I'm Back from New York City

My experience was wonderful. I will be sharing some of the videos that we made as I receive the clips.

One of the topics I asked to share was Military, Military Families, Veterans and Veterans Families.

I discussed some of the broken links between services needed and funding sources.

The VAMC is not staffed to deal with the load of soldiers being discharged from the military.

The Wounded Warrior Program was filling some of the need by providing monies to Courage Beyond.

Recently some states, Wounded Warrior Program is not filling the grant under Courage Beyond. In Tennessee, Department of Mental Health gave Courage Beyond monies to pay providers in the community to treat veterans and families. The monies lasted 3 weeks. For our community, I made the offer to continue treatment for families, if they could pay $50. Some stayed, some couldn't afford the $50. That cost was 1/2 what I was being reimbursed by Courage Beyond.

The organization I was with in New York City, asked me to consider opening a GoFundMe account for this cause. I did so Wednesday night. The organization stated they would help market this to pull funds in.

If you would like more information about this, please send me a PM and I will give you more information.

I was also asked to educate the civilian community regarding the issues our military and families are struggling with. This is what I told them as of this time:

If you see a soldier, veteran with a cap/jacket insignia, please "Thank Them."

If you are somewhere that you see a soldier eating, offer to pay the tab if you can afford it.

Donate your time, money, effort for these individuals. After all they are fighting for all of our freedom.

The soldiers love homemade goods. Send a care package. Some of the soldiers have zero family members..so when the care packages come, all are shared. The soldiers love to receive cards, letters, anything that says "I care about..."

Some of our nation is becoming numb about this war, but it is steadily going on.

I treat these individuals for mental health needs all week and the stories they bring in are horrific. They cannot say "No I am not going to deploy." Some have been on 3, 4, 8, 10 deployments. Can you imagine what their families feel? What the soldier feels?

If you are willing to help, there is a website I will pass onto you to see what they are doing.

Thanks for listening to me on my journey to get help for people like me (I'm a military brat, endured the hell of Vietnam, but the Vet still is bat-shit-crazy and won't get help.) I have lived with that behavior too long to ignore it. So I am attempting to help as early as I can.

Sharon Davis