Coming Home: An outsider in your own life

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Lynn Bartell goes through her evening stretch routine with son Jacob as husband Sgt. Chris Bartell hangs out with their son Steel on Oct. 29 in their base house at Fort Drum, N.Y. Months before Chris deployed, the Bartells found out that Jacob has muscular dystrophy.


Coming Home: An outsider in your own life
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, February 19, 2009

In the beginning, it’s easy.

"Beer, sex and pizza — that’s the first order of business," when troops return home from combat, said social worker Susan Watkins.

"The first week or so is like the honeymoon. That’s a normal part of coming home. But then you start noticing … so many things," said Watkins, who works with returning Afghanistan and Iraq veterans at the Mid-Atlantic Mental Illness Research, Education & Clinical Center, or MIRECC, at the Durham, N.C., Veterans’ Affair Medical Center. "That picture you had — it’s just not the same.

"Everyone has some difficulty with adjustment. Coming home is harder than going."

For soldiers of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division who spent 14 months in Iraq, life does not magically pick up where it left off when they return home, experts say. Instead, there are changes to deal with — physical, psychological, relational — in the family and in the soldier. There is often grief, loss, survivors’ guilt, changes in the family dynamic and idealized family images shattered by reality.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60807%2e