The time I soft-launched my veterans support group because I was afraid I can't make it work

And why the transition from military to civilian life is so #$%@ hard

Does anybody really know what the $#%@ they're doing? I sure don't think I do...

On March 1st, I very quietly started building a veteran’s support group on Mighty Networks. I chose Mighty over something like a Facebook group, because it offers much more functionality, and because I have full control over the community and I don’t have to worry about anyone going to Facebook jail if we use words that their overlords don’t approve of.

jk Zuckerberg if your Facebook AI is monitoring this… you know I fully support your enforced standards… 😁

But for real…

It does offer me a lot of features that Facebook doesn’t have. It’s almost more like Slack, or Discord, only for what I want to accomplish I think it’s better even than them. With all the things Mighty allows me to do, I foresee building a strong, supportive, self-sustaining community, in no time.

The problem is…

I’ve never built this kind of community before! (Which is why I say I “soft launched,” because if only nineteen people ever join and I abandon the project the first time it gets too hard… then nobody will really know I failed.) But I don’t think I’m going to abandon this, and I really don’t think I’m going to fail.

I do think I’m in over my head and have no idea what I’m doing!

Sure, I built a small gaming community, ten years ago, using a WordPress site that I built from scratch.

(And that I probably poured hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into designing and creating content before it ever took off. And by “took off” I mean it grew to about a hundred active users — but those users are still active, today, ten years later… so I must’ve got something right.)

I also worked last year in the Facebook groups for the American Writers and Artist Institute, doing community engagement in two groups that totaled over 15 thousand members. And I was really good at that job! Every week a member would DM me or make a comment inside the group, talking about how I made it feel more welcoming, encouraging, and inviting.

But that was in a group that already existed… a group that somebody else already built…

I feel so far out of my element now, trying to create this veteran’s group… like I just built my first lean-to, and now I’ve decided I want to construct the Empire State Building. I feel like I’m skipping all the steps in between, and I don’t even know if I know enough to be able to build a strong foundation for this group, let alone build something with real lasting value.

I might as well lay it all out here. Maybe talking through it will help me understand the parts I’m still hung up on — or maybe you’ll read through this and an idea will come to you, that will help me get this all sorted. You never know until you try, right?

Here’s what I know:

Every year, a fresh group of ignorant, foolhardy teenagers joins the military fresh out of high school. (Some join a bit later, like maybe after college, or maybe while they’re still in college… but most join as soon as they turn eighteen.)

As teenagers, we don’t know anything about the world. We don’t have the necessary skills to really take care of ourselves. (You don’t really learn those skills until after you move out on your own… and by joining the military, we miss out on that phase of life.)

We go to boot camp, get trained, and sent to our first duty station, where someone is ready to tell us what to do, how to do it, where to report to, when to be there, and who’s in charge. All the thinking and planning that goes into that is done by somebody else. We just obey orders.

We’re taught, implicitly, that as soldiers, sailors, or Marines, “we don’t make mistakes,” and if we do, there are consequences. Which, in all fairness, if you make a mistake in battle then, yes, there are consequences, and those consequences can include loss of life, whether yours or the person beside you.

But we’re taught that we’re not supposed to make any mistakes at all… that we’re supposed to do exactly what we’re told, exactly the way we were told to do it… and if we don’t, we will be punished.

We’re also taught — or maybe conditioned is a better word — never to show emotion, never to show doubt, never to talk back (again, in battle, if you talk back, when you should just be following orders, someone is probably going to get killed).

We’re taught to execute orders. And we train, and we drill, and we practice, until we can execute those orders flawlessly. And we know that our lives, and the lives of our unit, depend on our ability to execute those orders (aka to make the right decision in the face of danger).

We’re not taught — not really — to think for ourselves. We’re not expected to reason things out on a moral or philosophical level. It’s not our job to understand why we’re being sent off to fight this country or that country; that’s for the higher-ups to decide.

We’re expected to shut up and do the job we’ve been sent to do. And we’re damn good at it.

In the military, one could argue this is just the way it has to be. You have to be able to follow orders. The men and women you serve with have to be able to know that you can follow orders. Your chiefs and your officers have to know that you can follow orders.

In combat, everybody’s life depends on knowing that each one of you can follow orders.

But when we leave the military, in our twenties, thirties, or forties… there’s nobody there to give the orders, anymore. Suddenly, for the first time in our lives, we have to think entirely for ourselves. We have to decide where we’re going to live, what we’ll eat, what jobs we’ll apply for, what to wear every day of the week… how long we want to grow our hair out…

Things that other kids would’ve been working out in their college years, or on their first job, military men and women don’t ever have to deal with until we leave active duty, and are suddenly cut off from the support, leadership, and camaraderie we’d enjoyed throughout our formative years… and expected to figure out for ourselves, for the first time in our lives.

We don’t know how to write a resume. We don’t know (unless you were married in the military) how to sign a lease, or buy a home. We might not know how to cook, how to create a budget, how to plan for major expenses…

We’re smart, and by military standards we’re quite sophisticated… but we’ve never had to do all the things that civilians learn to do naturally, through the course of high school, college, technical school, on the job training, and those first crucial years of living on your own and figuring out how to survive without mom and dad (or Uncle Sam, in our case) to help you out.

