"When you look back and start piecing things together, he had a lot of medical bills, he was having trouble with the bank and housing, his job and the relationships that he had."
Special needs summer camps are specialized programs designed for children and young adults with a range of disabilities, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ADHD, Down syndrome, and other developmental or physical challenges.
Connell moves easily between philosophy, farming and writing, checking the oven and returning to a conversation that veers from cattle to climate change.
We Americans who will protect our flag should have a voice in where it is flown. Despite his unimpeachable record of heroism and patriotism, he was disparaged and mocked by his government and the corporate press.
With millions of soldiers estimated to be suffering from trauma-related conditions, not to mention civilians, Ukraine faces an urgent question: How will it treat the lasting mental scars of war? Among the emerging possibilities is psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) in treatment of war-related trauma, a controversial yet increasingly researched approach that some experts believe could play a transformative role in veteran mental health care.
That's a $9,000 raise, essentially. Sell the car and use that cash to get a functional car. If you can sell it, get that $5,000 in your hand plus this $9,000 and buy you a $15,000 paid-for car, that's a nice car. And now you got no car payments.
Because everything there reminds me of Johnny," she said. My reaction was silence and determination to make sure common sense prevailed to make sure her senior son, Jake, a top pitcher who transferred from Palm Desert to Rancho Christian, had this continuing stress resolved after an already awful ordeal engulfed him and his parents for months.
What we like to say is, 'Where would you like to go today?' You get to leave the walls of the nursing home. We can link six units together, so we can do a trip together ... We can go down the streets of Paris, France.
During the troop surge in Iraq, I learned to constantly scan for threats, how to distinguish the sharp crack of a gunshot pointed in my direction from one outgoing toward an enemy, and the myriad ways that explosives can be hidden on a roadside. I learned that hypervigilance can be the difference between life and death. What I didn't learn was how to turn it off. Now, I take three psychiatric medications every day, and I go to therapy every week.
The Marines are a 24-hour responsibility. Once you commit, your personal ambitions take a backseat. Eventually, I reached a point where I wanted to explore those ambitions - specifically, entrepreneurship - while I was still young enough to act on them. I made the decision to leave the service during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - even though the civilian job market felt uncertain, and many encouraged me to stay. But retired service members who had built businesses offered a different message. They helped me realize that the military equips people with more transferable skills than they often think. The transition resources on base reinforced that point, so I felt ready to move on.
Physical strength develops through the perseverance of training, and strength of character is demonstrated by adhering to and applying integrity-the universal moral and ethical principle of doing no harm. Neither one of these is easy. Both require self‑initiated discipline, dedication, determination, perseverance, and resilience to develop and advance self‑empowerment potential, understood as the individual's inherent capacity for autonomy and agency; yet even with such effort, empowerment is not guaranteed, as it is realised only through consistent action rather than stated intention.
"But I had a real issue for five years, around COVID, when I got sepsis, I fell into a hole... I had a problem with addiction, drugs and alcohol, it was rough, five years of it. The longest I was sober within those five years was two weeks, and those weeks were usually before fights. I'd slow down two weeks before the fight, come to the fight underprepared, out of shape; it was rough. It's crazy I stayed in the rankings the whole time."
"Freedom from fear" was the fourth of four freedoms defining democracy President Franklin D. Roosevelt framed in his rally cry to fight fascist conquest from without. It is openly debated whether America is now fighting a fascist takeover from within. It may be debated, but only because the would-be dictators of the world will always disguise their plays for power in the mock forms of democratic legality-by declaring a fake emergency, attacking political rivals through trumped-up legal charges or holding rigged elections.
For many veterans, returning home marks not resolution but the beginning of a quieter struggle. Despite decades of innovation in trauma-focused therapies and medication, a substantial number continue to live with psychological injuries that existing treatments only partly address. Their trauma is not merely a cluster of symptoms; it is a disruption of identity, moral coherence, and belonging. It reflects lived experience often shaped by early adversity, military culture, and the potentially socially isolating aftermath of service.
Has this happened to you? You run into someone, and they ask about something that you shared with them that was painful. They start talking about it, and there you go, hurting again? You weren't thinking about it, and the next thing you know, it hurts like it just happened. There are occasions - holidays and family gatherings - where the effects of a past painful experience will reemerge and trigger emotional pain all over again.
