|
The blood-spattered, worn combat boots with a medical syringe
lying alongside them portray a healing image for retired Army Sgt.
Timothy "Mike" Goodrich.
|
April 13, 2017 - Combat boots covered in blood stains from his surgery are now a form of therapeutic art for retired Army Sgt. Timothy “Mike” Goodrich.
(DoD photo by Terri Moon Cronk)
|
Goodrich, who was introduced to healing arts therapy last year at
Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has found his way through art to express
feelings of war that he cannot put into words because of
post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
Following retirement after an injury when he was deployed to
Afghanistan, the psychological operations team sergeant was at first
leery about his treatment plan, which included art therapy, he said
yesterday during the opening of a Pentagon exhibit of therapeutic
art produced by wounded warriors. But it didn’t take long for him to
become hooked on expressing himself through his art, he added, and
it replaced his longtime coping mechanism of internalizing his
thoughts.
“I didn’t have to talk. I didn’t have to say a
word,” he said of working on art projects. “I could just work on
something that was bothering me, something I didn’t understand or
felt I couldn’t remember correctly. I could work on the art till I
understood what I was feeling.”
His artwork gives him
something tangible that symbolizes what he felt while at war, he
said.
Goodrich said using his blood-stained boots as art gave
him the emotional attachment he needed. The boots were stained from
the surgery he underwent after taking a direct hit from shrapnel to
his head, which shattered his jaw. “It’s a snapshot of what the
ground looks like at any combat surgical hospital in Afghanistan or
Iraq,” he said.
Meaningful
Attachment
His well-worn combat boots are authentic,
and using them in an art piece that displays something meaningful to
him is helpful in coping with his trauma, Goodrich said. “It’s not a
pretty thing, but it’s real,” he said. “It’s something I’ve
experienced after being wounded in combat.”
Healing arts therapy is spreading across the nation in military
hospitals as a coping mechanism for service members to open up when
they cannot discuss battle experiences in talk therapy, Goodrich
said.
A Journey
Relief from PTSD might not bring an instant feeling of well-being,
he said, noting that art therapy is a process.
“It’s a journey from the beginning to the end for
me,” he explained. “I get something out of it at different steps,
and I don’t get to determine what that is. It just happens, and at
the end of it, I usually end up where I feel better about
something.”
While the bad feelings might not go away
entirely, he conceded, he is grateful for finally having the tools
to keep his symptoms at bay, bringing time to adjust and fight back.
For Goodrich, using a variety of media – painting and working
with metal and wood – provides the outlet for him to create tangible
artwork he can look at every day so he can recall the emotions
attached to it when he feels he wants to.
“It’s important to
me, and I think it should be important to the Defense Department to
continue these programs,” he said. “You can’t predict conflict. But
you can predict that if you’re going to have conflict, you’re going
to have casualties and [service members are] going to need access to
the same kind of care we have right now.”
Pentagon Exhibit
Goodrich
and numerous other artists who have found outlets through creating
art to quell the symptoms of PTSD and TBI were selected to have
their art on display in the Pentagon for a year as part of the 2017
Pentagon Patriotic Art Program‘s Wounded Warrior Healing Arts
Exhibit. The hallway display is on the second floor of Apex 1 and 2.
Goodrich said he is pleased with the exhibit.
“People are going to be able to see these every day, and
repetition is important,” he said. “So now people are going to walk
by and see how important it is -- at least to the people who have
their pictures on the wall -- and it’s going to be important to
hundreds of other people just like us.”
His artwork is a
reminder of where he came from, albeit a bad day, Goodrich said.
“But that’s not where my story ended,” he said. “I didn’t die on
the battlefield, I didn’t die in the surgical hospital, I didn’t die
en route to the states. All those times when I could have died, I
didn’t, and my art reminds me of that."
By Terri Moon Cronk
DOD News
Copyright 2017
Comment on this article |
