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The Story Builders Podcast - The Hidden Cost of Service for Military Women · Moral Injury Support Network Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: We've got Dr Daniel Roberts today.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: He's the president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Dr Roberts, welcome to the show.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Same here, I'm really pumped.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: So we had a great conversation a little while ago and one of the things that really stood out is the work that you're doing, and it's centered around women and service women and, in particular, people that have experienced some form of challenge, and let's maybe just kind of start at the beginning of that.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: So let's start with kind of what you're doing and then we'll start peeling back some layers of like why you're doing it.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the what.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: So what are you up to right now, Dr Roberts?
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so I run an organization you mentioned it Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women, incorporated Long name, but it actually is very descriptive of what we're doing and that's.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Moral injury is when somebody experiences something traumatic that violates their deeply held sense of right and wrong and that can result in some really difficult difficulty coping.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: You know, very related to PTSD.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: In that way, identifying this problem.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: That's not unique to service women, but often is sort of enacted, or the context for service women can be different than for men and other types of context.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: So we recognized there was a need for more research, there was a need to train and educate care providers about moral injury and then there was a need to provide direct support to women that are suffering in some way.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: So we do those three things we conduct research, we provide training and education and then we help service women find that care and support they need to.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: You know, help overcome those challenges, whether they are mental, emotional or physical.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: You know, help overcome those challenges, whether they are mental, emotional or physical.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: You know connecting them with providers that can really help them in some way.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So that's what our organization is about, those three things, and we have a lot of new initiatives we're working at this year some conference that we do every year in September, some other things specifics we do to get after that, which we can talk about if you want, but that's in a nutshell what we're doing.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned the idea of moral injury and it wasn't a term that I was super familiar with until I started looking into it, until we had our conversation, and you know it's one of those things that's like it's there whether you know the name of it or not.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean, and so I guess, for the audience maybe, if they haven't heard of it, can you maybe tell a couple of stories or give a couple examples of how moral injury shows up?
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: What, like what is an example, or a couple examples, of moral injury?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: shows up what like what is an example, or a couple of examples, of moral injury.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so when I I first started the research to really gather the stories and experiences of service women who had, who had experienced, moral injury, my very first interview the woman started out by saying I was forced to have an abortion when I first got to my military police unit, and that was very shocking and surprising to me because this was maybe 20 years ago that this happened, so it wasn't like 1975 or something.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: It was 20 years ago in a military that's supposed to have gained some sensitivity to these sort of things.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So the violation was so deep to her because, just on a lot of different levels, right, that abortion itself is a highly moral issue, but then to be forced to do that by a military commander who's supposed to be, you know, who the military says is there to protect, care for, be a guardian over, that was a very shocking example of what moral injury might look like or how that might happen to a service woman, how that might happen to service women.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: That was just the very beginning and it it ended up being an example of other stories of women who experienced, you know, sexual assault in various ways.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: You know it.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Beyond just that the sexual assault, the forced abortion.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: We also heard, I remember, one woman telling me that she felt that it was just wrong to be a woman in the military.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: In other words, she was treated like there was something wrong with her because she was a woman and she was in the military.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: She would show up to work each day and just be treated like she didn't belong there.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Why was she there?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: She made it difficult for everybody else because they couldn't tell the dirty jokes.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: They couldn't.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: They couldn't, you know, act like the men they wanted to be, and that kind of thing.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: She was weak and all this kind of stuff.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: So the daily sort of having to face that every day in an organization that's supposed to pride itself on, in an organization that's supposed to pride itself on being, you know, having everybody's back, being there for everybody, being a place you can serve your country, a place, an honorable place and all that you know those are.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: You have a high ideal about the military, because that's what you're told the military is, and then you experience something very, very different and that can be hard to cope with, especially if you're told the military is, and then you experience something very, very different and that can be hard to cope with, especially if you're facing that sort of thing every day.