Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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Today I was minding my own business driving to the grocery store here in my town in the USA. Then National Public Radio ran a news story that triggered me about my South American past. Here's the print headline version.
"Grandmothers' president recovers grandson taken away under dictatorship"
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/166359/grandmothers-president-recovers-grandson-taken-away-under-dictatorship
The president of the group called Grandmothers of the Disappeared just found her grandson 36 years after the dictatorship ended. He had been taken from his mom at birth, and his mom had been murdered by guards in her prison soon after he was born.
I'm not being political. It's just that the same dictatorship is the one in which I got my PTSD and daily flashbacks. Hitler's practices in Nazi Germany spread to France, Denmark, Italy, etc.. So, too, Argentina's dictatorship's practices were the same in my homeland of Uruguay as in Brazil and Chile.
I got tortured under the dictatorship in Uruguay on Dec. 8, 1973 and can remember it still. I was an innocent 15 year old pulled off the street by soldiers on patrol on a quiet and sunny Sunday afternoon on the suburban street where I lived, just 4 blocks from my house.
Things have changed in Uruguay wonderfully with peace and civilian rule and I live here 6,000 miles away, so I try hard to put it all behind me. I try to withstand my daily flashbacks from being tortured under the dictatorship without letting them make me angry in the present.
But the dictatorship's abuse is even in the news so much later and in the USA so far away still in the present, today. Bad news from the past over and over for decades like it has been for Germany after Hitler. It comes back in today's news here in the USA, and not just in my flashbacks or my memory or back there in S. America only.
I'm going back there in 3 weeks. It looks like old wounds will be reopened when I visit.
I am so sad. I don't want to sound foreign to you in this, but approachable to be helped as just another friend with PTSD. I certainly will appreciate your help. Any suggestions?
"Grandmothers' president recovers grandson taken away under dictatorship"
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/166359/grandmothers-president-recovers-grandson-taken-away-under-dictatorship
The president of the group called Grandmothers of the Disappeared just found her grandson 36 years after the dictatorship ended. He had been taken from his mom at birth, and his mom had been murdered by guards in her prison soon after he was born.
I'm not being political. It's just that the same dictatorship is the one in which I got my PTSD and daily flashbacks. Hitler's practices in Nazi Germany spread to France, Denmark, Italy, etc.. So, too, Argentina's dictatorship's practices were the same in my homeland of Uruguay as in Brazil and Chile.
I got tortured under the dictatorship in Uruguay on Dec. 8, 1973 and can remember it still. I was an innocent 15 year old pulled off the street by soldiers on patrol on a quiet and sunny Sunday afternoon on the suburban street where I lived, just 4 blocks from my house.
Things have changed in Uruguay wonderfully with peace and civilian rule and I live here 6,000 miles away, so I try hard to put it all behind me. I try to withstand my daily flashbacks from being tortured under the dictatorship without letting them make me angry in the present.
But the dictatorship's abuse is even in the news so much later and in the USA so far away still in the present, today. Bad news from the past over and over for decades like it has been for Germany after Hitler. It comes back in today's news here in the USA, and not just in my flashbacks or my memory or back there in S. America only.
I'm going back there in 3 weeks. It looks like old wounds will be reopened when I visit.
I am so sad. I don't want to sound foreign to you in this, but approachable to be helped as just another friend with PTSD. I certainly will appreciate your help. Any suggestions?
In the meantime, I do keep a journal, and during the trip this time I'll post here like I did on my trip back last July 2013. It's a great kindness to be able to keep in touch here while going back there.