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Introducing MISNS and Our New Podcast Series · Moral Injury Support Network Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Monte, and I'm going to be your host for today's episode.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to dive into the concept of moral injury.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: So along with me, I'm joined with Dr.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Daniel Roberts, who is the president and CEO of Missions.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Missions is a moral injury support network for service women.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually so excited to be entering with Missions as part of my applied practice experience because they are an organization that advocates not only for yes service women, but just women's mental health in general.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: So throughout the series, we are going to be hearing from service women who have experienced moral injury and how they've been dealing with that.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also joined by the lovely Jamie, senior exec officer, who is also a retired military officer.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to be listening and diving into Jamie's experience with moral injury as well.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to go ahead and pass the mic to Dan.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, good afternoon, evening, whatever wherever you're at.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Good to talk with you today.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: As she mentioned, I'm Dr.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we are an organization based in North Carolina, and we specialize in research, training, education, and direct support to service women affected by moral injury.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk a little bit more about some of that as we go along.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But uh very happy to be working with Jamie and Monte on this uh on these podcasts.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Jamie, do you want to give us a little intro?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: So my name is Jamie Peer, and I just came on um earlier this summer of 2023 with missions.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I'm now serving as the senior executive officer and uh really just um I'll I'll share parts of my story here in a little bit, but um I'm kind of one of those people that when I see something good going on that I, you know, want to support, I tend to try to figure out who's in charge of that thing.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so I reached out to Dan and figured out that he's a great guy with a great mission.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just I felt very honored to be asked to to join the team and help the cause.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: So just glad to be here and excited to work with you too, Monte.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Excited to work with you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Dan, I'm gonna ask you um, what inspired you to create missions?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, you're uh a male, and obviously this is targeting women in specific.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to know like what caused you to start this nonprofit just simply targeting women because you could obviously just target it, just men.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what's your view on that?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I get answer that question a lot, actually.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so one of the reasons.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So let me first go, what inspired me to create missions?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was conducting uh research uh on moral injury in women veterans.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was interviewing women veterans who had experienced moral injury.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as somebody who's worked in the Army chaplaincy uh for over 20 years, I was shocked that I had never heard some of the stories that I heard.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I did not realize that military women went through some of the experiences they went through.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everything's like, you know, we've heard of sexual trauma, but do chaplains know that um about forced abortions?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do they know about um the extreme level of disrespect and um bullying and um you know other kinds of things, violence that women go through, both emotional violence and and physical violence.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what the women we were interviewing that I was interviewing told me about, not from 1960 or 1950 or 1970, but in the 2000s, women experiencing these things.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as somebody who worked on the chaplain core, I had no idea.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized like a lot of other chaplains need to find out about experiences women are actually having.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and so my first idea was to create a conference that would bring together chaplains and women veterans that would share, they would be able to share some of this experience, and chaplains would be able to learn firsthand what what people are going through, what service women go through.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and to do that, I realized that the you know a nonprofit organization is best suited, is the best business model for that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we we ended up morphing to other things beyond just a conference.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but it was really based on what I was hearing in those stories through my research.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what got me interested in you know, focusing on women is um prior to me even starting my doctorate program, I I was sort of identifying that in the military women were not only underrepresented but often undercared for, especially by the chaplain corps, uh by some of the chaplains I saw, not the chaplain corps as an institution necessarily, but and so so I just you know I feel like God placed it on my heart to to care for these people, not just my own gender, you know.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So so I began to really pay attention to to how women were not always served as well as they should be.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that led me into my dissertation, which which actually focused on chaplaincy support to wounded uh service women, women who had been wounded during an overseas deployment.