Words From Our Heroes
Life Is More Than A Mission
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus, Veteran Liaison/Group Facilitator I sat on the cigarette burned, dirty ass mattress of the abandoned house we had made a home for the last few days and watched as the life slowly left the dude next to [...]
Marine Corps Training, Sir!
By Andrew McKenna, Transformations Client Services Representative Veteran of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps The flight down to Marine Corps training in Quantico was rocky. Everyone had these exceptionally foolish haircuts, except me. I was not gung-ho about this. Others were gung-ho, [...]
Kill House
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus As we turned the corner, we heard a large explosion directly in front of us. We could see smoke coming from the building where a team had just entered and immediately heard the call for a stretcher [...]
Recovery and Our Inner Voices
By: Andrew McKenna; Transformations Client Services Rep., Veteran Marine Night Land-Navigation Test, Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia “Get your stinkin’ ass up Marine and go navigate!” My barracks roommate Martin, a wise-guy from New Jersey, was standing over me, totally messing with me—a big grin [...]
Understanding Overdose Awareness
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus As I was about to sit down and write today, I was told that my recovery family out in Texas lost another young man to the insidious disease of addiction. About an hour earlier, I had finalized [...]
Indispensable Emotions
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus One of my biggest struggles in sobriety has been learning to deal with emotions. Even as I learned how important emotions are to my mental health, I continued to have a hard time dealing with the death [...]
Purpose
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus, Transformations BHT I stood in the battalion parking lot with my arm firmly around my wife’s little body watching the rest of the platoon come down the stairs from the bus and into the arms of their [...]
The Emotional Switch
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus, Transformations BHT So let’s talk about emotions. Why is it so hard for us as men to admit fear, to admit sadness, or how about this one, to admit we’ve been hurt? When I say hurt, I [...]
Bunker Mentality
By: John Schrey, Help For Our Heroes Alumnus, Transformations BHT For a long time, I used to get really annoyed and frustrated when I would hear civilians using terms like Bunker Mentality, Fox Hole Prayers, and War Stories. I used to say to myself and [...]