Latest / Untold Valor: Veterans Recovery in Action / Ep 20: Trauma, Faith & Recovery: Cheryl Gricoski’s Experience Navigating Life’s Challenges As A Veteran & Spouse

Transcript

Ep 20: Trauma, Faith & Recovery: Cheryl Gricoski’s Experience Navigating Life’s Challenges As A Veteran & Spouse · Untold Valor: Veterans Recovery in Action

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Voice and Vision, bringing help, hope and healing to individuals, families and communities affected by mental illness, addictions and disabilities In Southeastern Pennsylvania.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: financial support for this podcast is provided by a Veterans Trust Fund grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Untold Valor, a podcast with a unique focus on veterans, featuring stories of courage, recovery, perseverance and strength.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Listen to hear veterans share their perspectives on what it's like to battle mental health challenges, combat addictions and overcome other adversities unique to those who have served.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Welcome into another edition of Untold Valor, where we share stories from military professionals and personnel and talk about just the struggles that can be faced during and after a time in the service.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: And we've got a great story and a great guest.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: this week on the podcast, We're going to be talking with Cheryl Greikowski, who is going to be sharing her time, her experience, not only as a veteran herself, but also the struggles from being the spouse of a military personnel.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: So we're going to have Cheryl come in and share some stories with us as well.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: And Reverend Ben is here.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Reverend Ben, how are you, my friend?
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: Good morning.
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: I'm fantastic, i'm glad to be here for another episode of Untold Valor so we can share a message of hope to other veterans today.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Absolutely Well, let's go ahead and bring our guest in, Cheryl.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: welcome in.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: How are you?
• 1:29
  Speaker 5: I'm doing fine, thank you.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being here and sharing some time with us here on Untold Valor, And we always kind of kick this off very simply with tell us a little bit about yourself and your time in the service and things of that nature, and then we'll move through your story.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: So take it away.
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: Okay, well, i am a Cheryl Greikowski, a 67-year-old widow at the time.
• 1:53
  Speaker 5: I was raised by an alcoholic father who owned an inn and joined the Air Force to get away from that environment.
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: I'm a Vietnam veteran, so I participated in Operation Baby Lift And I was stationed at Travis Air Force Base and I met my husband there and he was a medic on some of the planes that came from Vietnam over with the infants and the refugee families.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: That was the Operation Baby Lift.
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: Yes, gotcha.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: In the 70s.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: And I was quarantined one time for 48 hours in the terminal when some of the refugees had some diseases.
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: So that was the only real traumatic experience I had.
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: My experience in the Air Force was very good.
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: I joined the Air Force to get my college degree in social work, which I did accomplish.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: That's awesome, fantastic.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: So obviously you served in your time in the military and had a good experience there, and you said you met your first husband, correct, robert?
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, and really that's where we're going to focus on some of the story today, because that's when the mental health struggle started to kind of come into play, correct?
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: Yes, my first husband was very involved in being a medic in Vietnam, as well as a desert shield and desert storm, so he experienced a lot of trauma.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: He saw things that he could not verbalize or tell me, but it came out in nightmares at night and one time he grabbed me by the throat and was going to punch me in the face and I kept saying, robert, wake up, cheryl, i'm your wife.
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: He just had a lot of flashbacks, a lot of depression and a lot of pulling away from the family.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I got you And Reverend Ben, that's something that certainly you can relate to with your time in the service, as well as the medic.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: That experience is something that is engraving your memory, and saw things that you don't even see on TV, so I can truly relate to that, cheryl.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes, he was a manly man, so he didn't want to go to counseling, and our marriage suffered as he grew more and more distant from me and the family.
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: He spent a longer and longer time away from home, hunting, fishing, um, drinking with his buddies and then eventually, uh, finding other women to comfort him.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and sadly that's that's an issue a lot of times for you know, married personnel, military veterans, is is not getting the the help that you need.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: And to your point, you said he was, you know, kind of doing that manly man thing where it's like I'm not going to ask for help.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the great things we about sharing the stories that we do here on the podcast we've had so many different walks of life on here is that you know, getting help is essential to getting healthy right And being able to fix yourself and not only just yourself but the family.
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: And then, because of the stress of the marriage, uh, because of the lies, the lack of sleep, um, i did become uh psychotic and I had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized under a 302.
