Healing Battle Wounds
I wanted to highlight the work of an extraordinary man I met
this weekend, Edward Tick. No, he has
nothing to do with pesky bugs. He has
everything to do with healing the effects of war in veterans and our communities. And it is nothing short of astonishing.
Where medicines and psychologists are failing, Ed is
succeeding. He starts with the concept
that post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not a disorder; it is an identity and soul wound. Imagine what soldiers have
to experience in war - and have to change into to commit the acts asked of them. You sign up for the military to serve your
country. You are then asked to go to war
and kill somebody. Who have you
become? Ed argues that the only people
naturally adept at this behavior are psychopaths. The others have to lose a piece of
themselves to kill and bomb and destroy.
War vets return home and are traumatized. They are haunted by the
people they killed. They hear bombs exploding around them. In short, they must live with the “ghosts” of
war. What has prepared them for this,
and how can they heal? Veterans are told
to take mind-numbing pills and “try to forget”. This fails more often than not, and the images of war return.
Ed Tick is miraculously healing veterans by treating their trauma as a soul wound. For example, he recently performed a reconciliation ceremony in Vietnam between the American and Vietnamese veterans that liberated many soldiers from their haunting pasts. Ed has been there himself. He had PTSD and has traveled a long road to arrive at the point where he is curing others. He also draws analogies to honorable “warriors” in indigenous societies. Interestingly, these warriors are revered as peacekeepers, not warmongers.
Moving beyond war, it struck me that most of us probably suffer from a soul wound. We see ghosts from a past relationship. We relive a traumatic experience over and over. We sense that "nothing" will ever fix a loss in our past. These are soul wounds.