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: There's many stories like that, but that's just a couple, I think, to give you some context for what it might be like for a service woman, what moral injury, how it might happen.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's super powerful because it can be like a moment, it can be a thing, a decision, an action, something that happened, or it can be like this kind of death by a thousand cuts, kind of just subtlety, that happens over a longer period of time, and I think that's a really great distinction.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: So it's not like something, some one act happened to you or you were a part of one type of thing.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: You know, it may be kind of multiple things that are on the surface each one not an enormous deal, but all taken together can cause major, major challenges.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious as far as the genesis of this organization, the genesis of the business.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: How did you and anyone else working on this, how did you come to the conclusion that this needs to exist?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: What?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: What started this whole mission, this whole project?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: yeah, it's a great question.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: So I first learned about moral injury from uh, a man named dr harold Koenig who is one of the pioneers in the field of moral injury.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: He's done tremendous amount of work.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: So I was at Fort Bragg at the time Now it's Fort Liberty and at one of the chapels there he was given a class on moral injury I had recently finished my dissertation and on support to women veterans and I heard his class and I realized, you know, we need a lot more research on moral injury related to women.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So I began this moral injury research project and as I was uncovering the details of these women's stories, I realized that care providers don't know this.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: They don't, they don't know this stuff.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Even most psychologists, social workers, chaplains that you talk to if you mentioned the term moral injury, they've never heard that term.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: So I realized that one we need to educate people.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: What I'm finding is, you know, after serving in the military for well over 20 years and spending most of those years in the chaplain corps, I realized like none of my peers other chaplains, et cetera had heard that term or really knew what to do or how to help people.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So that sort of began this passion to to really educate on what I was finding and and how we could make sure women got better care, and so you know when you're, when you're trying to do that kind of that kind of activity.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Right, that's nonprofit work.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: And so, putting together the three things of hey, we definitely need more research, because I was one of the first, if not the very first, to do moral injury research specifically focused on women, the training and education piece.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: And then the first way I decided to try to get after that was to create a conference where we could bring together chaplains, psychologists, social workers and so on to learn about this and to gain some continuing education credit so that they could increase their capability to provide care for these women.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: And that's all nonprofit work, right.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: So that led me to establish a nonprofit organization so we could seek some grants to help us.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: We could do sponsorships, those kind of things to help, you know, build this program, build some programs to help get after the problem.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now I love that.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: You saw something, you saw a challenge, you saw an issue like, hey, these people are underserved, this is under-researched and people are under-educated about this and a lot of people see that stuff every day.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Right, they see it, they write it down in their notebook or they're like man, that's a really good idea, I should do something with that.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And then they just keep going.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: They just keep going about their day.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I wish somebody would do something.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I wish somebody would do something.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: That's a big problem that we have.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: We have a problem with this and then nothing happens.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: I just want to pause and say I really appreciate, dr Roberts, that you took the time to to rally people to this cause, to do that research and to start creating educational resources for people, because one in a hundred, you know and and likely, if this is, if you're the first one to start doing that you know one in many hundreds of thousands.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean at this point.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: So that's it's super impressive that you took that upon yourself as, like you know what.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: No, I'm going to see what I can do to help with this and during our conversation previously, you had talked about what your goal is.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: As far as the experience of the veteran side, of the women that are coming in to this nonprofit to get connected to these resources, and I thought it was really, really powerful.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So I guess walk me through it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: If I'm a female veteran, I've got, or maybe, active service and I've got some sort of moral injury that I've experienced and I'm processing it poorly or I need help with it and I come to missions, and I guess walk me through maybe what I would typically experience going somewhere else, and maybe we'll start there and then walk me through what it's going to be like working with missions.