Come Home From War
National Guard members take part in regular gatherings held one, two and three months after their return. She says: “We all shared the same experiences there, and many of us are going through the same struggles. We support each other.”
From Soldier to Grandma Throughout her deployment
in
Iraq, U.S. Army Reserve Lt. Col. Arthurine Jones encouraged her granddaughter to stay strong. But once Jones returned home, the little
the military,” she explains. “When women with children come home from deployment, that’s when the special challenges start.”
There’s another tragic side to this homecoming from dangerous confl icts. Not everyone is coming home as intact as when they left. Retired Army Staff Sgt. Angel Herrera was deployed twice to Afghanistan. During her second tour, the California mother of three was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. Her internal organs were torn apart
has had to form her own support network. “I have a loving family and caring friends who understand where I’m coming from,” she says. “When life gets out of hand, they are just a phone call away.”
Military Parents ADAPT Abigail Gewirtz, associate pro- fessor of family social science at the University of Minnesota, developed a new National Institutes of Health- funded study. It will measure the effectiveness of a parenting program for National Guard families as they cope with the stresses of deployment and reintegration.
Amundson Jones
girl’s emotional dam burst. “Driving home on the expressway, suddenly she starts screaming,” Jones recalls. “I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ and she said, ‘Nana, you were gone for so long.’ She held it inside for so long.” Military moms understand her pain. One of the offi cials helping moms make the transition is Barb O’Reilly, director of women ve terans programs for the Minnesota De part- ment of Veterans’ Affairs. A former lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, O’Reilly com- manded the 147th Personnel Services Battalion in Afghanistan. When she deployed, she left behind a husband and two daughters, ages 4 and 7. As the growing need was recognized, O’Reilly’s position was created this year. “Since 9/11, more and more women have been joining
Herrera Ostendorf
by shrapnel, and she couldn’t walk for months.
Today, Herrera has largely recov- ered. But like many soldiers who have experienced the fi rst-hand rav- ages of battle, she suffers from PTSD. “I got a lot of help with my wounds,” Herrera says. “But my family and I haven’t found a lot of support for the emotional stuff. It’s hard to know where to turn for those services.” While Herrera was recovering at Fort Hood, Texas, she got help for her children, bringing them for a couple of visits to a therapist who charged on a sliding-fee scale. But now she’s back in her rural hometown of Corning, Calif., where her options are limited. Unable to fi nd an offi cial support female veterans and
program for their families in her area, Herrera
“We are hoping to learn an awful lot about child and family resilience,” she says. The After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) study will have 400 participants. For some military moms, however, only time and perspective can help lessen the impact of deployment. But many report they are winning the battle to successfully transition home. Last year, when Minnesota Army National Guard Lt. Col. Christine Ostendorf prepared to deploy to Iraq, the wife and mother wondered if her family could survive the stress of yet another tour.
Then one day while she was out running errands, she recalled a coping mechanism that she’d developed during her fi rst tour. She looked at the big picture, and a sense of calm washed over her. “I realized that in the larger scheme of things, this was really just a blip in the road of life,” she says. “It gave me the confi dence to go into my second deployment knowing that my family and I could eventually come out the other side. And with the help and support of others, we did.”
SEPTEMBER 2011 / NEWSMAX / 9|11: A DECADE LATER 79
AMUNDSON/COURTESY OF SGT. DEBRALEE CRANKSHAW / HERRERA/COURTESY OF ANGEL HERRERA OSTENDORF/COURTESY OF JON ECHTERNACHT HUDSON (WIS.) STAR OBSERVER
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