I thought, as I found my seat in the convention center in Loveland, that I'd attend a run of the mill training session, get my CE credit, and probably learn enough about the specifics of VA loans that I could feel like I had the qualifications to write/call USAA and ask to become part of their Mover's Advantage program. We had used that several times while Mr S-P was active duty, and it seemed like the perfect way to get valuable leads handed to me. I speak the language of military, and I have devoted a sizable portion of my adult life to supporting servicemembers and their families. It seemed like a great way to get into a niche where I feel I belong. Within five minutes, I discovered at least one of my assumptions was blown. The speaker (a regional manager of Fairway Mortgage whose main office is near Fort Polk, LA) put up a slide of what her training was not -- it was not specific information on originating VA loans, and while later I got a whiff of some of the details I'd been lacking as a professional, I am not any more of an expert than I was while I kept hitting snooze on my alarm this morning. There are a few pages of rules and benefits of VA mortgages in the handout booklet, so I am not completely let down, but I need to devote plenty of time to reading it before I set off boldly to offer my services to USAA.
The second way this differed from my expectations was the manner in which the training was conducted. I expected something like my boss does with the annual update courses, where the state of Colorado gives him slides and expects him to teach the exact material that they want him to cover. This played more (much, much more) like a motivational speaker trying to get us to raise our hands and say yes every time she said trigger phrases. I don't generally enjoy that sort of thing, but I wasn't about to walk out. I still believe this is my niche, and I am going to plow ahead one way or another to plant myself squarely in it. Eventually she started saying things that sent my mind off on tangents that were useful, and I made myself notes based on those inspired wanderings. I have a few good ideas of things to do jotted down.
Right before they broke for lunch, they brought out a Gold Star mom, who gave a speech about her son who died when a helicopter went down, and he and part of his Seal team were on it. It was difficult to hear, having spent twenty years fearing that same sort of door knock, but I had sympathy for her experience, and I was glad that she was touring and sharing her story with the country. Not everyone understands how stressful it is to be part of a military family (in her case, multi-generational), and there were probably a few callous realtors there who were never touched by such fears, realized or not, who needed to hear it.
They set out box lunches, which were of course all sandwiches and wraps, so I sat in the middle of a group of realtors who were chowing down on bread, just hours after I had to watch them all eat donuts. I was at the bottom end of my second cup of coffee, so after a bathroom break, I just texted and made lunch plans for later while I my belly was cranky that there wasn't even a bowl of fruit, much less anything of substance that was gluten free. But I digress.
It was after everyone had eaten that they brought out the big guns. The final speaker was Sean Parnell, a former Army captain whose story made a huge impression on the woman who led the training. She had told us earlier that she requires all of the mortgage officers who work for her to read his book, and she's serious enough that she nearly fired her best friend who procrastinated reading it. I didn't know what to expect when he started to talk, but his candor moved me in ways that took me all day since to digest enough to repeat. He spoke of being an unfocused college student when 9/11 happened, and that was his first inkling that he really was going to join the Army. His family convinced him to finish his degree first, and he went in as a freshly minted second lieutenant. He was so naive, he said, that he showed up to basic training with a hair dryer and styling gel in his suitcase. Eventually he made it to Fort Drum for eight months of training with his platoon before they were shipped off to Afghanistan.
As the Chinook helicopter descended to their forward operating base, he looked at the geography and thought, this is bad. The base is low, surrounded by high ground where attackers would have advantage. No sooner had they gotten off the helicopter than he was proven correct. There were rockets launched over the base from the hills, and the first one landed well outside the perimeter. The attackers marked where it landed, readjusted, and fired the second, landing a tiny bit closer. They did this over and over until they finally struck the base. But in the meantime, local villagers showed up at the gates of the FOB, carrying injured civilians, particularly their children, demanding medical care. (Side note: they demanded their sons be treated first. Save that thought for another day.) This young LT took a little girl who was crying hysterically from her father, and ran for the medical facility with her. Rockets were landing inside the base by this point, and at one point a blast blew him around a little. He felt something warm and wet going down his hip, and he patted himself looking for a wound, and found none. He touched the little girl's leg, and realized that it was missing below the knee. It was then he noticed that she had stopped crying. She had died in his arms, and he had to bring her back to her father. This was his first day in country. His first hour on his base.
This upset me far more than just the story itself. It put me in an unhappy place in my own life. When my husband was deployed to Iraq, and volunteering to help in the trauma center every night after work, I knew he was there, but I only imagined him carrying the stretchers of soldiers who had signed up to be in these battles. I had no idea civilians came into the ERs, and certainly I never imagined that there would be children. When he returned from Iraq, he took a picture of a little preschool boy who sat next to him on an airplane, and after months of separation, I had a flare of jealousy that he had struck up such a conversation with this single woman and her son that the boy was on his lap and he was taking pictures. I was lonely and hadn't seen him in a very long time, and he had kept most of what he had seen to himself. I mean ALL of what he had seen to himself. He said at the time he didn't want me to freak out, but my imagination was worse than anything he could have said. So I imagined boogeymen (or women) around every corner. It wasn't until last year, when he was one foot out the door that he threw this in my face, how angry he was at me at the time and still was. He told me, for the very first time, that this boy was the first uninjured child he had seen in four months. How dare I think that there was anything nefarious about him wanting to see a child smile and play.
I felt shame. I felt his hurt. I felt powerless to help. I felt enraged that he kept that to himself for twelve years, letting it fester, turning me into even more of a villain than he thought I was in the moment.
Something the trainer today repeated over and over was to stop calling PTSD a disorder. Just call it post traumatic stress, and stop there. It's harder for some sufferers to face it if we are labeling it a defect. Anyone can feel stress over horrible events--sudden, fierce ones or long, slow, agonizing situations. Her theory is that if we remove the stigma, we can get more people to seek or accept help. And oddly, we realtors could be the first line of aid. When active duty servicemembers or veterans come back and are looking for places to call home, one of the first friends they might make in a new town (or returning to an old one where they don't feel like they belong after where they have been) is the man or woman who helps them shop for a house. We have the chance to let them talk, about anything and everything they need. We can be the first and maybe the best support at the right time. By the end of the day, I had come full circle. I knew this was where I belonged. I need to be that person, as often as I can. I might pay off a little cosmic debt in the process. But even if that debt from 2004 is never paid off, I can amortize it and make payments until I can't work anymore. This is my niche.
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