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, you know, and and realizing there was a gap in research.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's always a gap in research when it comes to women's issues.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that gap was something that I had a heart to to try to help with, and you know, missions became the uh the baby of that uh brainchild.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really nice.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: So Dante, before we get to the next question, I just Dan, I wanted to tell you like the the part about things kind of blowing your mind, not realizing that this was a reality.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: I I just want to let you know, even just this past week talking to my husband, who, you know, for all intents and purposes, was raised in a healthy family, he had a lot of support from his parents, played sports, developed a lot of those leadership traits and attributes as a young person, and then came in the military where those were just you know further groomed and appreciated.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um he said, you know, he he's in the military and he works with cadets, male and female, and he's made it a point to tell the female cadets look, if something doesn't feel right, say something, don't suffer in silence because it was always like months later that he was hearing about things.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then when he would dig into the situation, he would find out that they just didn't say anything.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it just really hit home to me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like he hasn't had to suffer in silence, he's always been empowered.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's a six foot five white guy, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: He's always been empowered to say, I don't like this.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: He might not say it that nicely, you know, I don't like this and I'm not gonna do it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't understand that there are whole segments of our population that don't feel like they can say, I don't like this and I don't want to do it.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then you you couple that with being in the military as a woman who may have been raised to keep her mouth shut and now she's in the military, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't feel that way.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I totally get why that wouldn't have been on your radar until somebody brought it to your attention, but that's another part of the work that we want to do as missions is increase awareness that this is happening and it is affecting people.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's okay that you didn't know, but now you do.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, go ahead, Monte.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're good.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was really good.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you're obviously a retired military officer.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, could you give us just a little bit of your military background?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: So um I'm older than you, Monte.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: I enlisted in the Army in 1996.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, fresh faced, naive young woman.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh came into the military wanting to do good things and get a college education and be a part of something bigger than myself.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and about three years into it, uh became aware of uh Army ROTC and that there were scholarships that were available if I wanted to go back to college full-time and then I could come back in the military as an officer, which is what I chose to do.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: So did that, um commissioned as an officer, which is different than being enlisted, uh commissioned as an officer in 2003.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was in the human resource field of the military.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I handled a lot of personnel issues and kind of by virtue of my position, often got to talk to the commanders directly about people things, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, and and people would bring things to me, problems they were having with their pay, or they were getting ready to move to a new duty station and wanted to make sure their families were settled.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would collect up with that information and process it, or if there were issues, I would bring it to the commander's attention so they could weigh in on it and and make it easier.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um and ended up, you know, in lots of different assignments in lots of different places at all kinds of levels from 50 people to 10,000 people.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then in my last military assignment, I got to be a professor of military science.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I was in charge of a university's Army ROTC program.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that was very rewarding because I was getting to help shape the future generation of military leaders, officers that were coming.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: They were doing what I did when I went through ROTC, uh, finishing college, commissioning, and then going off to lead the military.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: So um that's a little bit about my military background, but I uh my whole life was changed in so many great ways by the military.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I before I share some of the harder things, I want to be very clear.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um so much of what's good about my life.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: I met my husband, we have three beautiful children, I got two college degrees, all my I have friends scattered all over the world that I've met because of the military.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that's another part of the reason why I, you know, want to be a part of this, is you know, there are a lot of hard things about it, but there's a lot of good things.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to help people that have served and were affected um get to a better place in their own lives if if their moral injury is holding them back in any way.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so there are a ton of definitions for moral injury.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't really even define moral injury.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how would you two define moral injury?