didn’t click. Job, apartment, relationship—it all felt wrong.

Eventually, I hit bottom. But here’s the thing—when a fellow veteran jumped into the hole with me, not to pull me out but to sit beside me and say, I know the way out. I’ve been here too, that’s when things started to change. It wasn’t a doctor or a professional. It was a friend who’d been through the same battles.

Veterans, we come back to a world that doesn’t always make sense to us, a battlefield of sorts. This time, though, the holes are different—they’re marital, emotional, financial, and sometimes we’re stuck in them alone.

Read more here .