wait to get home because then everything is going to be nor- mal. … And then you get home, and you realize, of course, that nothing is ever going to be the way it was before. … That’s when some problems started. We had really tried to [head] things off at the pass, and we thought we were doing a good job, but then … Matt told me that he felt like he needed to walk his path on his own, and that really hit me like a big punch in the stomach because I just didn’t understand. … “Don’t you love me?” [I asked.] “I love you so much.” And his answer was, “Of course, I love you. I love you
very much, but I’m at a point where I think I have to do this on my own.” And so I went out and got a little apartment. … A lot of people might see it as a failure. But we still see it as a success story because we are still an incredible team. … I just want him to be and feel as whole and happy as he possibly can in his life. When he first told me that he wanted to go on his own, I started doing some research on the Internet to see if there were other people out there that were in the same position [and I] found hun- dreds, if not thousands, of other people in the same situa- tion. … Something really needs to be done for our families to help them through this process. There’s no instruction booklet on how you move for-
ward. There’s nothing that talks about how your relation- ship can change from that of husband and wife to that of patient and caregiver. It can happen before you know it. … There are some big holes in some areas that I think
could really be filled either by the government, by private organizations, or by both, where we can address some of the more unpopular topics for our families and our caregivers to help our families have a better chance of success because I don’t want to … find more people who are in our situation. They’ve given too much already. I think we have to do everything we possibly can to keep the families together. PETTY OFFICER 3rd CLASS BENJAMIN HOST, USN-RET.: … In September 2004, I was in a convoy in Fallujah [Iraq] and I was in a serious accident. I broke the right front temporal area of my skull, and I broke an artery in my tem- poral bone. I had severe bleeding on my brain, and I was just very, very blessed to have my guys be able to get me to a field hospital. [In my recovery] I deal with things on a regular basis that I notice, but you’ve never met me before. You don’t
ON THE WEB
If you didn’t get the chance to attend the 2012 Warrior- Family Symposium, don’t worry. Find an event recap, video footage of the panels and keynote speakers, a list of sponsors, the complete transcript, and more on MOAA’s Web Base at
www.moaa.org/wfs.
Event Sponsors
MOAA thanks all who participated in its sixth annual military symposium Sept. 13 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washing- ton, D.C. Special thanks go to the event’s corporate sponsors, without whom the symposium would not have been possible. Sponsors for the 2012 Warrior-Family Sym- posium include executive sponsor USAA; patron sponsors Health Net, Lockheed Martin Corp., and TriWest Healthcare Alliance; gold sponsors EADS North America, Express Scripts, Humana, Northrop Grumman, and U.S. Family Health Plan; silver sponsor Cubic Corp.; champion sponsor Oshkosh Defense; continental breakfast sponsor American Physical Therapy Association; lunch sponsor Stra- tegic Resources Inc.; exhibitor sponsor Delta Den- tal; and media sponsor
Military.com.
know what I’m struggling with. I seem normal to you, and that’s a good thing, but in some things it’s not. … When we come back and we’re wounded … we don’t
have the ability mentally to handle a lot of the struggles and [to be] setting up appointments and making sure we meet the deadlines. So to have a little bit of assis- tance in those areas, I feel would be a great thing for a lot of veterans. And I’ve been blessed my whole time. I love the mili-
tary, and I’m loving life after the military, and I would like to do my best to help other people coming out of the military to that same place because there are a lot of people hurting who need help. COL. KAREN T. MALEBRANCHE, USA-RET.: ... One of the things that I noticed is we have liaisons at these different facilities ... to help you with different appointments and things where we’ve been putting out. We have been doing a lot more together with DoD and VA than we ever had. ... The VA [is] probably a little bit more out there. ... The Vet Centers [and] the Readjustment Counseling Centers, those are now over 200 [locations], and that’s been in the last year. So I think we are doing better with those efforts. JOHN CAMPBELL: … You’re hearing today ... true stories about what they’ve done, how they’ve overcome the hard- ships, the difficulties that they have, and this is just a sam- ple of thousands of young men and women who are coming out today who are really remarkable. They are the next “greatest generation,” and … we have
to do everything we possibly can to make sure they have as good an opportunity as anybody does to succeed. … We’re all in this together.
MO NOVEMBER 2012 MILITARY OFFICER 65
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