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: And, uh, actually, that was really when my healing began, you know when, i could share my story of you know my marriage and the stress that I had, and that was the beginning of the healing, but it was a long journey.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah Well, i think often, you know, sometimes we, we can't see the things when we're in them, right, and sometimes we have to be kind of removed from it And uh, i see that you had kind of put here on your bio as we were chatting, that you kind of really feel like you know, sometimes the just the psychological response on one side really is detrimental to the other side, and I again, so often that goes overlooked.
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: And then sometimes you know the family doesn't get counseling right.
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: But, um, i chose to get counseling for for myself and we had a little bit of marriage counseling.
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: But every time the counselor wanted to focus on his service related trauma.
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: You know he, he stopped going.
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: You know he just could not, could not go there.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Reverend, we've talked with other other people before that.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: that's sometimes.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: that's the big struggle for military personnel The the stigma of asking for help makes you weak, kind of thing right, absolutely, absolutely.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: Uh, cheryl, i can truly relate to that And, like um Mark has just said, other veterans have uh relate the same uh feelings toward that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: However, cheryl, i'm glad that you put something up when you said that when you began to receive treatment and ask for help, you began to feel better.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: That's what the message we want veterans to hear today That it will ask for help And we make the first step.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: transparency and disclosure is the first key to recovery.
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: Exactly, and I was put on medicine and it took a while to find the right one.
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: So don't give up when the first medicine has a lot of side effects.
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: Keep looking.
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: And now I'm on a great medicine that works for me and my body.
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: And then I also turned to the Lord for with a Christian counseling and, uh, ladies, bible studies and support groups for depression Yeah, that was I mean.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: So that's great How you kind of overcame those personal battles, right?
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Uh, so obviously not going through the process enough.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: I'm assuming that the marriage ended.
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: Yes, after 35 years we finally got a divorce.
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: My pastor said he had mentally left me a long time ago and then he was living with another woman.
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: So you know I was allowed to, or you know I encouraged that I could get a divorce because I did not believe in divorce.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: And so that's I mean that's a real challenge.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: that again many you know families phase It's, it's not just the experience.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Uh, you know, here, here you have two people, both you and Robert, who both served different experiences, clearly, and then different results on how it affected you.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Uh, and it seems as though you know, some of the mental trauma that you went through really was more, uh, kind of the side effect of his versus your own experiences.
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: Right, and you know how I handled it.
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: You know I internalized.
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: It was my fault that he was growing distant from me.
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: It was, you know.
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: And then the lack of sleep.
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: I definitely say that plays a big portion.
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: When you're not sleeping, that messes up your, your brain and how you handle things.
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: For sure?
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Well, so tell us a little bit about the transition then.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: So you know, you got divorced after 35 years, which you mentioned, and you continued to kind of go on your own personal healing journey.
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: Yes, finally, the stress of trying to mend the marriage was over And I had to stand on my own two feet.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: I was codependent on him, you know.
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: So I got my CDC certificate to go back into childcare and I was hired as a preschool teacher, continued with my counseling and support groups, and then the Lord introduced me to a man of integrity and honesty And he built me up and encouraged me And he said he could not even picture me being in a mental institution.
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: You know, like what he saw in me was a strong woman who served in the Air Force and had courage to.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: You know, stay with the marriage.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: That's awesome though that we eventually finding and you know, i think that relates a lot in a way to well it's, you know, not marriage, but certainly one of the things that the team does so well here with untold valor and computer chorus, is just really finding people to.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: You know, a positive influence in someone else's life can make all the difference.
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: Exactly So.
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: In November of 2018, the Lord suddenly took my second husband home And so he died, and that was a shock.
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: But I joined a support group, greaves chair, and now I'm hosting about 20 other widows in my home every other Saturday And you know we're turning to the Lord and doing Bible studies and you know reaching out, you know to get our strength and hope from him.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Reverend Ben, that's very similar to you in a lot of ways.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: It sounds like.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely And sure.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: As I'm listening to you, i see you have a dual experience, as you are also a veteran and a wife of a veteran, so that's a double whammy there.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: But I just want to say your resilience is awesome, very resilient, and that's what we need to be as veterans.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: You know we need to be resilient And also, at the same time, we need to know that we do have a higher power.
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: Some choose to call him God, some people choose to call him whatever, but I choose to call him God And that has helped me so much, tremendously through my struggles with mental health, addictions, afflictions and the same things that my PTSD.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: God was the key for me, and spirituality, spiritual healing, was very essential.
