Welcome!!!

Hi, My name is Stacy Hess. I am a wife and a mother.  I have two children a boy age 10 and a girl age 12.  I have been married for almost 14 years to the love of my life.  Just a few years ago my husband decided to leave his lucrative job to pursue his dream of serving in the armed forces.  So in 2009 my husband joined the US Army.  Just recently he served a tour in Afghanistan it was his first deployment.  It was a very stressful and lonely deployment for him.  You see I have some major medical problems due to a car accident and so my life is limited.  Because of this he was constantly worried about the kids and I which made his job there harder than it should have been.  Toward the end of his deployment things were getting worse at home and finally he snapped.  He was sent home early to recoup but he never did.  The man who came home to me was not the same man who left me almost a year earlier.  He was short tempered, couldn't sleep, always on edge, would freak out in a store, kept to himself,  and couldn't control his moods.  It really hurt our marriage and almost destroyed us. I begged him to seek help and that is when he was diagnosed with PTSD.  But like most men he claimed it was wrong he was fine, though those of us that knew him knew he wasn't.  I had always wanted to start my own business and I was preparing to start a non-profit organization for the military anyway but after seeing how little help there is out there for spouses and family of soldiers with PTSD I decided to focus my group on helping those like me.  I felt so alone and didn't know where to turn.  I couldn't truly understand what he was going through and it made things worse when I would yell at him for being a jerk yet in his mind he thought everything was okay.  I don't want other families to go through that.  It broke my kids hearts and though he would never hurt them they grew afraid of him.

I have found that PTSD is very common among soldiers and in a majority of them it goes untreated.  Like most mental  illnesses it makes them feel like less of a human to admit that they need help.  I've also noticed a stigma attached to having PTSD.  These men are looked at differently so most of them won't seek help to avoid being labeled by the army and the world around them.  I am hoping that this group will serve two purposes the first to help educate people about PTSD and the second to help wives who are struggling through this and feel like they have no place to turn.  I am hoping this group will give them a place to connect with other spouses and families to know that they aren't alone.  To give them strength to get through the hard times.