Guest Blog: On Story-Telling and the Shared Humanity that Binds Us All

By: Colin Halloran

Having embarked on a recent book tour on Veterans’ Day, Monday November 11^th, I had my final appearance this past Monday the 25^th. My journey took me more than 3,800 miles, which gave me more than 60 hours of sitting in my car, contemplating the world we’re living in. Here’s a sampling of those contemplations.

This whole endeavor was born out of the fact that the university where I teach did not have any events planned for Veterans’ Day, and classes were scheduled regularly. That’s all well and good—after all, Columbus did way more than those who have served this country he “discovered”—but I felt that there should at least be some sort of on-campus acknowledgment of the day.

Mind you, I’m biased. I proudly served this country, and regardless of any lasting negative impact on my life, I will always be proud of that service. I wrote a book about those experiences, the impact they had, and I’ve been fortunate enough to continue in the military’s tradition of service by sharing my story in order to help other vets come to terms with theirs, and in order to educate civilians on just what that experience can mean. Remember, we volunteer to wear the flag and bear the brunt of the burden so that the other 99% of the population doesn’t have to.
(Related: I Never Imagined being a 20-Something Veteran: A Soldier Reflects on Why It's Important to Share His Story)

So I brought together a talented group of veteran writers to come together for a panel at the university on the evening of Veterans’ Day, so that we could share our stories, so that our experiences could live out in the ether, not just deep within our own minds. I had already been invited out to Ohio University to participate in their week-long symposium on “Conflict & Contact,” so a panel at my own school seemed like an appropriate way to kick off the week. Naturally, when my friends at the Warrior Arts Alliance expressed how they wished I could be out in St. Louis for Veterans’ Day, I said, “Well, I could head down after my readings in Ohio and be there Friday if you really wanted.” They did. And a tour was born.

Now, I know I’ve spent a lot of time in the past ranting and being seemingly frustrated with the world, but this post is different. These past 2 weeks confirmed for me what I have known to be true, if not always demonstrated: there’s a Hell of a lot of good in this world.

Whether it was a 19-year-old college student, or the 65-year-old wife of a Vietnam vet, or a small town school librarian with no ties to war, I found that people were incredibly receptive to my message. Even when they admittedly hadn’t looked at war in the ways I was presenting it, namely as a human experience that has become largely white noise in this country over the last decade, the people I encountered embraced this view, and later thanked me for broadening the scope of their thinking. This is not to toot my own horn, but to point out that even in the face of uncomfortable, often really depressing conversations, people in this country care enough to listen, to change their views, and to take on the burden of moral responsibility that they must bear as citizens of a nation at war.

In St. Louis, at the Missouri History Museum, I had the privilege of working with a group of veterans, who had served in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. We spent the entirety of the morning sitting at a large, pieced together conference table, sharing our stories. I had never seen so many grown men cry. I had never felt a part of something so deep. I have not felt so close to, felt such a sense of belonging with a group of complete strangers since my time in uniform. It was as though we all entered that room a bit broken, each person missing a small piece of his or herself, but by the end of the morning (which culminated in a group hug—seriously), we had filled in those missing bits for each other. Because what was missing was that knowledge that though we all have our own story, our own experiences, we are, in fact, not on our own.

After spending the week giving readings, which entails leaving much of myself out there for the audience, and often leaves me feeling emotionally drained, being able to help others share their stories, through conversation and creative writing, had the opposite effect. I left the museum feeling fulfilled in a way I didn’t get on any other leg of the tour.

I guess the point is this: no matter how isolated we may feel, no matter how disconnected this country or this world seems to be, there is a deep-rooted humanity that binds us all together. And we can find it by sharing our stories—not just by telling ours, but by listening to others’.
And if we do that, we’ll find that what we thought was missing wasn’t missing at all; it just hadn’t yet been found.


Colin D. Halloran is an Afghanistan combat veteran, English professor, and poet who leads student and teacher workshops on understanding war through poetry. He earned an MFA at Fairfield University, and he is an associate editor at Copaiba.org. His book of poetry on his war experiences, Shortly Thereafter, won the 2012 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and is a Massachusetts Must-Read Book of 2013. He has spoken at conferences at the state and national levels, including the 2010 Connecticut Council for the Social Studies Conference and the 2012 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference.

Time to Make Choices

So, probably like you, I get really annoyed when I see sappy and effusive praise for one’s self and accomplishments on, for instance, social media. Yay, you’re the best cat owner there is. Oh, you got another raise? Wow, your wedding / child / graduation looked SO beautiful! Yuck, yuck. Yeah, I’m just not into it.

I think most service members and veterans aren’t, too, because in the military you’re trained to just do a job, and even the heroic stuff is just you getting noticed for what anyone else in the military would’ve done.

That being said, I’ve been told that my story – yes, my annoyingly happy story of having a really f’ed up mind upon coming home from Iraq to being a healthy and happy human being – is one that should be shared despite the gag factor.

So here’s your motivation: guess what, you can get well. Some of us have and even do. That shouldn’t be a shocker, but I guess it kind of is. Now that I’m thinking about, we’re so inundated with so many stories of “victims” coming home from war. I guess that fits the mainstream template: the wars were stupid, and look at all the crappy things that happened to everyone involved.

Fairly, there is a degree to truth to all that. But what about the great things veterans are doing, even if they are having challenges still? What about the stories about the men and women who came home, struggled and are still struggling, but are also getting better?

Click the archive button and you’ll read about my once very fractured mind. I was incapable of basic existence after coming home from my second tour, and sought to destroy myself every night with bottles. Self-medication, I’ve learned years later, is what that is called.

Time was my greatest ally in getting better. Time and also patience to have realistic results. I didn’t go from Drunky McWastedface every night to outstanding graduate of my Master’s program overnight. It was harder than anything I’d ever done, especially harder than being in Iraq, but having risen above that challenge I can tell you, even though I wanted to quit and certainly could’ve accepted a less than desired result over the many years after war, it was totally worth it.

Time. It’s your friend. It’s an asshole, also, because time usually takes too much time, but trauma likes to hang around like an infection. You have to approach it holistically. This will be the new focus of my blog: How I got well, how others got well, and what we can share for you.

In the meantime, you’re reading this. You should go back in the archive, and also read the other blogs, and really get involved here at Courage Beyond. There are way worse things you could be doing. Like, what you may already be doing. Accept and believe in time, and that we’re here and want to and actually can help you. But it’s a decision that begins with you.    

The Snare

The curse of alcohol is that you can never move

away from the town where you’ve made the bars home.

You can never save up enough to purchase 

a way out of your problems.

Each shot becomes an expression of the regret

you can’t swallow, so you fill your cup again.

You settle for being empty and never quenched;

and each drink becomes more desperate than the last.

You cycle between the highs and lows

of your glass only to come to understand

you drank yourself away years ago.

And you can never get that time back.

And you cope with the bottles, 

and you love them.

Because the booze blacks out the memory

of your buddy’s head exploding;

the cold glass feels better than the warm blood

from when you bandaged another’s shrapnel wound;

because it was hot in the desert and the whiskey

pulses flame through your heart and mind.