I had a heck of a day yesterday, the last school day before Easter break.  A series of diverse people wanted to talk privately with me to process some feelings.  One was an Iraq veteran who is my student, a really great guy who served on a Marine bomb squad defusing IED's in the combat zone there in 2004.  He lost a brother in arms who came back with PTSD.  The brother recently committed suicide by stepping out in front of a train.  

My student spoke about it in a class presentation to the college death and dying class I teach and cried privately about it when he spoke more with me about it after class.  He knows I'm a member here of DS PTSD.  I was really honored he would be so vulnerable with me as to allow himself to cry, because he's as tough as nails.  He's in training right now to be a state trooper.

Then another person came to speak to me in a two hour meeting arranged for the afternoon.  She drove from an hour away just to talk to me.  She's from one of the churches where I was guest speaker a Sunday ago.  The topic was how stressed out she is with her life right now as a social worker and a mom.  I don't have kids, but we had a good talk about what I've learned on this site here at DS PTSD about stress, and by the end of our long conversation we were laughing.  She and her husband are a super couple in that church and really great parents so I hope I was able to lend a little support.  

And that wasn't all.  There were a couple of unscheduled chats during the day with folks as I tied up loose ends before school let out for the Easter holiday.  I got to thank the lady who makes sandwiches for me in the cafeteria.  She saw me having a bad day a while ago, a day when a student who got an F was abusive.   I got support here on DS PTSD to get me through drawing a boundary with him, and she supported me, too, telling me she'd pray for me.  So yesterday I got to tell her it had all worked out, and that I was grateful she had noticed my worry and had shown her support like that.  

I got to chat about baseball with a coworker who just beat cancer--pancreatic cancer.  It was nice to talk about baseball instead of chemo with him.  He knows I think his health is a miracle.  I also got to chat with a co-worker who brought his class into mine yesterday to watch that Marine Iraq veteran student of mine who cried after class give a class presentation in my class.  I'm kind of a lone ranger and a hermit who minds his own business so as to manage teaching with daily flashbacks from PTSD, so it was really nice of him to support me and my Marine Iraq veteran student by joining my class like that.   Especially since during the presentation my Marine Iraq veteran student spoke about PTSD and his friend's recent suicide so as to educate the group on the need to support people in their PTSD recovery and what we do here at DS PTSD.

On the way out of the building leaving school, I ran into a student I had last year, someone I hadn't seen in a long time.  We had a nice exchange there, too.

I don't know, it just seemed like a magical day somehow.  You know how there are days when things just seem to go wrong no matter what you do?  Well, this was the opposite, a day when things just went right time after time all day.  So right that by the time I got back home alone to my little apartment I was giddy with gratitude.  I thought I'd have to post my gratitude on the board to make it official that I thank the universe for a day like that.  I've gotten a lot of support from here in the last few weeks, for carrying on with my work like when I took my students to a field trip to the Holocaust museum last week and so many posts of support were offered here.  That kind of support made yesterday's magic happen.

I was just glad that having your support to be "out of the closet" at school with my own PTSD recovery.  I took some serious flak about being "out of the closet" about my PTSD recovery from the tenure and promotion committee last year.  They called me in for a very confrontational interview during which they falsely said that my mention in class of the problem of PTSD to prevent veterans' suicide was "anti-veteran."  That was an outrageous accusation exactly to the opposite of what my class is all about, so unlike the usual nonsense from academics that I allow to roll off my back, that hurt, it was a real stab in the back.  

The promotion and tenure committee made it clear, too, that now because I spoke about PTSD in class and "polarized" my classes about it.  I'd pay the price and most likely never be promoted to full professor or to professor emeritus when I retire soon. Advancement in my career was over.  They put on the record in writing that my talking about PTSD in class gave them "grave concern."  The college vice president told me not to talk about PTSD and suicide prevention in death and dying class when I teach it, just to assign the topic as an extra credit option for homework.  I really wondered, then, if I'd taken the right approach ever saying I belonged to DS PTSD.  I really wondered whether it would not have been better for me to shut up and stay in the closet about PTSD and avoid talking about suicide prevention in my college death and dying courses every time that textbook chapter came up in every course every semester.  Shutting up is what I'd done for 5 years until "coming out" last year for the first time.  I'm not the hero type.

So I'm glad I withstood that kind of false attack stabbing me in the back about coming out about PTSD last year so that yesterday's healing moments could happen about PTSD in class.  It vindicated my coming "out of the closet" about my own PTSD.  I'll still never get another promotion at my college from my college's tenure and promotion committee, I know.  But though "coming out" about my PTSD at school got me stuck with a stigma, it also created a chance for this Iraq veteran student to have a place to present about PTSD and a real veteran brother's suicide in class.  Despite being lied about by colleagues who aren't veterans themselves who spread their opinion around my college that I was "anti-veteran" because I spoke in class about veteran PTSD, it allowed a real veteran to shed a tear with me after class about his brother in arms's PTSD suicide.

Thank you for helping me stand the stigma put on me by my college promotion and tenure committee last year to be there for this veteran about PTSD now.  It doesn't make it right that after coming out about my PTSD recovery stigma is keeping me from getting a promotion but it wasn't all for nothing.  It was for veteran students like him.  I won't ever get a salary raise from a promotion, but that's a reward more than money.

Hope you're reaping the rewards of a good day yourselves, my DS PTSD friends.  Now I' off to do my taxes.