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um there are a number of definitions out there, and I think when you're um operationalizing research, you know, you have to be very specific about what a definition of a phenomenon is that you're studying, right?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're doing ministry, when you're helping people, I think to me it helps to have a broader definition of moral injury so that people can can define it for themselves or can identify it for themselves, uh, because um it's only the person can decide if they're morally injured.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that but the definition I keep in mind um is and this is dot related to what Dr.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nash um described as moral injury a couple of conferences ago, but but he said um, you know, it involves trauma, it involves uh violation of deeply held moral beliefs, and then there's difficulty in coping afterwards.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so that's the three sort of elements I keep in mind is that the person went through some kind of trauma.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: They either were the survivor of a trauma or they perpetrated a trauma, that can happen too.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a violation of deeply held moral beliefs.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's beyond just an ethical violation, maybe it's beyond because we see ethical violations in our work, you know, frequently in anybody's job.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's always somebody cheating a little bit on a report or lying a little to the boss or whatever.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we might identify, well, that's wrong, they shouldn't do that, but it may not be traumatic, or it may not cause you to have difficulty coping, or you may not be able to, whatever.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there are moral conflicts that are not moral injury, but there's a violation of deeply held moral beliefs of in other words, they're deep in the sense that you they they guide your life, right?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: They they give they are on a level of even if you're not religion religious, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're on a biblical kind of level.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, that sort of like really important beliefs.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and then the other pieces afterwards difficulty coping, forgiving, um seeing the world in the same way.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it has it's something that completely changes your world view, um or shatters your current worldview and forces you to completely rethink or rethink some very important things that you held dear before, if that makes sense.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's what I keep in mind when we're talking about moral injury.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, being a part of this organization, I take the same stance as Dan as far as an organization.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: We want to keep a very broad perspective.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um I would just add that moral injury, there are as many definitions as there are people that believe they've experienced it, because there could be things that I hold as sacred as an individual that nobody else holds as sacred.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: But once that's violated, it has a deep wounding effect on me.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: And just to be really transparent and vulnerable, which I'm used to being at this point, but you know, I look back now on the young person that I was when I came in the military.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was so idealistic and in many ways, so naive.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I believed every single thing I was told as it pertained to this is what the military is about, and this is what it means to be a military leader, and we only do the right thing all the time, and you know, and I was like, Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to be.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I was just like, um, and it's adorable now, you know, like that's so great that I felt that way, but the reality is, and now I'm much more on the realistic side of things, but maintaining some of that idealism, is that humans are humans.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: And for example, as good of a mom as I set out to be in the beginning, I screwed up, you know, and as good of a wife as I started out to be the day I got married, like I'm gonna be the best wife in the whole wide world, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: You get tired, you get hungry, you say things you don't mean, and then you're like, screw that up, right?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: We all have shortcomings as human beings, and that applies to the human beings that run the military or any other organization, we're all gonna screw up.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: But so I looking at that now on this side of my life and all the experience I've had, I would say to that young lady, hold on a second, don't forget these people are people, and people may not want to let you down, but they're going to let you down.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: But having these like high in the sky ideas of what it means to be a military leader, yes, that's good, but it's still human beings and human beings make mistakes.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I and so I say all that to say, you know, that version of me was morally injured, and I stuffed it down in me and carried it through my life, not really taking the time to process it until way later.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and other things happened along the way.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but again, it just goes back to my point like everybody's different, and everybody has their own standards of what right looks like.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And anytime that standard is violated, whether the rest of the world thinks they're being silly or not, doesn't matter.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's how it impacts them in their heart.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so let me see.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are a ton of events that could happen in the military.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: What are some common ones?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just so the public sort of understands um moral injury in the service um military point of view.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um as you mentioned, there's a lot of different things that can happen.