Many believe that mentorship is a voluntary act of kindness: a "pay it forward" hobby for those who have extra time on their hands. This is a dangerous misconception. For the Christian Veteran of Color, mentoring is not a choice; it is a debt. It is…
Many people believe that once a veteran hangs up the uniform and returns to their neighborhood, the mission is accomplished. There is a common assumption that a "Welcome Home" banner and a handshake at the church door are enough to bridge the gap be…
You have been told that your nightmares, your isolation, and your sudden bursts of anger are merely the biological symptoms of a disordered brain. For decades, the clinical establishment has funneled every veteran’s struggle into the narrow fu…
You spent years in a system where the rank on your chest was supposed to tell people exactly who you were and what you were capable of. In the military, the mission came first. While the service is far from perfect, there was a certain level of dire…
Most people in the civilian world have a completely backwards idea of what military leadership looks like. They imagine a drill sergeant screaming in someone’s face or a rigid hierarchy where "because I said so" is the only rule. They see the …
You were told that if you just prayed harder, the weight on your chest would lift. You were told that if you stayed on your knees long enough, the images from that deployment or the "moral compromises" you had to make in the name of duty would wash …
Most people think the hardest part of leaving the military is the paperwork, the final physical, or the move back to a hometown that feels smaller than when you left. They’re wrong. The hardest part is the person looking back at you in the mir…
For years, the clinical world has funneled every struggle an Urban Christian Veteran faces into a single, four-letter acronym: PTSD. We are told that our sleepless nights, our hyper-vigilance, and our sudden bursts of anger are purely the re…
For years, the clinical world has handed Urban Christian Veterans a single label for their post-war struggles: PTSD. We are told our brains are "rewired" for survival, our nervous systems trapped in a loop of hyper-vigilance and fear. But for many C…
When people hear the term PTSD, they often assume it is a modern diagnosis tied to modern weapons. That assumption could not be further from the truth. Long before clinicians, psychology, or even formal medicine, soldiers were returning from battle …
The Urban Christian Veterans Podcast recently tackled several critical issues affecting veterans of color, beginning with the profound concept of military moral injury. This psychological wound occurs when service members participate in or witness a…