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, um, I think one of the important ways to illustrate what, um, what might happen and what's happened to a lot of women is to tell you the story of, of one of my friends who who works with us now, and she, she, once she heard the term moral injury, she began to look into it and she began to realize that, hey, that's something that I've experienced.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: And so she began seeking care, like through the VA, other organizations, and she found that she would have to tell her story over and over again, like every time she talked to somebody who might be able to help.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: She'd have to relive that whole story and tell all of her background and all that kind of thing and then often be referred.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Well, we can, you know, we can help you a little bit, but we really want to refer you to this provider.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: And so then she'd have to go on her own, find that provider, make contact with them, try to set up an appointment and then, if she got an appointment, tell her story all over again.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: So it's a constant like re-triggering.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Like re-triggering and then like you still haven't got any solutions yet, you're living it in this like nightmare of like it sucks.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: I need to get out of here, yeah.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: So what we're, what we, what our intention is, is that you only tell your story once to us.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: You reach out to us via whether email, phone, the website, tell your, you know we'll, we'll, we'll talk to you, get your information from you, find out what you know, what care you think you need.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Find out, you know, get your story, basically be a case manager for you.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So you're only we're the only organization you have to reach out to, and we'll continue to follow you, follow your care and make sure you're getting the care you're getting, so that a person can tell their story one time.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: They can say to us I experienced this.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: This is how I'm feeling, this is how it's affecting me.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I think I need help in these ways, and we'll begin to journey with you and hold your hand through your journey, getting you the care you need through our vetted care providers that we have partnership or agreements with, and so, on the one hand, the other models that women have had to deal with is like you're on your own, we have all these potential menu items, right, but, but you have to pick.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: You have to even cook your own meals, right In that way, but what we're trying to do is say hey, you're never on your own, we're with you, we're going to partner with you, we're going to hold your hand through it to the extent you want us to help you.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: We're going to be there for you to make sure you get the care you need.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: And so you're not alone on your journey, trying to read the signposts, where they're walking with you, helping you decide what you think you might need.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And that person, that veteran, is always in charge of their own care.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: So there's so much there that I think is absolutely spot on.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: That I think is absolutely spot on People that have either discovered that they've gone through some traumatic experience, because sometimes, kind of like you mentioned, like you research something and you're like, oh, that happened to me, oh, that's not normal and that's not okay.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: There's like some of that that happens.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: But then there's also, like People recognize in the moment, like this is not okay, okay, and and then they have to go and then on their own, figure out who I'm going to get help from, go here, go there, and they have to run it themselves while still processing and being in this state of challenge.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: And I think that's super powerful, because there's so many people that get probably lost in between handoffs, that get lost in between these referrals, like oh, go talk to so-and-so, and they schedule an appointment and they have to cancel because something happens and then this, and then they never get it rescheduled and then they're still kind of floating in limbo and they haven't gotten the help that they actually need.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: And so I love that they get that.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: They get a case manager, they have someone that's going to be connecting them with all these other places, all these other individuals journey, but they always come back to that central point.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: There's always somebody accountable and responsible for their journey, and they only have to tell the story once.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of Amazon, where Jeff Bezos was arguing with his staff and the team was like to buy something, you have to enter in all this information.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: We got to collect all this stuff in order to send it, and he's like I want you to get it down to one click.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: I want someone to see something, click once and then they bought it, which was nowadays, we don't even think anything of it, right, you just buy something.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: But back then, absolutely revolutionary.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: And so he recognized that you can drastically decrease friction, in this case for purchasing, if you can get them to just click on something.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Right, they just click once and then they bought it.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Yay, he makes a lot more money, okay.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Whereas here that same principle applies, though there's so much less friction if that story is just told one time and then they're brought to those people and those providers that are going to be best for them.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: So yeah, dr Roberts, I applaud that.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely brilliant thinking, and you see it in breast cancer institutes and other places too, where they're modifying the typical procedures and experiences, where it's like, cool, go to breast imaging, great, now go home and this, and that you know, and wait for two days and like it's the worst two days of your life, cause you're like, do I have cancer?