Look, I was responsible in the Navy. I showed up every day and I did my job (and I was good at it). I helped my shipmates. I followed orders (mostly, but thankfully the times I didn’t, I managed to get away with it).

But if I spent my paycheck in three days and had to wait a week and a half before I got paid again, I still had a roof over my head. I still had three meals a day. I still had hot showers and electricity. If I got sick or got a toothache, I could get immediate medical attention.

And when you’re on active duty, I think you deserve all those things. But when we transition out, and suddenly we’re faced with providing all those things on our own… it’s overwhelming.

I dare say some of us never figure it out.

Civilians don’t understand. It’s not their fault, though; they can’t understand what it’s like not to learn all those lessons early in life. While Uncle Sam was making sure that we had somewhere to sleep, and food to eat, and medical attention when we needed it, they were learning that in the civilian world, everyone fends for themselves.

In the civilian world, if you blow your whole paycheck in three days, you don’t eat for a week and a half. Or maybe you don’t pay your rent, and you risk being evicted. Or your kid gets sick and you can’t afford the copay.

As veterans, we don’t go through that until we’re out of the military and suddenly on our own. Nobody teaches us how to handle basic life scenarios. (I suppose nobody “teaches” civilians how to do it either; but y’all figure it out somehow.)

We don’t know how to survive in the society we fought to protect. We don’t have the basic life skills you do. We’re not allowed to show emotion (hell, we’re not even supposed to feel it). We’re not supposed to ask other people for help; we’re trained to “figure it out for yourself” and hope that we figure it out right (we rarely do but still, that’s the expectation).

And we’re still conditioned to believe that we have to get things right, that we have to execute our orders perfectly, that we have to always make the right choice, because the wrong choice means somebody dies… even if the choice is, “Should I live on 42nd Street, or 37th Avenue?”

Which is clearly not a life or death situation… and yet, when anxiety runs high, any situation can feel life threatening, even when we know, ourselves, that it’s not the case.

Worst of all, we don’t know when we first re-enter society, that there are social norms and expectations that if we don’t meet, we will be ostracized.

And there’s absolutely no way anyone can expect a returning soldier, sailor, or Marine, to know or understand your social norms. We just don’t exist in the same world y’all do. We don’t know that our words and behavior are “inappropriate.” After all, it’s the only thing we’ve ever known or ever been part of. To us, dirty jokes, foul language, and false bravado, are practically a way of life.

We don’t know that the way we behaved on active duty is not acceptable behavior in polite society. We have to learn that over the course of several years. (Again, some of us never do learn.)

All of which leaves us misunderstood, confused, afraid of being left out, uncertain about our own future, or our ability to make new connections among our civilian friends…

And with a mindset that tells us we can’t show emotion, we can’t ask for help, we can’t show weakness, we can’t ever admit that we don’t know how to do something…

And then, as one of my friends told me the other week, “We end crying, holding our dog, not understanding why holding the dog makes us cry, and not knowing what to do about it.”

This is the state of far too many veterans in our society today.

I’m one of them (except that, I don’t even have a dog to hold when I’m crying and I don’t know what’s making me cry).

I left the Navy in 2003 — more than twenty years ago! And I still don’t know how to regulate my emotions… and I still feel like every decision I make is life or death, all or nothing, go big or don’t even bother going home because you just messed up so badly you don’t even have a home to go to, anymore.

I need help sorting this all out. I’ve fought, and I’ve struggled, and I’ve “done the work,” and I still feel lost, confused, depressed, hopeless, overwhelmed, afraid, uncertain…

I can’t live this way anymore.

So I’m building a support group. I’m building the group that I need… and I’m bringing together all the people, organizations, and resources, that can help me figure these things out… so that I can live a better, more fulfilling life… one that’s more in line with my values and my purpose…

Because I don’t know how to create the life that I want… and I’ve come as far as I ever can on my own… and I’m ready to admit that I need help… and I need friends… and I need resources that I probably don’t even know exist right now…

And if I need these things, then surely, there must be other veterans that need them, too.

So, I’m doing the thing that keeps me moving forward… and I’m taking a huge leap of faith, and trusting that it’s gonna help at least one other veteran to move forward with me… and if I can reach one, I can eventually reach the many…

But it’s got to start with the one.

I believe I can help one. I’m willing to put myself out there and put it all on the line, to reach the one. I have no idea yet, how I’m going to help them, or what that’s going to look like, or why I should believe that I’m capable of putting this all together and building something that will actually make an impact!

But I’m doing it, anyway.

I guess, my hope is that I’ll figure out all the details along the way. (Which, I imagine is what any successful civilian in the history of the world has always had to do.)

P.S. If you’re a veteran who wants help rejoining society, or you know someone who is, please check us out at

https://app.resilientveteranalliance.com/

One connection with one other vet might be just the thing you need.

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