A Review of Dr. Tick's book on PTSD

I was reading the praise, by multiple veterans, for Dr. Tick's book.  This review moved me, thought I'd share.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

 The Way Home for Our Veterans, November 30, 2007

By	Remy Benoit (Louisiana United States) - See all my reviews

Back in the world.
Often within 24-48 hours.
It is over--
It is never over.

Now you are:
son--daughter
mom--dad
husband--wife
friend--lover
You are home.
It is over--
It is never over.

Rank does not matter anymore. The decisions are yours now. Yet those with whom you served are forever, inextricably, a part of you.

When you went in country, wherever that was, the you who went in was a different you than the you who came back to the world. That you, the you of innocence, did not come home; couldn't possibly come home, having come to know what the survivor you knows, what the survivor you has experienced.

A new you, an infinitely more complicated you; a you of lost innocence, at almost every level, has come home.

And home looks and feels different.
And everyone looks different.
And you have all changed.

You cringe, or hit the ground, at noises commonplace while they carry on with the everyday of the life they know.
Shadows lurk, scurry into and out of the dark, as if a dark collage artist were pasting over the new reality you are experiencing with the old you had hoped to have left behind.
You wake up screaming.
Sit facing doors.
And no matter what you wear, you still feel naked, weak, without your weapon sleeping next to you, without the powerfully protective feeling of your weapon in your hand.

You are home; yet still adrift in sand; yet still treading on the floor of the jungle with the thickly twisted canopy keeping out the light; yet still crawling into dank, stinking holes in the mountains. You are home; yet in a seemingly parallel universe that weaves in and out of the world you are told that you live in now; a fluctuating Twilight Zone, beyond even Serling's imagination, where apple pies morph into Daisy Cutters, where the crunch of a nut cracker on a walnut amps into an IED exploding under, around, next to you.

Welcome Home.

Dr. Edward Tick has an awesome gift for you--a road map that will put you on the path to re-connect your conflicting parallel worlds into one that is manageable for you.

Any soldier, any civilian, who has known war has known it as the experience of living on the edge, of knowing life most sharply honed while death and destruction steam, reek, explode all around; but the modern soldier also is burdened at soul level with the very real possibility of war's escalation to the ultimate destruction. That burden, like all the others, is also carried by his soul.

Dr. Tick's War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder explores, unearths, de-mystifies the myths of war. Its wisdom is applicable to the veterans of any nation or time. It brings home war's verities, and it will help to bring you home, as with him you unravel what you are feeling, why you are feeling it; find that the others who were there feel what you feel, and know what you know--illuminates what those at home have to be brought to comprehend.

War and the Soul will help you understand where all those missing soul pieces have gone. It will guide you in fetching them back. It will make you know that what you are feeling is a normal, not an abnormal, reaction to a chaos of war unleashed on your body, mind, soul, and spirit.

With clarity in dissecting the myths of war; by sharing Veterans' stories, observations, experiences, and nightmares, Dr. Tick helps guide you a to a new place where you can understand the impact of war on you and begin to step out of its chaos. If you want to come home, War and the Soul is the road map you need.

Yes, you need physical, mental therapy to leave the chaos of war for the order of "normal" life. But deep healing calls for soul and spiritual re-alignment. For that, Dr. Tick is there with cultural myths, with compassion and understanding, with the cultural rituals necessary for re-initiation into society. He is the spiritual shaman, the soul reviver whom you need to begin your real journey home.

War and the Soul is a book every soldier, every veteran, every civilian needs to read--and tell others about. It brings a new perspective to war, and to the healing of those we send to fight. We--all of us--need to understand these things if any soldier anywhere is ever to truly come home.