Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
I'm safe because it's happening an hour and a half away, but on Wednesday night I went to a concert where an active shooter is shooting up a synagogue right now. He killed 8 people.
It reminds me again, as did the pipe bombs this week in the States, of when normal life was interrupted for me on a Saturday with my buddies when I was an 11 year old kid in Uruguay as we were going to go bowling. Two blocks away from the bowling alley, it went up in an explosion from a bomb placed by Tupamaro terrorists.
The bombing was meant to be a statement against US imperialism, since bowling is a North American sport. Ironically, the only person to die in the bombing was a member of the proletariat, the janitor. He was pinned in the wreckage as he agonized toward his death for hours. We kids got to hear his screams.
It was my second such experience in two years in Uruguay's Tupamaro War, the first being when my family's car was bombed with us in it when we were going out for ice cream when I was 9 years old. My head snapped back and hit the car's metal frame so hard that I still have a dent creasing the back of my skull bone.
Going bowling, going out for ice cream, these things were interrupted for me by traumatic violence. Now seeing these folks in Pittsbugth getting shot going to worship services on a Saturday in a place where I was just this past Wednesday triggers those memories.
Whatever traumatic violence it is, whether bombings and shootings or sexual assaults or car wrecks, it always pierces right through a peaceful day with shock, tragedy, grief, and pain, doesn't it?
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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Once again I've had a fever today. I'm not going to the hospital because that's a huge waste of time but I did schedule a dr appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
It was totally luck, because I moved to another town and just got his name out of a phone book. But he did counseling on the side for the general public after working all day every day at the VA with soldier combat veterans. He was perfect for me in every way. I only got to have him for 3 years because work required me to move away again to another city, but he changed my life for the better.
I really hope everyone can get a counselor like him, at least once. It makes a difference when a counselor is specifically trained for PTSD counseling.
Last year my son was down at CMU, (although I highly doubt that he even noticed it).
Needlesstosay, I'm triggered too. I just deleted a journal about it.
I love my hometown, but it's also racist, sexist, and has religious issues up to my eyeballs. (Nothing quite like meeting people who outright admitted to being part of the KKK and willing to tell me all about it.)
Hate to say it, but I'm glad that I didn't raise my own kids there.
Such a past horrible thing to have happened....
i'm sorry you are so triggered...
Take gentle care of yourself today.
Police haven't officially said how many have died yet.
Four police hurt, none reported to be life threatening.
***bad day, bad day, bad day***
I'm lucky that the folks who took over Uruguay in democracy in 1985 set up a truth commission for trauma survivors like me. When they got the facts on the record, I was able to make a timeline for my book about the time period I grew up then.
I was even able to pinpoint the date when I was tortured, December 8th, 1973, and what was going on with the military that day that made them go do a random arrest sweep that I was caught up in. Wow, was that healing to me, to know is was at once senseless but that there was a reason, however wack.
And then the support group meetings I got to be part of down there in Uruguay with other torture survivors meant everything. Plus, when the Uruguayan president tried to pardon the dictator whose army tortured us, I got to march that day in a spontaneous NO demonstration. It was 50,000 strong and made up of those us who had survived torture. It forced referendums that overturned that pardon. The dictator died in jail where he belonged after his fair trial instead.
It's so different there to here in the USA, in a USA society that's not honestly addressing these attacks on its innocents. Not being validated, as you say being forgotten, is the worst. That's why I try to give back by coming here, because I got so much validation in Uruguay and from the response to my book on it afterward. Plus the validation I get back here from you means so much to me here at DS PTSD, too, that never ends.
By the way, tonight I just got back from my town's annual NAACP meeting. I sat at the table with my town's rabbi and with the keynote speaker, who was the only pastor who survived the massacre at the Mother Emmanuel AME church in South Carolina.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting
Listening to their chat, overhearing the South Carolina pastor comforting the rabbi, made me cry, I won't lie. But it also made me determined to come back to DS PTSD and keep our support for each other going here. Much support to you, patti and Loo and all of my good DS PTSD friends.