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Do I have cancer?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know Right when it's like nowadays you go in and like it's a two hour or three hour process, but you're there the whole time, you're with people the whole time.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean and you're and you're brought through it in a way where you don't feel alone, and I think it's.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It's really critical that you know.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Obviously, with moral injury, that's kind of maybe a new term for people.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else that people are unaware of?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And I guess maybe statistically, how many women are experiencing this or how prevalent is that?
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: How many people need this type of help?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's a great question.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: We don't have super specific research, not just my organization but out there in general, on you know how many women might be suffering from moral injury.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: But based on our estimation, our work, we figure it's at least 25 percent.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: So like one out of four, like one out of four, and you can, when you're talking these kind of, these kinds of numbers, you can almost assume that it's.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: It's probably a lot more than that, because you know one, people don't know how to identify it as that too, With this kind of thing, people aren't talking about it, you know, because one, they don't know what to talk about.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: They haven't heard the term, they're not, they're not sure what's going on with them.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: But it's something big and and and there's just a lack of research.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: It's very difficult when you, when you have a, let's say, say you have something, everybody knows what a broken leg is.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: So if you, if you have a, let's say you have something, everybody knows what a broken leg is.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: So if you're able to survey a whole bunch of people and ask them have you ever had a broken leg, you could get some pretty good numbers, because everybody knows what that is.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: But let's say you were to survey a thousand women and ask them.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: If they've ever been morally injured, You'd first have to explain to 995 of them what that was.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Right, right yeah.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: So.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: So then, even with moral injury, there's no like clearly defined, everybody agrees with it, specific definition of what it is.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: We have some definitions that we're working with, but you know there isn't a way to objectively, but you know there isn't a way to objectively say you know, check off these.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Fill out the survey and we'll know if you have a moral injury or not.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so so we can estimate the numbers are a lot higher.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: But if a woman has been sexually harassed or assaulted, if she's been in an environment where she has been harassed other ways, like gender harassment, that kind of thing, if she's ever felt she doesn't belong, if she's been disrespected, if she's been treated like her voice doesn't count, or if she's a member of the LGBTQ community or non-white you know, dealing with racial kind of things like all those people, anybody who's had any of those things is likely to have experienced a moral injury on some level.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So that's where we say 25% is probably a low number.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: But you know, in research you always try to be conservative because you don't want to.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: You know you're trying to stick with the data that you know.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: But there are millions of women veterans in the United States, so we can figure that hundreds of thousands of them have experienced a moral injury.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: So the numbers are quite staggering when you really think about it.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Now we've been hearing a lot in probably the past few years about suicide rates for service members and former service members and you know are these two issues related?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: I couldn't say for certainty they were, you know, absolutely linked in the sense.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Again, we don't have great research that says the correlation is that it up and seeing that suicidal ideation was very common among them post-moral injury experience, it doesn't really take a leap of faith to say that, hey, people that are suffering greatly in their soul, in their spirit, at a very, very deep level and are feeling, you know, some of the symptoms that we see are like loss of self-esteem, loss of self-identity, mental and emotional crises, all these kind of things, lack of sleep and then physiological changes that occur, disability, that kind of thing.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Those are all people that are very right for suicidal ideation.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: So my guess, my suspicion, is that a vast number of women who have experienced suicidal ideation or who died by suicide, that moral injury was a major factor in that, because it really is such a deep, deep, deep violation of a person.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: It affects them so deeply that it's very difficult to recover from, even with some very nice care, some really trauma-informed kind of moral injury-informed care.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: We're still talking a long road to recovery for most people and so you know it just doesn't take.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: It's not a difficult leap of logic to say that moral injury is at the heart of many, many suicides, if not most many, many suicides, if not most.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's that big of a leap to kind of make that connection and, you know, maybe for you or maybe someone else in the service that can, that could be some of their research that they dive into.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: So I think the the depth and the gravity of what you're working on here is is profound, because you know, like, like we just talked about, right, I mean, this is, these are people's lives, um, and this is it can be really really scary, really intense for many of these people.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I want to kind of spin it to the future for them, and you know they've, they've been morally injured.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: They are now processing it, whether it's poorly or, you know, just figuring it out, and then they realize they need some help.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: You know, can you maybe share a specific example?
