Battle won by more than my love could give

More than my love could give
PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
April 8, 2018

"Combat should never be easier than coming home to you!" Kathie Costos

For The Love of Jack, His War My Battle originally published in 2003 because I tried to warn people about what was coming into their lives. PTSD! It was republished in 2013 because too many thought their love alone would be able to heal them. 

Love has to be strong enough to do whatever it takes to help them heal! Stop making excuses for what you fail to do. We lose more after combat than we do during it. Wars end and they come home but that battle lasts a lifetime! We have to be trained to win it for them!

The battle to save the lives of combat veterans is not lost and it is not new. 18 veterans and more than one active duty service member take their own lives each day. More attempt it. Kathie Costos is not just a Chaplain helping veterans and their families, not just a researcher, she lives with it everyday. Combat came home with her Vietnam veteran husband and they have been married for 28 years.She remembers what it was like to feel lost and alone.Everything you read in the news today about PTSD is in this book originally published in 2002 to serve as a guide to healing as well as a warning of what was coming for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

 I did not set out to do this work for all these years. All I wanted to do was help my husband see himself through my eyes. To see all the qualities I saw so strongly in him, that I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

Once I knew what PTSD was, I knew my love alone was not enough to help him. It never is, but if you love them enough, then you have to do whatever it takes to fight this battle when they come home to you.

You have the tools but you need to learn how they work or you'll stay stuck in the ditch of despair.

When you want to go someplace you have never been before, you get directions on how to get there. Think of this that way. This is a road map of getting around road hazards so you can find short cuts to get there.

It took a lot of years for me to be able to do this, but just as cell phones replaced road maps, getting where you want to go doesn't have to be done the old way. It just started by older people who cleared the road!

Kathie Costos DiCesare
Published on Apr 8, 2018
Why is combat less dangerous than coming home to us? That is the question I have been asking for over 3 decades. How is it they train to do their jobs, but we do not train to fight for them when they come home to us? They do their jobs. Why aren't we doing our jobs for members of our own family? If you ran out of excuses but did not run out of love, listen to someone who have been in this fight and won!