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: I really focused a lot of my time in Psalms, and Psalms 138 and 139 just assured me that God knew my struggles.
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: He knew me inside and out, when I didn't, and he went before me, went behind me and is with me daily.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: You know, cheryl, one of the again, the big thing that we try to do here on the podcast is really share these stories to highlight for others who maybe are struggling, maybe can't figure out exactly the right path for them to get going.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: And that's where that message of positivity comes through for folks like yourself who have gotten there right, you know so any message you'd like to share or any kind of thoughts.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: As you know, when you're struggling with mental health issues, you know what to do, what to find within yourself, anything you'd like to share that way?
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: Well, i definitely turn to God and trust in him to give you the strength and courage to live your life.
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: And if you're in a hard place right now and you're struggling and you don't see any way out, it's a season, it's just a short time, if you keep your eyes on the Lord and you know, keep getting counseling that God does restore, he heals and he loves us and forgives us.
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: And it's like the read that's broken.
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: you know I was like a broken read and God put the read back together and now I'm stronger than ever before and helping other you know widows going through grief and tragedy.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: And veterans, I would like to say that veterans, listening in, that you know, when we begin to help one another is how we get stronger.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: She said, you know, cheryl said, when she began to care for others, her load got lighter.
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: So let's, let's remember we are still brothers and sisters in green.
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: Yes, Our widows group.
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: We collect for Christmas.
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: We collected um toiletry bags.
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: We made them and sent them to the Cotesville Veterans Association.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: We did that and um you know we help.
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: You know the veterans because I was at Cotesville getting treatment and help.
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: So my widows group, that's a passion in my heart, so my widows group has reached out to them and and help them.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Well, cheryl, as we get ready to wrap this up, anything else you'd like to share, feel free.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Also, i'd just like to ask you know if, if you have a message to share with not maybe just even just veterans, but spouses who might be listening to this of veterans, you know if they're struggling, you know any words of encouragement or thoughts on how to pull themselves, uh, from you know from this these kind of turmoil times?
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: Yes, um, you know, many times the traumatic spouse veteran projects his inadequacies and stuff on the other spouse, and so if the veteran that has trauma will not get counseling, please get counseling for you and your family.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: Sometimes the Lord restores and sometimes the Lord separates, and you know life goes on.
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: So just follow the Lord and he will lead you.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Rorynn Ben, anything else from uh, from your side things this week.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, cheryl, i just want to just again thank you for your um sharing your story and your experiences.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: I'm sure some veteran listening will be touched but, like I said, we want to just relay a message to whole to veterans.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: Yes, those veterans that are walking around right now that are feeling spiritually bank rocked, those veterans walking around right now but they're not in the middle of your gut, you know what I'm talking about?
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: Yes, you have it, you can be set free.
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: Yes, the message we want to promote today is we can be set free.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: Yes, indeed.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's you know.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: That's again the why so many organizations are out here to try to help veterans, uh, just like the, the folks of voice and vision, and, of course, if you need some help, reach out to them.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: We're going to have all that information popping up here in just a second as we wrap up the podcast.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: So make sure that you have those conversations, do something for yourself and reach out to so many of the great organizations all around the area, like computer, computer core and voice and vision and, uh, veterans associations, veterans affairs.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Just get yourself some help, take the time to do something for yourself or your loved one as well.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: So, thank you so much for your time here on Untold Valor.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Cheryl, thank you so much, and Reverend Ben thank you, as always.
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: And we'll be back with another episode coming up on Untold Valor.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and we'll see you next time.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: You've been listening to Untold Valor by Voice and Vision.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: We hope you found the information and resources discussed today helpful, as always.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: thank you for listening and for your support.
• 16:29
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• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Don't forget to visit the website VoiceandVisionorg that's VoiceandVision-I-N-C-dot-org where you can sign up for our blog and find free resources and information on upcoming events, webinars, workshops and get support.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: You can also access our free help and hope guide for individuals and families struggling with substance use and addiction.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: If someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help, because you and your life matter.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Remember, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available to you at any time by dialing 988.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: We are all ambassadors of hope and recovery And if you want to share your story, please contact us.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: Compure Core is also looking for veteran mentor volunteers and veteran participants.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: To find out more information about Compure Core, please call 610-541-0790.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: that's 610-541-0790.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: You can find all the links and contact information for the resources mentioned on today's episode by checking the description and the show notes section of your app.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Thank you again for tuning in and for your support, until next time.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: this has been Untold Value.