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: What does help look like?
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: What does recovery look like?
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: What does getting to a better place look like for these people who have been morally injured?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's a great question and fortunately I have a great news story about that.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: There's a woman who works with us, helps us do some of the research and she says that she's been healed of moral injury.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And just a little bit about her story.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Years and years ago many, many years ago she was working as a public health practitioner in Rwanda and with all the genocide things that were happening and she was in charge for the United States of getting care to these people.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, there was a huge lack of resources and so she had to do what was called reverse triage, which means you know you really only are helping those who you think you can save and unfortunately the rest you have to let perish.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And so she at the time didn't have moral injury as a word for it.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: She learned about it later, but that's what caused her moral injury is just, she had taken this Hippocratic oath to do no harm, yet here she was responsible for people's death.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: That's the way she saw it.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Well, recently, as she was preparing for this moral injury conference we have in September she's one of the speakers there she was working with another speaker who's a licensed counselor on kind of getting their presentations together, and this licensed counselor put her through a responsibility chart.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It's a modality where she said OK, tell me your story and let's figure out to what level of responsibility was yours, what level of responsibility was other people's.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: And so after she worked through that, she realized that only about 5% of it was her fault, her decision, her responsibility.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: She couldn't control the resources, she couldn't control the lack of, she couldn't control what these warlords were doing to other people and so on and so forth, and it was, like you know, a light from heaven opened up and she realized it's not my fault, I've been taking responsibility for all these years for something that wasn't my fault.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And and and she said, I'm healed, I'm cured of it, because now I know that was an unnecessary burden I was carrying.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was very sad, it was very tragic, but it wasn't me that caused these tragedies, and so she's very adamant about that.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: And what we see with moral injury a lot is that it often isn't the person's fault.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: It often isn't the person's responsibility.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: If you're military and you're in a combat zone and you're doing combat things right that you're told to do, you're working from a certain set of information.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: If you realize later that some of the people that died at your hand were innocents but it wasn't your fault because you were told that you know that you were authorized to do and you didn't know the innocents were there and you dropped the bombs or whatever, then then you know you didn't knowingly be part of the death of innocent people and so on.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: So so that is one modality that can work really well, is helping people realize what really was their responsibility and then helping them work through forgiveness, both for themselves, others and all that kind of thing.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Forgiveness is a key part, and so it can be healed, it can be cured, it can be.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: You can get to a much, much better place because forgiveness is always possible, forgiving yourself, others and walking through that piece.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: But it is important to know like Sarah spent years trying to work through this, I think she could have probably worked through it much sooner if she'd have got the care she needed sooner, but she got it when she got it, and so that is a good example.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: There are a number of programs that work with people that are morally injured.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: They're multi-week programs.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: It's not typically something you do in one, two, three sessions, but it's just helping people sort of unravel, unwind, you know, changing the way they think about what happened so that they can, you know, reinterpret it in a way that lets themselves off the hook or even, if they were responsible, somehow, a way to help them find some forgiveness at a deep level.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Because you can really walk around with all this baggage, burden, thinking, you know, with all this guilt for everything we've ever done.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, nobody can live that way.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: So there is help, there is hope.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: It is a process.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: It's not overnight for most people, but it can be.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: You can get to a much better place.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: You can get to a place where you can feel good about yourself, about your life again and have a a joy filled life with the right care and support.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's super powerful and I love the story you just shared.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: And I love the story you just shared and it's interesting because it's, in a lot of ways, a perspective shift and, in a sense, a storytelling shift Is what is the story that we're telling ourselves about?
