Here is a glimpse into my experience working with a wounded warrior last weekend and a snapshot into what will be a story line within a documentary film:
“War is a terrible thing,” he says quietly and with effort. Brit’s empty gaze is cast downward as if watching a distant fire within his memory, “I used to be…you know, what’s the word…bubbly….before the military…everyone used to say so.” For former Corporal Burness Brit, words come slowly and his cadence lacks a touch of expression. He barely survived an IED while leading a patrol through a poppy field in southern Afghanistan. He took a step and heard a “Pfffssst” sound. There was a momentary pause and then an explosion in which he could not protect himself against a piece of shrapnel that severed a main artery in his neck. While being medevaced to a nearby field hospital, he nearly bled out. Incredibly, an embedded photo-journalist captured this with her camera just minutes after it happened. See below for the link to the article.
Nearly five years later, Brit sits on a bench at Studio Bamboo in Virginia Beach, VA. He is ready to do yoga with me and his teacher of four years Ann Richardson. Brit is the survivor of a traumatic brain injury, a massive stroke (that occurred during subsequent surgeries), and severe PTSD. He has quite an indent on the left side of his head where they tried to rebuild his skull. He is significantly paralyzed on the right side of his body. Brit lives in very rural South Carolina in a recently built house of the edge of his family’s property. He eyes still bubble with light-hearted mischief when he is not remembering.
Brit has memories that interfere with his present and make it difficult for him to imagine a future. He has struggled in public places. A baby screeching at a restaurant, a car alarm going off in the parking lot, an piece of silverware hitting the floor – all of these unexpected sounds are enough to flash the violent warrior across Brit’s face and nearly send him diving to the floor.
Brit lets me ‘inside’ of his experience. He tells me that he has trouble sleeping. I ask him if he has hard dreams. He tells me of a young boy and his father back in Afghanistan. He cannot give the details. I do not need them. Whatever they are, they still injure him. Brit dreams about this boy many times a week. They meet him in combat, in a mall, at his house, at a birthday party, or on a street corner. I wonder if the boy represents Brit’s innocence. Later he tells me that he is not a killer. A few more moments pass and he says, “I love fighting. I love being a Marine.” He sits in this paradox as he keeps trying to come home from Afghanistan for the last five years.
He says he needs to go outside for a cigarette. His darkness is beyond my moral judgment, way beyond any righteous yogic sensibilities. I go with him and watch him quietly honor the distance he carries within himself – between that poppy field and this sidewalk, between the fighting Marine he identifies with and this gentle, giant of a man in front of me.
We go back inside to do yoga. My idea is to help him ground through his body as he travels through his past. His PTSD injury has landed in the subtle part of his mind-body relationship…into the intangible spaces that he cannot control. I tell him that perhaps the boy in his dreams is there to help him heal. “Let the boy be in the room with us while we practice,” I say. “You need to let him go for your sake as well as his. He deserves it.” Brit looks at me with new hope. We keep working. I tell him, “The shrapnel is in your past. Your body is safe in the present. You don’t need to protect against it anymore.” We continue to practice yoga together. Brit and I are building the airplane as we fly it. We are both in unknown territory…we are doing the best we can and we are doing it together. That’s all we can do.
Who knows what will last. The next day Brit tells me he had no dreams the night before. Just now while writing this, I got a report through Ann from Brit that he slept for thirteen hours straight last night – that never happens.
My takeaway from my time with this wounded warrior: Healing is beautiful and it’s not only Brit that healing.
Here is the link to the article about Brit’s experience:
Here is a link to the Director of the in-progress documentary film Andrew Walton: