Chapter 4: The Power of Your Story

July, 2018: Veterans Yoga Retreat in Rhinebeck, NY

I’m thinking—I don’t want anything to do with this guy Patrick.

Yes, I’m at a Veterans retreat, and he's another Veteran, so—ultimately—I have his back, but this guy's energy is not something I want to deal with.

Patrick Dillon is an Irish Vietnam Veteran in his 70s, and he’s never fully come back from the war.

He walks around in black cargo pants and a black cable knit sweater, even though it's July. He keeps his hair styled in a balding Irish-blonde mohawk. His face is deeply lined, but still rages with vitality when he talks about how he’s been wronged.

Part of the day, he carries around a plastic baby doll. He’s written on the doll, things like the symbols for anarchy, and words like “baby killer.” A small glass jar sits over the infant's head.

His whole energy screams, “I’m fucked up and when you look at me I want you to feel fucked up too.”

I want absolutely nothing to do with this guy.

Sometimes, I’m forced to listen to him because once a day we all sit together in a circle and get a few minutes to share.

This afternoon is one of those times…

Patrick is speaking. This time, instead of talking about the pro baseball career he never got to have, or how he never earned his father’s love, he’s sharing something I’ve never heard from him before. He’s talking about the first time he walked into a South Vietnamese village:

“Finally, I was there, you know? After all the training and all the bullshit, I was gonna get the chance to be a man worth a damn. I wasn’t drafted; I volunteered. I saw on the news that the people in Vietnam needed our help. Getting off the helicopter and walking toward the village, I felt it in my heart. I was a liberator. I was just as good as my father and uncle, who served in World War II. I saw a young Vietnamese woman walking out of the village. She was coming straight at me, and I smiled at her. As she got closer, I opened my arms to hug her and receive my hero’s welcome. She spit in my face. I didn’t understand. She looked at me, full of anger, and started saying words I didn’t understand. But the meaning was clear: ‘Go. Leave. We don’t want you here.’ Then I saw the hard faces on the other villagers. The shock of that moment was the first domino to fall. Over the next few months, going from village to village, I realized we weren’t wanted anywhere. And it took me a while to figure out why.”

As Patrick is saying all this, I’m feeling uncomfortable. There’s a buzzing, crawling sensation in my stomach, slowly spreading through my body, like an electric centipede.

Not this again.

I’ve felt this sensation on and off for over 10 years and can’t figure out why.

Could it be something I ate? No way. The food here is all high quality...

Then what?

Is it irritable bowel syndrome? Ulcers? Cancer? What the hell is this?

I struggle to keep listening:

“I’m ashamed. I learn what I’m really part of—a killing machine making mistake after mistake, carpet bombing villages with women and children. We’re shooting people without even knowing if they’re guilty or innocent. We kill the chickens, the pigs, the water buffalos. It’s all sending people to the side of the Viet Cong. What the hell is the point of all this? I come home and I’m like — demoralized. Not proud. Angry. When I get off the bus in San Francisco, crowds of people have gathered. A woman breaks free from the cops, puts a sunflower in my hand, and shouts at me, ‘BABY KILLER!!’ My father and grandfather look down on me and call me the Dillon who ‘lost his war.’ I feel guilty about being alive at all. About not coming home in a body bag like my best friend from high school...”

Ok. Fuck this. My body is going haywire, I need to get out of this room—now.

Annie, the woman co-leading the retreat, speaks up:

“We’re moving into an iRest* session. Everyone grab your bolsters, and blankets and make yourself comfortable. Thank you, Patrick, and everyone who shared.”

I decide to stay. iRest usually relaxes me. Maybe it will help.

Annie’s voice travels as she walks through the room.

“Allow your body to fully relax. Find the most comfortable position you can. However that looks for you.”

As soon as I lay down on the mat, I feel the muscles along my head, back and legs lock up. I’m almost vibrating from the intensity of the energy running through me.

What the fuck is going on? Why is my body so sick all the time? Why can’t I just relax?

What the hell did I eat for lunch?

I start having all the same thoughts again, and then I remember what I learned from a different retreat:

Sometimes when strong sensations come up I need to feel them, not try to figure them out.

I do my best. I focus on the sensations in my stomach.

“You might invite a few rounds of deep and slow inhales, followed by soft and smooth exhales. Feel your body. Travel down to the soles of your feet, feeling any sensations there, moving up the legs…”

I follow her voice. Feeling my feet, calves, thighs—and then, my mind goes somewhere else.

The shipping container.

What the hell?

Why am I back in the shipping container I lived in during my last month in Iraq?

What is this? A daydream?

Wait, don’t think. Feel.

My body is tense. Buzzing. Frozen.

I’m back in that shitty bed, staring at the ceiling like I did before every mission. Same two-sentence spiral: I can’t go. I have to go.

I can’t go. I have to go. I can’t do this anymore, this isn’t right. I have to go. I took an oath. I don't think I can do this anymore. We’re not helping these people. This isn’t worth risking my life for anymore. If I don’t go, the team will be broken up. I have to go.

ARRGH.

Everything clenching and unclenching.

Why am I reliving this memory?

Back then this scene would end with the sound of boots crunching on gravel, three hard knocks, and a “Round up!”

Then I would force my stiff body onto the next mission.

But this time, there’s no knock at the door. I’m just stuck in the loop.

Wait a minute.

The sensations I'm feeling here on this bed feel exactly like the sensations I’ve been dealing with for the last 10 years. The ones I can’t find a cause for…

Has part of me never left this shipping container?

Did part of me get stuck in Iraq?

This can’t be.

I can’t end up like this fucking guy Patrick.

November 2023

Patrick’s story did something nothing else had done. It activated my nervous system in a way that pulled up repressed memories. His story helped me realize that the fight-or-flight reactions active in me in 2004 were still bottled up in my body—and unresolved.

I understood Patrick's pain completely. His nineteen-year-old self and my nineteen-year-old self went through almost the same experiences. The orders he and I followed were, in some cases, the same type of oppressive actions we'd taken an oath to defend others against.

I'd tormented myself over the bad choices available to me and got stuck in self-torture. That internal conflict never ended. It sank into my subconscious and drained my life energy for over a decade.

Patrick’s story is something I will forever hold with gratitude. I know parts of him have been crushed by a weight he wasn’t meant to carry. But for me, his worn, lined face is the face of the unconquered.

This tough Irish warrior, son of generations of warriors, who carried the moral weight of the Vietnam War for over five decades, changed my life.

His story reconnected me to mine.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Some experiences do need proper support to be complete. And telling half-stories keeps us half-alive.

Our full story has things like; the feelings those events created in our body, the shame that left us unable to be proud of our service, the parts of us we never brought home, the ending that left us believing we were powerless, and all the ways we found to be whole again.

Our full survival depends on our full story. You’re reading this right now because Patrick told his.

What’s the power of your full story?

It’s time to find out.

Move on to Chapter 5: No Story Left Behind

*iRest (Integrative Restoration) is a guided body scan developed by Richard Miller in 2006. iRest is currently used in 19 military hospitals, 46 VA hospitals, and 76 other organizations that serve Veterans worldwide. For free iRest resources, use this link

Annie Okerlin, has been my iRest teacher for the last seven years. She holds free online iRest sessions for Veterans every week. You can find out more here: https://www.exaltedwarrior.com/