J. R. Martinez Quotes

Please God, I'll never be in a war zone, but everything I sort of know about people who come back is that it's a hard transition to make. I mean, even if you've not been in a war, even if you've just been in the Forces, you come back and probably have more fights in civilian life.

Ministers regularly meet soldiers that have returned from operational tours to hear about their experiences, including those who have recovered from their injuries.

I find skydiving really hard. I broke my back while skydiving when I was in the military, and for 18 months all my nightmares were about falling.

The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.

I have friends with post-traumatic stress - friends with post-traumatic stress who are, you know, highly successful, capable people.

If you get a big injury, it is not easy at all to deal with it.

When you go through a traumatic event, there's a lot of shame that comes with that. A lot of loss of self-esteem. That can become debilitating.

The strips about the military do seem to provoke moving and thoughtful responses. It's nice when the strip resonates, but more importantly, I need to know when I'm getting something wrong. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the suffering that wounded warriors already endure.

When suffering from TBI and PTSD, it's difficult to find the motivation to seek help. I want society not to forget those that served this country.

I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident.

But even before I was in the military, I was extremely jumpy when asleep.

Here in Israel, we want the boys back home, we demand it from our government, who often pay a steep price to get hostages back. But we need a happy ending. We don't want to deal with those days after release, their post-trauma or reintroduction to society. Yet coming home is only the start of their journey.

I am classified as a disabled veteran. The reason I'm disabled is because I have wounds and injuries that I got while on active duty... from parachute jumping to combat to gunshot wounds, all that stuff.

Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions.

For many of the brave men and women who have fought on the front lines, returning home means trying to navigate a complicated and bureaucratic Veterans Administration benefits system.

There's something called latent PTSD. It manifests itself in different ways. I want to be free of it, but I'm not.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don't know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

I feel that I am nine years old, seven and a half years in the Afghan Jihad, one and a half years in Jihad in Palestine and the rest of the years have no value.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody could get…

As the wife of a retired Navy commander and the representative of the district covering Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, I see firsthand the permanent effects of war - both physical and psychological - on those who serve our country.

I learned a lot about a traumatic situation and what it does to you. It really brings you closer to your family and your loved ones.

The military is a discrete entity. Then they come back, and they're such a small percentage of the population, and they can't really - it's hard for them to talk to civilians.

When I was growing up, it was a bad time to be in the military. It was the time of Vietnam, but I was never called up.

The big 'Aha!' moment is that the trauma never goes away.