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There's a lot of bonding that happens between service members especially as they face high-stress situations. The uniqueness of these bonds and friendships is that service members don't even need to know that much about who you are or the details of who you used to be, hell, we don't even know each other's first names most of the time. But we face the same stressors and deal with the same issues and it creates a sense of togetherness that helps us face the dark times ahead. Sebastian Junger's Ted Talk speaks with accuracy about this bond:
brotherhood is different from friendship. Friendship happens in society, obviously. The more you like someone, the more you'd be willing to do for them. Brotherhood has nothing to do with how you feel about the other person. It's a mutual agreement in a group that you will put the welfare of the group, you will put the safety of everyone in the group above your own. In effect, you're saying, "I love these other people more than I love myself."
Ambiguous and Disenfranchised Grief
Grief takes many forms throughout our service. We bond with people we meet in boot camp, and then months later we all disperse to our training schools. We bond together in training, and then all leave to go to our first duty station. Some of those people will come with you, but some you may never see again. At your first duty station, you bond even stronger with the teams you work and/or deploy with, the instructors and support staff that are with you, and the leaders who put in the time and showed that they cared about you. And then, one by one, their orders are up and they leave. There is grief in losing people not to death, but to the nature of the transitionary life that we led. There's grief to leaving the familiar environment, the familiar people, and the comforts that got you by. Ambiguous grief can come from falling out of touch with those we've bonded with. It is a profound sense of sadness for a loss that isn't a death.
I remember the day of my farewell party from the mobile security squadron I was attached to in Bahrain. I remember my battle buddy and best friend was shipping out that same day to go to canine school. She had to leave the party early for the airport. I remember thinking that I didn't know how I was going to deal with the next duty station without her. I remember feeling like someone had ripped my security blanket out from under my feet. I was absolutely devastated. I felt like a part of me was being torn away, the part that always had my back. What if I never see her again? It was hard to adjust to the next spot and navigate all the new relationships there. It was hard to keep having to do that over and over.
We may believe that it makes no sense to feel so sad about leaving our brethren behind or losing them to yet another duty station transfer. We may be told, "It's just the nature of the job". Society and military culture fail to address this with service members. They fail to help us understand the nuances of this life when it comes to relationships and so this grief ends up becoming "disenfranchised grief". Disenfranchised grief is grief that is minimized as if it has no validity to it. Losing people to a transfer, losing the orders you really had your heart set on, not getting that promotion, not passing a board, divorce papers - this can all become disenfranchised grief that is simply glossed over by others and deemed unworthy of grieving over, putting service members in the difficult spot of having to compartmentalize yet another challenging part of their job. That "suck it up" mentality can take a toll and after a while, this could lead to depressive symptoms including isolation, despair, feeling numb, issues with memory, and so on.
Grief Grief
While we are bouncing around from duty station to duty station, we may lose people along the way. Deaths from combat and disease, accidents, murder from within, suicides, and more. We don't have a lot of time to process those and there really isn't a lot of support especially when you're deployed when it happens. Actually witnessing a death can have devastating effects on the psyche (PTSD) especially when it's someone you care about.
I recall one of my first deployments and hearing that back on base there was a double homicide. A girl that I had gone to boot camp and "A" school with had been fatally shot by one of our own in the barracks. I found out she was one of the victims from social media. How was I supposed to do my job when I was grieving? But we do. We pushed it to the back of our minds and tried not to think about it In the moment, it makes sense to compartmentalize it. The problem lies in never returning back to it when it's safe to and processing the loss with support.
Grief & Regret
And then there is the grief that comes after you've left the service altogether. Service members scatter back to their homes across the country and the globe. We try to "friend" each other on social media to keep connected. But time has a way of flying by and getting busy and we often don't think to reach out. We see the pictures posted online and think "Oh good for ____! He had a baby. He looks happy. I guess he's doing alright." Then one day we find out that he's been sick for a while (we were exposed to so many unhealthy fumes, chemicals and hazards), got into a car accident and didn't survive, or took his own life. And the grief of losing a brother or a sister hits you like a brick wall.
"I should have reached out more." "I should have made more of an effort to see them when they were in town." "I should have taken more pictures of all of us". "Why them?" How could I leave my brother or sister when they needed my support the most?
Guilt, sadness, anger, regret, and helplessness all surfacing like a tsunami of grief for a life that seemed forever ago, for the people who got us through some low and uncertain times, for the safe spaces and the complete trust we used to have in others, and the oftentimes humorous ways we supported each other.
As I wrote in the last blog post, Post-Service Isolation, loneliness and isolation after the military are huge factors that exacerbate mental health risk factors and symptoms for service members. But the layers of grief we all have faced without processing them do too.
I have lost 3 brothers since I got out of the military (that I know about). I am lucky enough to have social media connections to my old mobile security squadron. The outpouring of pictures, shared stories, and grief messages on our Facebook group and on individual pages has been helpful in processing those deaths. To find a way back to each other, to check in with each other, and to process with each other is a luxury that I have because I have access to many people still. Not all service members do. Not all service members want to talk about or feel their losses. But we must normalize it and encourage it from each other.
Secondary Losses
There are so many secondary losses that come from the grief we find in our service, but it's a very normal part of the grief process. Secondary losses are the ripple effect that comes from a bigger loss. Secondary losses can hit just as hard on our mental health leading to heightened anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Maybe because we lost someone to death, we lose our faith. Maybe after being medically discharged, we lose the future we thought we were going to have. Maybe because we didn't get the orders we wanted, we'll lose touch with friends.
Even if a service member was in 2 years or 20, living and working in and for the military is an immersion in a culture. A culture rich with identity and tradition, a culture with specific languages and customs. It can be a culture-shock to transition back to the civilian world and leave all of that behind especially if you've spent most of your adult life in it. After we get out, we can question our identity, lose confidence, and lose some sense of security and belonging.
If you ask a veteran if they miss the service, oftentimes they'll respond with "I miss the people". Those bonds we created can last a lifetime if we're able to stay in touch. But seeing as veterans statistically have shorter lifespans than civilians (due to exposure to hazardous environments, chemical exposure, a lack of access to good healthcare, mental health issues and substance use, etc.) we are also probably always grieving time.
We lost time. We lost time with loved ones back home, with life, and with each other. We might still be.
Military veterans experience multitudes of grief simply by serving whether or not we want to admit it. Years of not talking about it or not processing it can lead to the worsening of both mental and physical health problems. We definitely don't need any more factors stacked against us.
As a military veteran, licensed professional counselor, and certified grief counselor, I write this blog post in hopes it will help normalize the grief we all experienced, to show that we need to come together as a community and talk about it, to show that we can heal from our collective grief just like we used to face the odds of other scary things together. Veterans need veterans now more than ever. Grieving together, we can support each other, reminisce, and find ways to honor our losses, recreate the support network we used to have, and find comfort in the companionship we used to know.
The staff at Symmetry of Self Counseling Center are all veterans from different branches specializing in different things but we all understand the grief of having served and the grief that continues to be there. And, while grief doesn't actually go away, it does get easier to carry around. Let one of our staff help you with that load.
This blog post is dedicated to all of our brothers and sisters-in-arms and to every life we have lost and everything that went along with it. Your grief is valid. You are loved. Please reach out.
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