I have been writing lots of articles and my most recent contribution has been to the VA Magazine: https://www.v2mag.com

My time with Shawn back in 2019/2020 changed not only how I understand, care for and navigate the complexity of someone with true PTSD, it also opened my eyes to all of the layers that someone can carry!

It truly was the turning point in my journey of empathy!

Here is my article and I can only hope that I will help others understand as well!

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He Wasn’t Broken in War- He Was Broken Long Before

Not all trauma begins on the battlefield.

Sometimes, it starts in a classroom- when a child hears his father’s crime read out loud like a lesson.

It was a Monday morning and the class had been told to bring in a headline news story from the weekend. He was sitting quietly in his seat when another student stood up to present their news article. It wasn’t just any article. It was about his father- convicted of killing a man. Imagine being that boy, sitting there while your classmates listen, while your teacher nods along, while your world is quietly exposed without your consent. That moment doesn’t just pass. It settles in. It becomes part of how you see yourself.

Before the military, before the deployments, before the war- there was already a fracture.

He grew up in a home where stability wasn’t guaranteed. At one point, he was kicked out and bounced between friends’ couches. The condition for returning home wasn’t healing or reconciliation- it was compliance. Go to church. Do the right things. Say the right words. Belonging, care, love wasn’t offered; it was negotiated.

Even there, he didn’t quite fit.

What should have been a place of grounding became another space where he was labeled as “different,” as a problem, as someone who didn’t quite measure up. When belonging is conditional, it doesn’t heal a wound- it only deepens it.

And still, beneath all of that, he was gentle.

The kind of kid who would stop on his way to school to play with flowers. The kind who noticed butterflies. The kind who wasn’t built for hardness- but was surrounded by it anyway.

That softness was slowly worn down.

By an older brother who believed in “toughening him up.” A brother who mirrored the harshness of the environment they came from. A culture that confused cruelty for strength and called it masculinity. And slowly, piece by piece, that gentleness was pressed down, reshaped, covered over. Not because it was weak- but because it wasn’t protected.

We talk a lot about what war does to people. We talk about PTSD, about combat stress, about the cost of service. And those conversations matter.

But what we don’t talk about enough is this:

The military doesn’t always break people. Sometimes, it finishes what life already started.

By the time he enlisted, he wasn’t a blank slate. He was a young man carrying confusion about identity, about worth, about what it meant to be “like his father.” He was already trying to outrun something he didn’t have words for.

And then came the war.

When we look at veterans and try to understand their struggles, we often draw a straight line from combat to trauma. But for many, that line isn’t straight. It’s layered. Compounded. Built over years of experiences that shaped how they see the world long before they ever put on a uniform.

So when they come home, we ask: What happened over there?

A better question might be:

What happened long before they ever got there?

Because if we want to understand the weight they carry, we have to understand that some of it didn’t come from war.

Some of it came from being a child who never had the chance to feel safe in the first place.