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: What has happened and in many ways, what has happened is not okay, it was not good, it was not right.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: What happened to most of these individuals that experienced some sort of moral injury?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, there's a lot of that that happens because we live in a flawed and broken world and then we need to figure out what we do from there, and I think what you guys are working on is helping people reframe that narrative, helping people retell that story in a way that gives them back their power, that gives that responsibility to those that are truly responsible and allows them to let some of that burden down and take some of that pain and deliver it where it actually belongs, which is often not living with them constantly.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: So, man, dr Roberts, that's that's super powerful.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Um, and, being a show about stories, you know, I I can't think of a uh, a better type of uh, uh nonprofit to be talking with.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: So you know, looking at your personal story.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: So you you're kind of starting this nonprofit Now.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: You also mentioned that you also have served for 20 years in the military.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about your military journey and what's next for you.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, Thanks.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: I'm coming to the end of a 33-year military career, most of it on active duty, some of it in the Army Reserve but I started off way back in 1989 in the infantry 82nd Airborne Division.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: I did that for 10 years, deployed to Desert Shield, desert Storm, kosovo, haiti, a number of places, iraq of storm Kosovo, haiti, number of places, iraq, that kind of thing.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And then, after 10 years of serving in the military, I wanted to get out and do something different, so I left the active duty army and started going to college and I actually decided I was going to be a minister, I was going to be a pastor, so I started going to school for that.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I was going to be a pastor, so I started to go going to school for that and while pursuing my bachelor's degree at John Wesley College in High Point, north Carolina, 9-11 happened and I realized that, you know, I couldn't sit on the sidelines, I needed to be part of the military effort.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Couldn't sit on the sidelines, I needed to be part of the military effort, but I didn't want to because of my family situation.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Different things.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Going back on active duty, going back to the 82nd in the infantry, wasn't the right fit for me, so I continued to go to school.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I joined the Army Reserve and I became what's known as a chaplain assistant, and that's an enlisted person who helps.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Chaplains, you know, provide care to soldiers.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: And so I continued my bachelor's degree, then got my master's degree and did some mobilizations while I was at it and finally ended up with my doctorate degree.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Around 2016 is when I finished that.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: And so while I was pursuing these degrees, I was also in the Army Chaplain Corps providing care for soldiers, counseling and helping them through all the difficulties, whether it was suicide or sexual assault, survival or even.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I even remember one of my favorite stories was a young soldier.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: He was an Army Reserve soldier but he he was still sort of connected to some friends back home and they were bringing him and they were still into drugs and stuff.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: He had left that, but he would go home on leave or something and he would get back into it, and so the commander found out about it and of course, that's grounds for being kicked out of the army, especially if you're a young soldier.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: But the commander said go talk to the chaplain.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: And so he came and talked to me, were able to get him the help he needed and the commander was also very compassionate person, and so we got him the help he needed, and the commander was also a very compassionate person, and so we got him the care.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: He ended up being not only getting away from drugs but becoming a soldier of the year.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: He went to school, I mean, he totally turned his career around and started having the career he really wanted to have, and that was because the commander was compassionate enough to to send him to the chaplain's office.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, we don't.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: We're there to help and support, and so you know, my job was to get him the care he needed and he and he ended up thriving after that.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: So so my career for the last 20 plus years has been about that helping soldiers and families recover and find, you know, wellness and health.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: And so this what I'm doing with Moral Injury Support Network, it's just a continuation of that.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And now we of course, bring in other things.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: We have all kinds of people on the team besides chaplains.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: We have about 10 chaplains who are always standing by to help people, but we also have public health practitioners and psychologists.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: We have life coaches on a desire to help those who who are underserved, um, and applying it in a way that, um, you know to a broader audience than maybe just you know my work in the Army Reserve.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: So I retire in a couple of months uh, retire, you know, completely from the Army in a couple of months, and I'll be devoting a lot more time and effort to this organization and looking to continue to grow it.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Grow the care we provide, grow the research we're doing, grow the staff so that we can do even more and operate even bigger.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: At last year's conference, we had presenters and attendees from Australia, new Zealand, the UK, canada, the US, so we want to continue doing that, continue to expand the net around the world, because everybody's dealing with moral injury.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what country you're, in, what language you speak, whatever, and so the opportunities are huge, the potential is is amazing, and I'm looking forward to really devoting a lot of uh, a lot of effort, a lot more effort to that.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Um, now it great.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: I already have a great staff of people, so it doesn't rely just on my ability to get things done.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: I have a great staff of people, some who are retired from the military, and so they are very devoted and working hard and they're smart enough.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: They can do a lot without me, which is great.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not the bottleneck.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they can just thrive in their brilliance.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Do what you do.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: So look into transition to wrapping up here is obviously as a nonprofit.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: You know funding and help and support and you know referring people that need help is super critical for the mission, for what you're up to and for, ultimately, for people to get the service and the help that they need.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I guess for you, dr Roberts, if you wanted to leave our audience with kind of one last thought or one last story, what would you want to share with them?
