The Soldier’s House
Our nation’s veterans have given us the ultimate gift: our freedom. When they return home to Fremont County, their journey of reintegration—from warrior to civilian—is often as challenging as the service itself. At The Soldier’s House, we believe no veteran should have to walk that path alone.
For over a decade, we have been a sanctuary for local heroes, providing free, confidential mental healthcare, and addressing issues related to food and housing insecurity. We are not a clinical institution; we are a community-driven organization that operates out of a restored Wyoming farmhouse—a symbol of the hard work and care required to rebuild a life.
I am grateful for this opportunity to give a report of what has been going on at The Soldier’s House this past year. Some stories are easy, and some are harder. A hallmark of all interactions with local veterans is to protect the confidentiality of our work together, so sharing specifics and stories can sometimes be a challenge. My role in the organization has been that I am one of the founders, now a board member, and am the volunteer therapist providing about four hours a week of free, confidential psychotherapy. In this last function the clients are officially clients of my practice, Wind River Family Therapy, and all records and responsibilities for the client are handled through my practice. I had an opportunity to work with a very gifted young veteran who was in crisis. The story unfolded quickly and intensely, and dangerously. I found myself in new terrain, and quite impacted by the events over a 48-hour period. In the hindsight of the past weeks, I have come to believe this was an important event for you to be aware of as it is a part of what we do at TSH, and I think it is important and beneficial work. At the same time I think we must generalize the facts and protect the confidentiality of the individual. So this is about what happens and how we support veterans, not about an owned experience of a fellow human being.
What did we do this year at TSH? We provided free psychotherapy. We worked closely with a Lander financial institution, a local lawyer, and a donor to secure a veteran’s home from foreclosure and help him take ownership of the property. We had a local builder build a “Little Pantry” for us, and we have been socking it. We grew vegetables and distributed them to veterans in the Peace Garden that is entering its second phase of construction this Spring. We have brought on four new exciting board members. We participated in C4C for our third year, and have continued to expand our fund raising efforts, clarifying a goal that 80% for funds raised goes to veteran programs and we limit our overhead and administrative costs to 20% of our budget. This is a challenging commitment and will require our fundraising to increase significantly should we hope maintain consistent administrative support. We helped a Lander veteran procure his next support animal. We have worked with CWC to involve students in veteran issues and encourage them to participate in programs such as the up coming Vietnam Veterans Memorial day at the Military Vehicles Museum. And we helped support a very challenged veteran to navigate a very challenging life situation to avoid suicide and possible homicide and gain entry into a VA residential program for his PTSD. I will here share a synopsis of the event and how it unfolded.
An infantry veteran had a life crisis over the holidays that brought him to a suicidal state that lasted some twelve hours and he was lucky to have some very caring and courageous friends, and to have alerted them such that they were able to support his safety through that time period. Having survived that, he was encouraged to reach out to me through The Soldier’s House. It took some time but eventually he did reach out, and we began to visit.
We met about half a dozen times, working to establish trust and respect. Then the life issues resurfaced for him, and he seemed to find himself thrust into a highly reactive, lonely place where he stated “everyone has betrayed me”. This is striking as this individual’s support system was quite good, especially as compared to what I often see. But our past relational experiences can often override our current realities.
The veteran had now lumped me into this group of people betraying him. We were scheduled to meet, but he cancelled that. At the same time one of the friends reached out to me, the friend had seen the veteran driving fast out of town and suspected he was in trouble, he thought the veteran was planning to take his life and do so in a suicide by cop manor if necessary. At this point what I could offer is limited. I was concerned for the friend’s safety, and advised he alert the sheriff’s office. As this friend of the veteran was the son of a friend of mine I soon received a call from the father who was scared for his son and was out of town. I reluctantly offered to go to where they were headed and see if I could help, so I began driving up to see what I could find, assuming the police had been called.
The experience of the drive out of town hoping to keep my friend’s son out of harm’s way was unique to me. The element of being willing to involve law enforcement with taking one’s own life is so provocative and morally repugnant. In the end I never found anyone. As I drove back into town, I called my friend’s son, he had found the veteran, and was able to talk him down and had him back at the veteran’s house. The veteran was very inebriated.
The next twenty-four hours we spent working to help get the veteran into an appropriate treatment setting. This was primarily achieved by the friends of the veteran with some coaching from me. The veteran willingly entered the treatment program and as of this writing is still there.
Please understand that sharing this story in this format is extremely out of the ordinary for me. I am making a strong effort to keep the events generalized and unspecific to help protect the confidentiality of the veteran. At the same time, I think it is extremely important that we, as a caring community, are aware of the types of incidences and struggles that we all are at times forced to work with. I especially apricate the aspect of this story that does not involve any one being physically harmed. We were very lucky. Courageous friends, a will to live and move out of crisis, and from my perspective good fortune in this case. Too often these stories end in tragedy. This story is not over nor is it unique. I am certain there are similar stories out there both evolving and sometimes tragically concluded. For this veteran, he is in a therapeutic program, will complete that, and I hope will be supported going forward with what is next. Should I have the honor to be involved in that work I truly hope to be able to.