When One Voice Breaks the Silence
Veteran Stories Can Be Someone's Healing Medicine
I wish I would have known when I started having children that they don’t only inherit eye color, body shape, gifts, or jawlines. They also inherit pain, trauma, resilience, silence, and the many untold and unhealed stories of their parents and ancestors.
I wish I would have known that my ancestral stories of war permeate much of our family history. They shaped who we became, both consciously and unconsciously. You see, war doesn’t end when the guns fall silent. War has aftershocks that continue to ripple through peacetime, families, and communities. Often these ripples create enough shame, grief, anger, and fear that we remain silent, feeling alone. The truth is, most families feel and carry the impacts of trauma, war, and survival. What if you writing your veteran’s story is exactly the medicine someone else needs to heal themselves and their ancestors?
Our stories hold immense power. Power we are often afraid to wield or we’ll be seen as the the crazy one who may be tossed out of our families. But what if the power we hold and the ancestral knowledge we carry can recount acts of sacrifice, courage, and resilience? What if this invites us into more truth?
The stories we tell, the medicine it creates can break silences in the family. It can heal what was passed down and remove the fear, emotional beliefs, behaviors, and patterns we all carry about self-worth and safety. In naming these things through our stories, we unbind them and can weave something new, safe, full of love and truth. This is the medicine we can create by writing our veteran stories.
This is the medicine that someone out there is looking for that only YOU can provide. Are you ready to share your stories?
The Unspoken Legacy of War
Trauma is the result of what happened to you. It is not the action itself, but how our nervous systems, bodies, and energy fields trapped the experience and kept us safe until we had time to process the experience. However, most veterans never got the opportunity to process anything because they were constantly living trauma. Once home, unless they had severe mental issues, resources and help were limited. Therefore, they struggled in silence, nightmares, alcohol, anger, and emotional withdrawal.
You can’t heal in the same environment that created the trauma, pain and silence. Without the ability or knowledge that they needed to process and heal, veterans had children that grew up sensing something was wrong, even when they couldn’t name it. They FELT it. Emotional patterns of hypervigilance, shame, grief, dissociation or detachment – emotions that didn’t belong to them, yet did. This is inherited trauma. We forget that the stories and pain that left untold, unhealed, are the most potent in shaping how we see and live in this world.
Telling the Story Changes Everything
Whether we are the veteran, a child, or descendant – when we crack open the door and tell the story, we begin to heal. Our words give voice to the pain that was unable to be acknowledged. The words allow the soul of the veteran to be witnessed in their full humanity rather than just a survivor or war. The veteran can be seen as a person with dreams, wounds, complexity, and great love.
For many of us who research our family history, this is a sacred act. It is soul work. For us it becomes more than just the bare facts of names, dates, and place. Our research turns into writing that quickly become more about emotions, context of the experience, awareness of the war’s impact on us, and healing. The process may begin with military research but ends with the story that changes lives. The records help us see how the war didn’t only shape our veteran but our family as well.
When we are brave enough to share our stories, others see themselves reflected in the words, photos, pain, resilience, and healing. Your words may create a medicine that a stranger required to keep going through their own struggles. Weights may be lifted in some lives as the individuals realize they aren’t alone in their feelings and what their family endured. This is how your story can become medicine.
Tip: The words may not come in the form of a story. They may come in the form of a song; a speech; a film. There are many ways to share your medicine.
The Medicine is in the Witnessing
Song, storytelling, speeches, films, are all ways we can witness our ancestors with new eyes. As we do so, we are also witnessing ourselves. As we dissect the military records, family stories, and pain, we can begin to see a grandfather as not only “emotionally distant” or a “raging alcoholic”, but begin to understand his scars of battle that manifested in these ways so he could cope. Not all coping mechanisms are healthy but we are human and do the best we can. A little empathy for others can go a long way to better seeing who they were at the core of their soul. Witnessing may help us stop blaming our parents and ourselves for the family dysfunction that has seemed so “normal”. We are able to trace the dysfunction to it’s original generational wound.
Some may believe that witnessing excuses harm done. In reality it doesn’t. It brings context to what created the harm. Through context we can find compassion. Through compassion and choosing a new belief, behavior, or pattern, we break old toxic cycles. This ripples out not only to our ancestors and descendants but all of humanity.
One story, honestly told, can help an entire family shift and feel safer, whole, and full of love. Whether this story is told through fiction or non-fiction, it may be the medicine someone needs to release lifetimes of pain. Remember, you and your words are more powerful than you’ve been led to believe.
From Silence to Soul Legacy
Anyone can tell a veteran’s story. You don’t need to be a professional writer, only the willingness to listen and be open to the context that arrives. Your ability to piece together the fragments of family story with military fact can open space in your heart and expand your intuition. Your intuition may lead you to things unspoken and this is ok. Simply naming the silence you feel can shift powerful forces.
Your words have the power to transform a veteran’s story from a source of pain into a legacy of light. Their story and yours, do not have to end in trauma and heartbreak. As we reflect, remember and create ritual around this work, it evolves into strength for us, them, and the world. Your act of remembrance matters. Your words can be the medicine someone didn’t know they needed. Are you ready to break your silence today and create your veteran’s story?
Bonus Writing Prompts
Here are a few prompts to get you thinking in a new way about your veteran and family’s story.
What story from a veteran or your family has stayed with you? This could be one that felt true or felt off in some way.
What beliefs, behaviors, or patterns have come into your family’s experience as a result of war?
What was kept silent or held as a secret about your veteran’s service?
What was kept silent or held as a secret about your parent’s or grandparent’s upbringing in a household touched by war? How has this helped you understand yourself and your ancestors?
Have you ever felt like you were carrying someone else’s pain, unfinished business, and trauma? How did this show up in your relationships, body, work?
What would you say to your veteran who never told their story? Write them a letter.
What did your family pass down as “normal” behavior that might actually be unprocessed trauma? Think about family dynamics, fears, beliefs, or habits.
How has your life changed as a result of discovering your veteran’s story?
How could your story become medicine for someone else?
Are You Ready to Bring Your Veteran’s Story to Life?
Whether you’re just starting to research or write and need guidance and a plan to draft your book or you have been writing for a while, I can help. I can help you move through the overwhelm, uncertainty, stuckness, and emotions that rise as you craft your story. I offer personalized research and developmental editing to all clients. All it takes is a free phone call to discuss your specific project.
To learn more, email me at jennifer@ancestralsouls.com to schedule a free phone consult to discuss your project and how I may be able to help now or in the future.
Beautiful, these stories need to be told.