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a couple of examples, you know, we're our organization focuses on service women, and so, you know, it's sort of common knowledge that that women experience uh sexual trauma in the military.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's that's not to say they all do.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows what the actual numbers are?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're vastly underreported, uh, and so on.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: But many people that that are familiar with moral injury, familiar with it as a term, um, and and are uh women veteran or or familiar with them can sometimes assume that military sexual trauma um is synonymous with moral injury.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you're talking moral injury in women, I I can't tell you how many people, a lot of times it's men who say this, but not always.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot I can't tell you how many people have said uh when I talk about moral injury and service women, they go, oh, MST, military sexual trauma.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, they're not the same.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: MST can certainly lead to moral injury, it is a potentially moral injurious experience.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it doesn't necessarily, some women that have experienced sexual trauma in the military were not morally injured from the trauma, but um from the lack of support they got afterwards or or other kind of things.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: But military sexual trauma, sexual assault, rape, harassment are common experiences of women who have service women who have moral injury.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um the second example I would give is in combat, and this is where a lot of people think about moral injury directly related to combat, and it can be, but a friend of mine was an airborne ranger, and so during uh Iraq and Afghanistan, both those conflicts, uh he he and his he and his teammates killed a lot of people.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that was their job.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it wasn't what bothered him is not that they killed people.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's not not fun or good but but what really caused his moral injury is that a lot of times the people they killed were innocents uh civilians and stuff and because um they would get intelligence they would be told by their commander whoever that hey look the the the building that they were clearing that they were going into was what's called a free fire zone in other words everybody in that building's an enemy everybody's a bad guy you could just and so they would go into rooms throwing grenades satchel charges spraying everything you know just very violent which is standard procedure if you're clearing a building where there's nothing but enemy soldiers in it but what they would find out later is that oftentimes there were also women and children in those buildings and so um at the time he didn't he had never turned the herb heard the term moral injury but he was he and his friends many of their teammates were really struggling with drugs and alcohol and they were just um they didn't know why of course he was diagnosed with PTSD but it wasn't until a chaplain introduced him to the term moral injury and explained it to him that he realized that's what I had because it it was it wasn't the the combat it wasn't the the violence of combat it wasn't the the fear of combat which is which is all of that but it was that guilt inside of him um that he and his buddies pushed down using drugs and alcohol knowing that he took the life of people that weren't soldiers they weren't combatants um and they were told to do it and and so the guilt and shame that he that he experienced um was moral injury and you know he was on PTSD medicine it did but it didn't help him at all until he learned about moral injury and then he it helped him greatly to understand moral injury and of course that that chaplain helped him through um work through the guilt and shame um and so on but um those are two examples military examples that sort of relate to common type uh things that that might happen either in combat or just being a woman in the military can sometimes be very dangerous um because of some of the issues that we um that that continue to exist um in the military uh for some people and Jamie I know we've talked about um like dive in a little bit into your like moral injury um do you want to go ahead and just share with us just a little bit um whatever you're comfortable with yeah um and part of why I do this work is because it does it does have a little bit of a therapeutic effect to be able to talk about it and to share it in a way that can help other people.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm actually pretty comfortable sharing at this point thanks to Dan's work.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you know kind of going back to the young ideal version of me, you know, I feel like in some cases I set myself up for moral injury just out of that naivete if you will.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: But later when I had a clearer understanding like we're all human um there were still some times where I knew something was wrong and I might have gone to a superior to express my what I'd noticed and you know what I thought about it from my perspective and got my perspective validated yes that's wrong and then when I asked you know so what are we gonna do about it and the response from the superior officer was well I don't know what you're gonna do about it but I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole kind of a thing.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so standing there feeling stunned that the leader acknowledged that what I was concerned about was valid and yet wouldn't support me in doing the right thing by addressing it out of fear of, you know, maybe they thought they would lose their career or it would negatively impact their reputation or negatively impact their family.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, at the end of the day, again, people are human and they're going to do what they think is in the best interest of the things that they care about the most and when it came to the military and this issue and their own livelihood and their family they were frankly choosing their family.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's ego sometimes it's something you know less you know understandable um and and then I would have to decide whether without their support am I going to do something or not and there was a couple of occasions where I didn't do anything.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe I shouldn't do anything about it either.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: But then noticing for days afterwards I felt bad.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: I felt bad about myself I couldn't stop thinking about it.