survivor guilt

Yes.

And he lived with survivor's guilt.

I can imagine.

Boy, we've got layers upon layers in this story.

what do you think all right so I guess we start where we it's a story of healing okay it's a story of healing based around a lost wallet and A dual timeline book where a woman empty nester is doing a home renovation and she comes across a wallet and it unleashes all these memories of her own father when she finds the dog tags because he also lost his life in Vietnam.

Where did we go from

there? She finds the owner of the wallet and then helps him finish his mission, which was to give the dog tags to the wife of the friend who died, which, as Rosa was just saying, was very difficult for him because he had survivor's guilt.

So there's a whole lots of layers going on there.

When you feel that you are being mean or bad or misreading the situation, going back and seeing all that stuff you wrote down that was sent to you, it can be eye-opening and it can be your salvation.

At some level, getting out of a toxic relationship and the bad feelings that accompany it are a form of survivor guilt.

Self-preservation and self-protection are all very nice sounding words, but putting them into practice is a whole other level.

And it's a whole nother experience for people who are trauma bonded.

You have a background as a television reporter covering military bases and you witnessed the civilian military divide firsthand.

And when we're talking about your novel, Handling Post-Traumatic Stress and Survivor's Guilt, you do it, You're not shy about going there.

You really, as I said, you really do put it there for us to see it.

How did your real-world journalism shape how you wrote his psychological trauma? Because I feel like having my own experiences with complex PTSD, I feel you did a very good job of it.

And, and, and,

You did a great job.

I think the survivor's guilt aspect, you didn't shy away from that.

You hit the nail on the head because I think for both of them, it was very clear he was going through survivor's guilt with his relationship with Scooby and him talking to him throughout.

Would you be willing to talk about your own experiences of grief and Survivors Guild or anything you want to bring to this conversation? Because I think it can truly support people listening, watching to this episode.

Yes, I would love to talk about grief and survivor's guilt.

I will start with the survivor's guilt because maybe you picked up on that.

I had really some challenges with survivor's guilt when I actually lived through my near-death experience because when I was in the hospital, my girlfriend, she was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force at the time, And when I was in the hospital, she was in Afghanistan and she was being extended.

She's one of the ones that I, you know, again, I thought I wasn't going to make it.

So I wanted to make sure that I sent her a message before I passed over.

Sorry.

So two years later.

Like I was jumpy with loud noises.

I struggled with survivor's guilt.

I didn't like crowds.

Those were normal human responses to war.

It's post-traumatic stress.

But if you accept it for what it is and choose to use it instead of identifying with it as a disorder, you can turn that post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic growth.

So for example, with my survivor's guilt, for a long time, what I did was I put a picture of my friend that I lost in the war up on my wall.

And it said, this should have been you.