Discovering the Truth in Military Stories
Is the truth what we WISH it to be or something else?
As we approach the 80th Anniversary of D-Day this week, a lot of people are traveling, walking in their veteran’s footsteps and seeking answers. It’s important to ask ourselves several questions as we research our family’s World War I and World War II history.
Is the truth I seek the one that validates what my family always told me?
Is the truth I seek what REALLY happened to my veteran?
Can I process information that conflicts with what my family or veteran always told me about the war?
Or will I continue to believe whatever I was told without question?
We all want to believe what our family tells us is always true and real. Sometimes though, stories are more fairytales in order to protect the storyteller from feeling too much or reliving the pain and trauma, or processing their actions. This is true regardless if we are talking about war or other life events.
War trauma, real or imagined, affects everyone in the family, for generations. The unwillingness to learn the truth and change our perspective of what really happened, can further cause damage to our souls and lives, and those of our descendants.
My job as a military researcher is not always easy. Family stories told to me are not always accurate. Sometimes my radar goes off alerting me that something is very wrong with what I am being told. In other cases, it feels mostly correct. Then there are a few cases of stolen valor where the stories were mostly imagined. Family members do not always respond well to hearing their father, uncle, grandfather, brother, etc. were not who they thought they were.
Many clients also have D-Day stories, some of which turn out to be true and others do not. I’ve had some cases where the military records prove the veteran was not even in Europe when D-Day took place, yet his family absolutely believes he was. I mean, why would he lie?
Recently, I responded to a client about her dad’s military service. After we did the research, my report was written and information analyzed, the story was not what she grew up hearing. She is another case of a child of a veteran seeking evidence to prove her father was exactly who she believed him to be.
Discovering What Happened
One of the gifts I have as an intuitive healer, and family and military researcher, is to go beneath the layers of the story and records. I am aware of the finer details other do not pick up on. I dive deeper than any other researcher and ask the tough questions when I speak with a potential client, or through the research process. My clients always leave with a different perspective of what happened. They always leave with many questions they can now ask themselves about who their veteran was, explore the reasons behind words, actions, trauma and drama experienced at home, abuse, anger, PTSD, you name it. My clients also re-examine who THEY are now armed with this new information about their family member and family history.
This is very healing in most cases. We not only heal ourselves but all those connected to us.
Changing Our Perspective
Is it time to change our perspective of our family members and what they experienced that created unhappiness, PTSD, trauma, drama, rage, hate, etc. in their lives which of course affected us? What if we dropped our points of view about who they SHOULD be or WERE? What if we were open to learning about their experience to better understand them? What would that heal? What would we learn about them and ourselves?
We are living in a time where it seems chaos reigns and nothing but hate, drama, trauma, war, and destruction survive. What if we began changing our stories to drop the points of view and allow things and people to be just what they are?
Asking Questions & Promising to Find the Truth
When we promise family members to find the TRUTH as they prepare to die, or commit to finding it no matter what it takes after they die, who does this serve? Are we dishonoring their memory if we find out what they told us was not true? And true according to who?
So many family stories circulate and often it is like the telephone game. A story is told, told again, distorted or embellished in some way, and by the time it reaches us – does it resemble what happened? With these stories can we really uncover what happened that created so much negativity in our lives and the world? Are they a stepping stone to discovery? I say yes.
My Grandpa’s WWII Story
I was told my grandpa served in the Navy in WWII as an Armed Guard Gunner. He died at Downey Veteran’s Hospital, where he worked. That his ship was kamikazed and when he woke up after the impact, he was the only one alive around him. There were other tragic stories told to me that I no longer remember, but that doesn’t matter because none of the stories were true.
No one would talk to me about Grandpa or his service. He was a ghost. It was long after my grandma died and my uncle, who originally told me these stories, also died, before I learned the truth. None of his three ship were attacked. Nothing of note happened to his ships according to the Naval Deck Logs. Is it possible something happened in his convoys that he witnessed that impacted him? Yes. Is it possible the stress of always being on alert, worrying about his wife and children, wondering if this moment was the moment he would die changed him? Yes. Loosened something already not wired properly in his mind and nervous system? Yes.
Grandpa was taken off his third ship to a California Naval Hospital where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This led him to being Honorably Discharged at the end of 1945, sent home where he got my grandma pregnant with my dad and then he went into the VA Hospital for the rest of his life. He died there alone in 1964.
When you look at the two photos of my grandpa, what do you notice? He has changed dramatically. His service in many ways, broke him. His service also then broke my family in ways no one would discuss. In ways that impacted the way I lived my life, choices I made, one particular marriage to my late Dutch husband I had….but that is a story for a book I’m writing about my life and the inherited trauma I lived.
It has taken me almost 30 years since I first heard this story, to process, layer by layer, his story, his service, my grandma’s experiences, and then my own through my marriage. I’ve explored so many questions without answers. Identified ways I was living grandma and grandpa’s unresolved war trauma, patterns, and stories. To change multiple times the identities I assigned them and to work through a range of emotions about all of it and them.
You know what, this is normal when it comes to healing family trauma. We have to work through the emotions that arise and understand where they came from.
Is There Only One Truth?
Why are we so tied to these stories as the ONLY TRUTH? What would be possible if we let them go and saw what really was or is?
Do the dead always care what we say about them and how we feel? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. As infinite beings we all have CHOICE. We make choices based on what happened in past lives and what has happened to us in this life combined with society’s view of how we are expected to be, the box we are expected to fit in. What if something different was possible?
My grandpa has come to me multiple times in the last 15 years to talk about his life and war story. His energy has shifted on the other side the more I explored his service and made peace with the family stories (lies) and healed myself. He and I, my grandma, and my lineage are better off now than we were before I dove into my healing work and took an honest look at who I thought my family was and is. I had to let go of the old stories and beliefs to move forward.
In the big picture of things, does it really matter what the story is? Are we really that conditioned to keep them and never heal and release them? To never accept who our family member really was and what they experienced that they were unable to release and heal from?
I held onto many of my stories for years. It is only in the last decade that I started to research and find the truth, then heal and release them. Most do not define me in this moment. Some have less control or no control over me today.
One of the missions in my life and business is to help people find the truth of what happened in their families. Through military and family research, classes, writing and coaching, I am able to help people release their stories so they no longer control their life. Would you like to learn more? There are many ways I can help you. Explore my classes at the Ancestral Souls Wisdom School. Explore how to do 20th century military research at the WWII Research & Writing Center. Ask me about a free consult to discuss your military research project by emailing me at jennifer@ancestralsouls.com
What are your family stories? Where do they conflict? How did you process this information? Ultimately, how do you now tell the story?
Thanks for this thoughtful piece. I grew up hearing a story about my grandpa’s experiences in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. It was always the same, always dramatic and heroic. After the death of my grandparents, I got interested in family history and one of the first stories I researched was Grandpa’s USN experience. Imagine my shock when I found that very little of the story was true! My struggle wasn’t so much with the truth of the story, but with the ways family members who’d been alive at the time had stayed true to such a detailed and nuanced falsehood. I’m still not sure what the motivation was, or how the story came to be told so inaccurately. I keep and share both stories in our family history, believing they mattered to my ancestors.