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I would wonder what are the implications if this person does this again you know and and kind of having to live with that you know and then how that affecting my view of myself as a leader like again going back to the idealistic leader they always do the right thing and they don't care what anyone thinks and they're you know they're gonna fall on their sword if they think it's the right thing and and then taking a step back and going well I didn't do that.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: So what does that make me?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: But again realizing like we're all human and we don't always know what to do.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't feel like you can talk about it with people that you trust that you know then you just feel stuck and kind of scared and isolated.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that was that was a type of experience I had and then you know going back to what Dan said you know I definitely don't want to paint the picture of the military as just daily sexual harassment daily sexual assault although it does happen and it happened to me on a number of occasions and when I was young and didn't you know feel like I had a voice I would kind of put up with it or I'd be like oh they're just stupid.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna blow it off.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then later in my career when I did feel an obligation as a leader to say something because what that person was doing could potentially affect other people wasn't even about me anymore.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was about stopping somebody who could ruin it for other people I brought it to the attention of you know some a superior officer I'm not saying a leader on purpose because leaders wouldn't do this but they outranked me.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just say that and um and they just kind of blew it off and they were like oh that guy's a knucklehead don't worry about it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I was I was saying as a leader I'm coming to you because I want something to be done and I felt like I got dismissed.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: And again I could have gone to the next level up I could have jumped up and down on his desk.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: I could have done other things to do you know make a point.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: But I had a job to do and I had soldiers to take care of and I'm like you know part of me was like whatever I'm just gonna go back to doing what I was doing.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well then fast forward um I retired from the military and there was a lot going on in the news about soldiers being affected by sexual assault and sexual harassment and things like that.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: And now I had the time to think about the totality of my experience and all the times that things had happened to me that either I didn't say anything or I did say something and nobody did anything.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I started to really feel the guilt and shame of that for the first time like how did I as an individual contribute to a culture that you know can dismiss women and dismiss their families when their families are expressing concern and you know try to keep it under wraps so to speak while they figure it out and that's when I really was like you know and I talked to Dan about this earlier today like you can't go back you can't change what you did or didn't do the only thing you can do is kind of forgive yourself and then say what can I do with what I know now to make a difference in people's lives.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: So you know the stories like the details of the stories are not as important as the overall idea and the feeling but then also the hope that organizations like missions give to people to say okay I can't change what happened I want to feel better about this and how can I do that and then help other people get on the other side of their moral injury.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And were you seeing someone like um to help with like your moral injury yeah I'm a big fan of therapists.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think everybody should have a therapist it's like preventative maintenance.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah really when I started getting clear on some of this stuff was towards the last couple years of my military career I was seeing a counselor.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: We weren't really talking about moral injury necessarily but I was telling her about a sexual harassment situation that I experienced and you know she was validating like that shouldn't happen to you and I'm like I know but then um very recently I'll share that I finally this is four years after I retired I finally went through the VA the Veterans Administration mental health disability process and had to talk about this again and discovered that it was quite triggering to have to tell the stories all over again to somebody new, right?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: But through that process got tied back into some pretty great mental health professionals and I have great friends that I can talk about this with too.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I take I think it takes a lot of the sting and the power out of it when you find those safe spaces to talk about it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I highly encourage like we just get in our heads and it we just make it worse and amplify it so much more.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: But when we talk about it it gets the energy out of our bodies and puts it where we can process it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I I do believe in counseling and yes I see a counselor to this day.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: But we're here obviously to help with that.