I like working with soldiers. I haven’t served myself, at least in this life. But I know many who have, and I’ve worked with many more. Sometimes the scars of war are readily visible. Most of the time they are not. I’ve seen all the visible scars. Broken bones, TBI’s, tinnitus, missing limbs, and the ever-nebulous and so profoundly impactful, PTSD – to name a few. These humans have seen and experienced the worst of humanity (and possibly themselves) and somehow return “Home.” What and who they return home to and how they are received are my place of interest. I “see” what many might call the invisible scars and the alchemy of the seen and unseen.
Somewhere in the depths of my own journey, someone recommended Martin Prechtel’s, The Smell of Rain on Dust. It’s a book, a story really, about grief. He’s a beautiful writer who makes pages of paper come to life. He has a chapter on war and coming Home from war that I’ve shared below. When I first read this chapter, I had an immediate knowing of oh yes, this is who you are and why you are here. I felt at Home.
The essence of the story is that war, when treated as a “necessary sacrifice for the advancement of culture”, does not make space for grief.
The greatest loss of all from war is one that is only rarely properly grieved: the loss of the intact soul of the soldier who kills. For once he kills and cannot be allowed grief for the one he has killed, the soldier himself is inundated by the ungrieved ghost of whomsoever he has killed, or whatever landscape of culture in whose destruction he or she has contributed. The solder is then unable to grieve the evaporation of his previous self and, by the spiritual physics of war’s bad policy with grief, begins to kill more to feed the hunger of the last ungrieved loss.
And the families and their lineages inherit these ungrieved losses.
You see, to give a soldier a lot of adulation for having killed what he or she was told to kill will be considered as praise, but this in no way addresses the reality of the amount of grief for the person they’ve killed, or the grief for the person they used to be, lost by becoming a killer necessary to bring a man or woman truly home from war. Therapy, they say, should “fix” it, but therapy is only triage to keep people functioning in the “front lines” as workers in a culture that continues immersed in the insanity of this syndrome of “curing things by force.”
Prechtel offers a different possibility of what welcoming soldiers home might look like. Before a solider comes back to “civilization” they are met by a gatekeeper – a warrior priest or priestess that they become bonded to as the losses of war for that soldier are properly grieved and the ungrieved souls hopefully put to rest by the process. And after a time, this soldier will be welcomed back into “civilian” life with a place that is fitting for who they have returned as. Not for who they left for war as.
Perhaps it’s idyllic to imagine this as a possibility, especially with the sheer volume of soldiers on our planet now. Our veterans’ programs offer what they can in the face of the structures they operate out of. I think we can do better. I consider myself to be some version of a warrior priestess. And while I don’t have the capacity or desire to be bonded to soldiers returning home as Prechtel offers, I do have the capacity to be a gatekeeper, meet soldiers where they are at, and help tend the lost souls. I do have the capacity to listen to the stories, told or untold with words or without. Because the body holds the stories. All I do is listen with a different set of ears.
I am not the only one with this soul gift. It’s going to take many of us to really meet soldiers at the threshold of Home. You might ask, if you’ve never been to war, how can you really understand? I’ve certainly asked myself this question. All I can say is that there is a resonance, a knowing, in my blood and bones that is not of this life perhaps. My training in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy supports me in orienting to the physical/emotional effects and my training in Internal Family Systems supports me in orienting to the mental/emotional effects. My soul orients me to much deeper levels. Come sit with me, I offer.
And so today, I hold space for all those who have served and are actively serving in any military. You are seen. And you are received as precisely who you are in this moment. And there are hands and hearts waiting for you when you return Home. May you find them.
I hold a free weekly soldier’s clinic. If you know of anyone who would benefit from this kind of tending, please send them to me. Send them Home.
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