Generosity

During this season, you will have many choices for how to direct your giving. We encourage you to invest in the proven, nationally recognized approaches of the Coming Home™ Project. Simply put, Coming Home's™ optimal healing environments rebuild the connections that war trauma can unravel: within our nervous systems, hearts and minds, with peers, family members, and communities. In just four years, our residential retreats have served over 2,500 from 45 states, at no cost to participants and without government support. Over 2 million have downloaded our training videos.   
 
Your contribution is fully tax deductible. If you are a federal employee, you can make a pre-tax contribution through the Combined Federal Campaign. Coming Home's™ CFC number is 52393.
Or you can simply click here. Thanks. 

11-11-11 Benefit!
 
Our 11-11-11 Benefit is quickly approaching, and it's sure to be an incredible event.  Come support our veterans by joining us for an art auction, art show, and a concert at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley.  The benefit will also feature an art workshop for veteran and civilian families that utilizes the same innovative creative techniques pioneered at our retreats.  

Click here for a flyer for the benefit, and help spread the word!

November Equine-Assisted Workshop

The Coming Home™ Project and the Presidio Riding Club are holding their second workshop on November 20th utilizing Equine-related approaches to wellness.  The first workshop back in August was very well received and we're looking forward to building on this work through this 11/20 event.  Join us in the Marin Headlands as we experience new pathways to healing in the company of these beautiful animals.

Click here for more information.

Partners in Integration

Come join me for a workshop at the Esalen Institute entitled Partners in Integration: Spiritual Practice and Emotional Growth.  Proceeds will benefit Coming Home™ Project programs for returning veterans and family members.  Running from December 2-4, this workshop will help us harness the deep connections between spirit and psyche, as we come together for a worthy cause and enjoy good food and healing hot springs in beautiful Big Sur, CA.  
 
Click here for a flyer to this event, and directions on how to register.

Mind Zone

Check out a documentary in progress on the  experience of a Combat Stress unit currently  in Afghanistan, and the challenges they face in providing psychological care in this warzone.  You can help support the completion of this important work. 

Plays Well with Others

I recently attended a laudable roundtable intended to develop relationships between a branch of our military and community-based organizations. We read a lot these days about the importance of public-private partnerships. But in reality these are not common and not easy to accomplish. None of us can do it ourselves and there is no operational manual. Some would even say that there is a stigma at play within some organizations about "needing" assistance that is just as powerful as the stigma many service members struggle with about asking for help.  

The participation of the corporate sector and the cooperation of all parties is critical. Playing together in the sandbox is something we learned in kindergarten. Or did we? "Joining forces" is not a desirable ideal; it is a necessity for the health and wellbeing of our remarkable service members, veterans and their families and providers.

The Costs of War

It takes a community to welcome home our troops and veterans, especially when we come face to face with the enormous costs of the longest wars in our country's history.  Read this article about the rising costs associated with veterans' mental health treatments, and visit www.costsofwar.org for an in-depth look at the wars' consequences in terms of the economy and human lives lost.

Resources

Here are some excellent resources I would like to share with you:

Nancy Berglass' white paper, "America's Duty: The Imperative of a New Approach to Warrior and Veteran Care".

From the Office of Warrior and Family Care of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a white paper entitled "Channeling the 'Sea of Goodwill' to Sustain the 'Groundswell of Support'".

The single most elegant account of the power for community, "The Roseto Mystery", the introduction to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers.

Army Medicine

I have been an Army doctor for 24 years.
Treated and written about Soldiers
fighting, scared, wounded and dead.

I have spent time in the mud in Korea,
eaten sand and hung with camels in Mogadishu,
witnessed the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon.

The litany goes on:
they targeted me in the streets of Baghdad,
later I hung low in a chopper crossing
the sands of Iraq while a harvest moon
hung red and round over the desert.

I write about Soldiers, but I am one too.
Shot at infrequently, more often simply
sick of sandstorms or missing
home and kids or a cold Diet Coke.

Images cross my eyeballs:
the fireballs outside the Pentagon,
taps at Arlington Cemetery,
another burned Iraqi child,

And notes, and smells.
More taps, sweet dung from horses
drawing the caissons of our dead.

- COL (ret) Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, MD, MPH

Sincerely,
 
Joseph Bobrow
Founder
with Jim Hatzopoulos
Coming Home™ Project