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so um couple examples from the medical fields um you know especially with COVID a lot of medical professionals have talked about the lack of uh personal protective equipment that there was available they had to see COVID patients uh without proper PPE um during during that time um and that that was moral injurious to some there were others doctors talk about you know knowing care that a patient should have that they really need but having that care denied by insurance companies or in some cases like uh for instance in Canada where it's a one-payer system the government system um the government denying whoever's responsible denying um care because it costs too much and so so doctors you know nurses etc who take that oath and they they're in the healthcare field to help people and yet are being denied that ability and so they have to watch patients suffer or even die uh because there's a lack of resources um or unwillingness by insurance companies or whoever to pay for that um a a another example of something could happen to anybody um you know you think about uh a drunk driver uh accident that causes death um you know often the drunk driver walks away with some bruises while the people they hit um you know die that could be moral injurious because it's it you have the elements right you have trauma you have vehicle trauma um an injury you have um difficulty coping afterwards if you lost your spouse or child or whatever to the accident and then you have the violation of a deeply held moral belief it's not if it was an accident just a freak accident might be different but you have somebody who made the choice to drink too much alcohol made the choice to get in the car and drive it made the choice to to you know be out of control in the sense the previous choices led to them being out of control um and then causing causing an accident that killed somebody and then often you know you get a lawyer you're willing to pay enough money how much you know I have I had friends in the military who had multiple DUIs um and so you know where's their accountability um I have a friend who works in the family loss she's a therapist for um many of them are women who are spout but spouses who are suffered a domestic um a domestic um like they had a domestic violence situation or or whatever and so there's a divorce but now um they have to share their children with that abusive spouse because most states uh don't do a very good job of protecting children and spouses in those situations so those are all examples outside the military that can uh result in um you know moral injury for people I think that junk driving one was definitely a very a common one pretty easy for people to understand absolutely so how does moral injury affect a person's ability to reintegrate into society after military service because I know they're seeing chaplains there too like who can they see when they leave the military so so yes how it affects well when it's very common in society today and I think it's more you know more good than bad that you know people get thanked for their service military service members get treated like heroes and stuff and I personally as a service member myself I'm always very uncomfortable with that but but if you're a person who deployed overseas and did some things that you're ashamed of like my friend the airborne ranger who who was directly responsible for the death of innocent uh women and children and even if it wasn't even if he wasn't to blame in the sense he was following orders and those orders were wrong even though he didn't know they were or the intelligence was bad whatever the case he still is carrying that guilt and shame and when people thank him for his service and and other service members have expressed this it it can re-trigger the guilt and shame because they don't feel like what they did was okay right um so so when when veterans return from deployments even if they are not morally injured it's off they often feel that civilians just don't understand because there really aren't civilian equivalents to what they go through over there.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so so there's already a feeling of like they don't understand.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: But now if you take moral injury then not only do they fear that that um that they don't understand right civilians don't understand they fear being judged very harshly or if a civilian understood or knew what I did they'd be horrified and so so there's this difficulty on I'll let Jamie talk about reintegration with family but in terms of veterans reintegrating in society it's like entering a world that you know you're an alien to um just on the basis of your experience that other people can't possibly fully know what you've been through.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I deployed to Afghanistan for a year uh 2009 to 2010 and I had a three well no I had a four-year-old and a two-year-old no sorry I'm getting these times that my husband and I we my husband and I here's an example we spent almost a total of seven years geographically separated like he was in one part of the country and I was in the one part of the country where he was deployed for 15 months to Iraq while I was home raising the kids and then we would switch and um so I'm getting a lot of this confused in my mind but when my oldest daughter was a first grader and my second daughter was four years old in a preschooler I deployed um missed my oldest daughter's entire first grade year like never met her teacher never stepped foot in her school just that that whole year is gone right um as far as being her mom and then I was deployed and you know we we worked hard we were there you know 247 seven days a week working every day um I would get up at six and I'd often not get six in the morning and I would often not get home till one or two in the morning.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I I worked a lot and I poured my heart and soul and mind and everything into the mission.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then I came home and every soldier that comes home is supposed to have a mental health screening with a psychologist to determine you know are you okay?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Do you need special help?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I because I hadn't been in like direct combat I had I had uh actually there was a bomb that went off across the street from where I was and I felt the pressure of the but I never got shot at and I didn't have to shoot anyone.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you would think well that's not that bad right but um anyways I'm in the mental health uh consultation after my deployment and the doctor who was a civilian who had not served in the military said to me don't you it's a it's a complete waste of time what we're doing over there, isn't it?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: And as a mom who had just left my kids for a year I needed to believe that what we were doing was important and that I was an important member of the team and that my contributions and my sacrifices meant something.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like I needed to believe that.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then to have this civilian who's been you know eating at McDonald's and do you know living his best life while I was over there doing that is looking at me saying isn't that a complete waste of time and I'm a very nice person.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've never gotten in a fight in my life you know physically but I almost came over the desk and just like you know punches in the face and I was like holy smokes like and I feel that way I can't imagine what some of my brothers and sisters feel that have had much more traumatic things going on and to have Have somebody who just doesn't have a clue say something like that.