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Kind of one last thought or one last story?
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: What?
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: would you want to share with them?
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, there.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: I think what I can leave audiences with is the first step is really kind of getting some education, some understanding about what moral injury is and how it you know how it might be affecting you or somebody else.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: If you're a care provider, then it's really important to understanding what is this, and because once you get a sense of what it is, then you go oh, I can think of four or five clients that I had before that were probably suffering from this.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I just didn't know it, and so we provide resources for that.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: If you go to our website, MISNSorg, or you can just look up Moral Injury Support Network, it should come up on the top.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: But you can subscribe to the website, it doesn't cost you anything.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Our annual moral injury support, our annual volume called Moral Injuries Research, discussions and Recovery Methods, for free and we just published volume three and so if you subscribe to that, you get that volume for free delivered to your door in a paperback and you can begin to really read and understand what this is, and that's a great starting point.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: If you're suffering in some way from some military experiences you had, you can just call us at 910-701-0306, and we'll reach right back to you, we'll talk to you and we'll help you take the next step.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: So you don't have to sort all this out for yourself.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: You can just go to our website and that has tons and tons of information, ways to connect to us and all kinds of things, and our senior executive officer, jamie Peer.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: That's how she found us.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: That's how she became part of us.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: She heard about moral injury and she looked up I need I think I'm morally injured, I need support.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: She literally Googled moral injury support network and we came up and then she called me and we had some great conversations and she told me her story and not only did think I helped her, but she said I think I need to be involved in this work, I think I need to help other people like me.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: And so we began to talk and over a couple of months of talking, I realized, hey, I need a leadership partner.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: She's a retired lieutenant colonel.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: She's very successful in her own right both both in the military and a business owner.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: And so I said, hey, I'd love to have you join the leadership team and be a partner with me, help me, you know, take this organization forward.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: And that's what she's done and I'm very, you know, proud of her and what we've been able to do.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: A lot of it is because of her influence.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: She's a brilliant person and so, you know, sometimes that can be it too.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: People say, hey, I want to get help, but also want to help others, and there's always ways that we can.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: We can, you know, enable people to volunteer and support and help.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: So, you know, enable people to volunteer and support and help.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: So that's fantastic, dr Daniel.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So, looking at you, know all the ways that people can get involved.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: They can, they can refer a friend, they can themselves reach out, get some of the help that they need, and obviously there's opportunity to serve as well, to be helped and to help others, and in my opinion there's.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: There's nothing better than once you've worked your way through something or gotten some improvement somewhere is turning around and helping somebody else with it.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Um, I think that's super, super powerful, um.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: So, dr Roberts, I really appreciate you coming on the show.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate you just sharing about moral injury.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Um, I'm sure that's kind of a newer phrase for many on the show, just like you've talked about.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: You know, you talk to a hundred people, 95 of them, 99 of them never heard of it even though they've experienced it, and so you know, hopefully this has kind of created some more awareness and hopefully opened some conversations and some doors for other people.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed talking with you and I'm looking forward to having people reach out to us so we can we can help them and educate Absolutely.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you very.