For Who
After two deployments, things didn't fall apart all at once. They shifted slowly — in ways I couldn't explain at the time and couldn't put into words for years after.
I was medically discharged from the Army in 2011. What followed was a long effort to understand what had happened to me — not just physically, but in every other way the nervous system can come apart and slowly try to put itself back together.
I am not a clinician. I don't have a degree. What I have is published material and a sustained effort to pay close attention to my own experience — and to learn how to describe it in a way that is useful to other people.
That is not a credential. It is a different kind of evidence.
What I Bring
I can describe what it feels like when the body braces before the mind catches up. When a room feels like a threat before a single word is spoken. When a person looks completely fine and is completely gone at the same time.
I have spent a long time learning how to put those things into words. That is what I bring — whether I'm sitting with a clinical team, speaking to a room of veterans, writing, or talking with the people who support someone going through it.
Not the whole story. Not the details. Just the part that is hard to reach from the outside.
A Note
I am not healed. I am not finished. This work is not built on a completed recovery. It is built on honest, ongoing documentation of what the process actually looks like from the inside.
That distinction matters. I will never claim to have answers I don't have. What I can do is describe the terrain with accuracy.