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, those are the kinds of things that also make you feel like, you know, you're an alien on a different planet.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like, who are these people?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: They don't get anything, you know, and that was hard.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: The only other funny thing I'll say about this isn't moral injury, but it was frustrating is when I was deployed, you know, three meals a day were cooked for me in the dining facility so I could just go get food and eat it and it was ready and all the fruit was chopped up and the food was cooked, and I only had to do laundry for myself.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I would pick up my room and I would leave and come back, and everything was where I left it, and then to come home to my family who had somehow magically survived without me for a whole year, and all of a sudden they don't know what to eat and they don't know where their jeans are, and they you know, and I I come, I come home from work and socks and shoes are everywhere.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: That was frustrating, but I wouldn't classify it as moral injury, but it was hard to reintegrate into that.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyways.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to know what are some long-term goals with missions.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um, you know, we we as I mentioned earlier, we have our research projects that we're doing, and those in themselves are going to be long-term goal, long-term projects.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like the the current one, um, we we well we did a research project where we looked at moral injury and women veterans.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: That that is still ongoing.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're not actively recruiting, we've interviewed or surveyed about 50 women, uh, but we continue to analyze and mine that data for useful information um to and and things that we're presenting and printing and and getting published to educate and train providers on those issues.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that will continue.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: The current research project we're doing is um looking at the moral injurious experiences of military spouses who of service members with PTSD.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um that we're actively recruiting for that project, but again, that's going to be long term because we're exploring that phenomenon.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's very little research out there about that, but part of the research is that identifying gaps in support for spouses, and so that may lead to us creating new initiatives, newer projects to help provide that direct support.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so long term, we're gonna continue to do um research that covers gaps in support for both service women and military spouses.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our training and education system uh programs will continue to grow and expand.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: This year we add religious, um not religious, retreat leader training uh for people for those groups running retreats.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um many of them are not um, you know, looking at moral injury in folks or not.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Their retreats are organized around PTSD, those kind of issues, but we think uh effective retreats will will be able to identify moral injury in people and be able to do things to help folks.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those programs will continue to expand.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then our direct support will you know we'll look to be able to provide support to more and more women um each year.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: So our long-term goal is to help as many service women and families as we can that are suffering moral and from moral injury, and to train thousands of chaplain psychologists and social workers, retreat leaders, other providers on moral injury, how it affects people, um, and and how to do effective support.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of organizations, a lot of ways that that people can get help and that do help.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: So part of it is not just creating all the initiatives for ourselves, but for those initiatives, for those programs that are empirically based, that are working, uh, we highlight those kind of things in our conferences so that um you know providers can make access for access them, but also um we we train and educate people, and uh there will be some new new initiatives coming up.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we are determined to be a highly effective, influential in the sense of of uh influential in the sense of of helping um the VA, other government agencies, nonprofit groups, um partnering with them to uh help them be as effective as they can be, and thereby um transforming the lives of millions of uh veterans and and military family members through both our work and our partnership with others and enabling other other ministries, other organizations to to do effective work.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so I like to call it dot dot connecting.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're just yeah trying to create space to bring in all the dots so we can get the dots connected with each other and we can the most people um as possible because yeah, you know, trying to do anything all by yourself is right, you know, you're only gonna get this far.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's a great quote you can get there fast on your own and you can get farther together, and we're trying to get farther together.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, absolutely.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this should be a good stopping point, but we are um, like we said, we're gonna throughout the series, we'll be hearing from individuals who've experienced uh moral injury firsthand.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's going to be World Mental Health Day.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be releasing something for that specific day where we'll be bringing Dr.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Amanda Yek.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Dan, do you want to go ahead and just introduce her just a little?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Amanda Yek is a brilliant psychologist in the Asheville, uh North Carolina VA.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she, with a couple of co-workers of her, other professionals, chaplain and social worker, have created a great program to provide support to uh morally injured veterans.