Chapter 9: Two Antidotes to Pain
If it hasn’t hit you yet, writing about the toughest moments of our lives can stir up a lot of pain.
This chapter is about ways to manage and ease that pain. It's often not possible to bring our stories all the way home until we face the rough feelings connected with them.
The two best ways I’ve found to ease pain are through Touch and Community.
Part of me wishes I had a different answer to give you. Touch and Community are things we can’t provide for ourselves in the same way others can, and that is a vulnerable thing to realize—that sometimes I can't do it alone.
In 2019, when I was writing the first draft of what you’re reading now, I was still under the impression that I could heal myself. I thought I was going to conquer the “disorder” I had been diagnosed with. I was wrong.
I didn’t need to conquer myself. I needed to love and forgive myself. And I wasn’t able to do that fully until I saw love and forgiveness reflected back to me—over and over—through the eyes and touch of people I trusted.
It was the persistent love of the woman who is now my wife, and the vulnerability and integrity of the Veteran community I found, that is now my tribe, that brought me over the finish line. We did it together.
Both gave me the kind of connected touch and deep listening I had been missing since my first deployment. Over time, I trusted them with the most painful stories of my life—the cries of my soul.
The touch I got before, during, and after sharing those stories melted the pain attached to them.
I hadn't just been heard; I had been physically received—with arms of unshakable belonging.
It took me fifteen years to share the full truth of how I was feeling inside. Fifteen years before I allowed outside tenderness in. This project exists to shorten that time for you.
Finding Touch & Community
Touch
Finding sources of agenda-free, safe and connected touch isn’t always easy. But it’s one of the strongest tools I know of to ease emotional and physical suffering.
When touch from someone I trust hasn't been available, I found these things helped:
1. Touch from animals.
Dogs, cats, other pets, and even horses can be sources of safe physical connection. There are many organizations looking to connect Veterans with service animals or that offer opportunities to be on horse ranches or farms. A few examples:
• Ranches
The “Operation We Are Here“ website has a long list of farm opportunities, as well as other resources.
• Service Dogs
And here’s a link to a document that has the contact information for over 50 organizations that work to provide Veterans with Service Dogs:
Organizations that Work to Provide Veterans with Service Dogs
On a personal note, my dog ‘Trucker’ deserves all the efforts I make taking him on different hikes, and keeping his puzzle-toy full of treats. I don't want to imagine a world without dogs.
2. Being held by the land.
Nature sometimes has a way of supporting me that feels like an embrace. Laying on thick clean grass, floating on water, or camping by a stream—these are some of the places that have brought me moments of deep rest. When we find places out in mother nature that are free from threats and make direct contact with the Earth, these spaces can reduce the pain levels in our body in ways that are similar to being held by someone who loves us.
3. Professional human touch.
I’ve also found great support from professional bodyworkers. Not every person I met was a good match. For me it was more important to find someone whose energy felt right than someone who used a specific technique. Some types of bodywork that helped:
• Thai massage and Ayurvedic massage
• Acupuncture
• AcroYoga
• Aquatic Bodywork (like Watsu)
• Platonic Touch Providers (like professional cuddlers)
• TVM Bodywork (Triple-Vagal Method)
• Cranial-Sacral Therapy
Try different methods to see which ones feel best.
Community
When it comes to finding a close community—the most important realization for me has been:
My stories build my community.
Writing about the hardest moments of my life helped me understand who I really was. The more I learned about myself, the more I could share my truth with others. And the more I shared, the easier it became to find my people—the ones who needed the real me to show up.
I was careful about who I shared with. Not everyone needs to know our full story. Some truths are damn vulnerable and meant for those who have earned the right to hear them.
I took it slow. I shared small pieces at first, and I paid attention:
- Did their eyes focus on me, or did they zone out?
- Did they ask questions or change the subject?
- Did they lean in, or sit back glancing at their phone notifications?
Few things hurt like being hit with a polite change in topic after sharing the realities of how we were affected by our Service. Most of us have probably given up on telling our story and gone numb to the rejection of it.
But when I paid attention, I found the right people. I grew closer to them as they grew closer to my truth. As I found my love of life again, they found more of theirs.
If you don’t have a strong community yet—like I didn’t when I started—the story you’ve written so far can help you create it.
I recommend exploring what’s happening in your area. At first, I felt out of place at Veterans’ gatherings, but I kept showing up. Eventually those events helped me learn about other resources that led me to my people.
I encourage you to try out different programs and environments. I personally got the most out of programs that involved outdoor group activities, story sharing, yoga, and solitude in nature. Some examples:
• Project Odyssey (Wounded Warrior Project)
Those organizations accept applications from Veterans living anywhere in the country.