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a multi-week program, it's been very effective, and um they are helping a lot of uh veterans through their morally injured veterans through their work.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so it'll be great to have her on to explain kind of some of the things she's been doing and um how how she got into that moral injury work and and you know what what are the latest updates uh with her.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I do want to say that anybody who's listening to this podcast or watching this video, if you have um a need, if you need some emotional or spiritual support, you'd like to reach out and get get some help or find out about some resources, you can reach us through the Harriet Tubman network, which is our network of um women chaplains and and counselors who uh are um you know understand moral injury, they can uh help other certain, they can help other service women um by providing that pastoral care.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can reach uh chaplain in the Harriet Tubman Network by calling 910-701-0306 or going to our website uh missions.org, misns.org.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a Harriet Tubman page there uh that you can request support, or you can email uh D Roberts at chaplinconsultants.com um and request support.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can also reach out to us if you're just interested in volunteering to help missions.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um if this is something that you care deeply about, like Jamie, she she called me out of the blue and and to wanting to help because uh of her own experiences.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's there may be others like that.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can again call 910-701-0306 or go to our website missions.org or email me.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're of course, we're a nonprofit organization, so we really run on donations.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you can donate.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, every little bit counts, every little bit helps, every dollar is useful, and we appreciate it.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, missions.org slash donate is our donation page.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you can donate one time or you can set up a monthly donation to go to us, and we promise we'll use it to help other people.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh Dan, would you like to just speak briefly on our conference in September of 2024?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we want to share about that for any practitioners who might be listening and wanting to learn more about how they can get pulled into the network of support.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the uh comprehensive moral injury conference is occurs every year.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: We bring um presenters and providers from all over the world.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they come together to talk about moral injury research.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: We cover, uh they present information on their latest research, recovery methods they're doing with folks.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have some great discussions around the issue of moral injury, not just for service women, but also, you know, it's a broad scoped conference.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: So um we've had presenters talk about moral injury in the healthcare field, uh, in the law field.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, lawyers have souls too.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um they can be morally injured also.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've had presenters and attendees from the US, the UK, Canada, uh, New Zealand, Australia.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it really is a an international conference.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and psychologists and social workers and chaplains receive continuing education credit, uh, 12 to 15 credit hours for attending.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is September 10th through 12th in Atlanta, Georgia.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh you can sign up for the conference newsletter if you go to our website and just uh click on the programs tab.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a uh under that menu.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can click on the conference, and there's um you can put your email address and send that to us, and we'll keep you updated uh on the conference as we plan it, put it together.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, next year, 2024, the first day of that conference.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh chaplains um will be able to get certified in the building spiritual strength program if they'd like.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the next day is all about military moral injury and service women.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um the day after that has is family dynamics of moral injury.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so we're going to talk about moral injury as it relates to military spouses and uh children, etc.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then that last day is sort of uh specialty track where we'll do breakouts, uh chaplain psychologists, social worker breakouts, where we'll have uh a variety of presentations on various issues.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that third day, a lot of different things happening on that day.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: But uh again, you can find out all that information on our website and um you know sign up to get the newsletter.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that covers it pretty well, Jamie.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I need to I think that's great?
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, this is uh a very powerful uh conference that's coming up and we're getting really excited.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're already planning it, we're already talking to a lot of the speakers.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: We've got some really dynamic keynote speakers lined up already, um, ready to go.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I I can't wait to be a part of it.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: So but that's all I think we've got for you tonight, Monte.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, do you have any other questions or thoughts for No, that's it.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was a good dive in into moral injury, and we hope to see you guys in the next episode.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.