At many of these programs, you’ll have the chance to share parts of your story. The story we’ve been crafting here will help you make the most of that opportunity.
My invitation: Look for people who are ready to hear your full story. Whether it’s a counselor, therapist, Veterans group, romantic partner, or close friend, doesn't matter.
Start with a few sentences. Pay attention. And choose to invest in people who are welcoming home the fully embodied you.
On Homecoming and Belonging
War journalist Sebastian Junger has a short book called Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. It goes into the bonds created during military service, and the longing we can feel post-service for real community.
Reading it opened my eyes to why I missed the closeness of military life—and how to find it in new ways. If you’re interested, check out the podcast and video below to hear directly from him.
A note I kept from the podcast:
People need community. When you take someone out of a platoon—maybe they were in a support unit, maybe they never got shot at, maybe nothing major ever happened—but when you take them out of that close-knit group and put them back into society, they’re gonna struggle. They’re human; we’re wired to be with others. And once we’ve been exposed to that kind of close community and then it's taken away, it’s very hard to maintain psychological health.” — Sebastian Junger, "Behind the Mission podcast #159 - Tribe and Veteran Connectedness
Starting by giving
Finding healthy touch and a sense of tribe wasn’t easy for me, or straightforward.
There were plenty of times where what I needed most was simply to be alone—sitting at home, smoking weed, having a drink, zoning out on a screen. Looking back, I see that those things kept me safe. They kept me from harming myself or someone else.
But they also kept me isolated, and numb.
For years, substances and distractions were my replacements for touch and community. They hid the real issues and, over time, made new ones.
Even now, some days I pull back and isolate. Some days I lean on something to cope. Touch and Community didn’t fix everything. But they cut the pain. With less pain, I don’t need to numb it as much. New habits—like writing and sharing in group council—help me handle my feelings without always relying on screens or substances.
I found my people step by step. Started with one Veterans or community event a year. Then one every six months, then every three months—always giving myself space to recover after.
My plan was simple: “I might not know where my crew is, but I can take steps to find them.”
At first, I didn’t want to talk. I stayed off to the side, letting other guys do all the talking. But as I kept showing up, I realized I wanted something more: I wanted to be around people who could listen to me, too.
That’s when my mentor David passed on what became an important life lesson: Give what I most want to get.
- I wanted people to listen to me, so I listened to them.
- I wanted trust, so I made sure my word was trustworthy.
- I wanted people I felt safe around, so I got clear about my own intentions.
- I wanted competent leaders—so I explored my own strengths and started developing them.
- I wanted my story to be held, so I built the strength to better hold others stories.
If you don’t have the strength or support you need yet, don’t let that keep you down and hiding.
This all takes time. To this day I still remind myself:
• Choose carefully who I invest in and trust.
• Keep showing up.
• Pay attention to who talks and who listens
Too often, I went to the wrong people. Shared my truth with folks who couldn’t handle it. That just made me lonelier.
As I mentioned earlier, you can start by looking out for people who might be open to hearing your story. Before asking for something, try giving them what you want back. If you want judgment-free listening that doesn't come with advice or fixing, then listen to them that way first. It can spark a loop of deeper understanding that leads to a more energizing and authentic connection.
End of Part I, and Moving Forward
We've reached the end of the writing portion of Part 1. Our goal here was to write out an accurate version of "What Happened?" that also honored our inner reality.
Writing everything in first-person strips away interpretations and judgements. This allows our nervous system to reprocess old experiences from a place of clarity rather than distortion
We wrote about what sensations were alive in our body because, what our mind couldn’t handle at the time, our body stored. Having that clear picture of our inner feelings, and sensations is the foundation for everything we will do in later chapters. Where we will create new endings that will allow us to experience the past event again, and take new actions, but this time as our fully resourced self.
This is critical because action is what rewires the nervous system and what changes how we experience life today, in the present. Following the steps of Embodied Wholeness Storytelling actively rewires the nervous system so that we can step into a new identity rather than just rehashing old wounds.
Before we move on to the next steps, I want to mention that there is another important element that can combine together here. For some of us, easing stuck pain and bringing our old stories home means getting the harm we’ve faced officially recognized—which might come through the Veterans Administration (VA).
Working with the VA can sometimes be a breeze, and other times it's stressful and agitating. Before going too deep into that bureaucracy, you may want to line up reliable sources of Touch (human or non-human) and Community (reliable support).
If you’re not filing a VA claim, this wraps up Part 1. Skip Chapter 10 and jump to Part II: Feeling What Happened, starting with Chapter 11: Living From the Neck Up
If you have filed—or might file soon—continue on to Chapter 10:Writing Successful VA Claims