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TAPS Mentors Support Families of Fallen
(August 22, 2010) |
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| WASHINGTON, Aug. 19, 2010 – The day Scott Warner saw Marines
standing at his front door, his world came to a crashing
halt.
The servicemembers told Warner that his son, Marine Pvt.
Heath Warner, had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq's
Anbar province.
Warner and his family, including his two younger sons, tried
to come to terms with the tremendous loss while also
attempting to navigate a huge and vastly unfamiliar military
system.
“We were thrust into this military world that we didn't know
how to interact with and didn't know how to connect with,”
Warner said. “At the same time, we had to deal with the
death of our son.”
Warner eventually found the support he needed through the
military and the
Tragedy
Assistance Program for Survivors, a nonprofit
organization devoted to helping families of the military
fallen. And nearly four years later, he's now dedicated
himself to ensuring other families don't experience that
same sense of overwhelming confusion after such a profound
loss.
Warner is a volunteer with the TAPS Peer Mentor Program, a
peer-to-peer program for people who have lost military loved
ones. The program pairs survivors who are further along in
their journey of recovery with those who are experiencing a
more recent loss.
“It's someone saying, ‘My story is quieter now, and I want
to help others along with the process,'” Debbie Dey, the
mentor program manager, said.
Mentors offer everything from a shoulder to cry on to
connections to helping resources, Dey explained. Mentors
aren't counselors or advisors, she added -- they're new
friends who will commit to being there for others.
Mentors ideally are paired with survivors within 48 hours of
their request for a mentor, Dey said, and the goal is to
match people based on relationship first, followed by
circumstances of death and branch of service. So, a mother
of a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in
Afghanistan will be paired, if possible, with another mother
whose soldier son died in similar circumstances, she
explained.
The similarities help to create common bonds, Dey said.
“Survivors are so grateful to have an ear from someone who
understands their loss,” she added.
In turn, the mentors often gain as much from the
relationship as the person being mentored. “It's very
therapeutic on both sides,” Dey said. “And it can offer a
stepping stone for both relationships. Their circumstances
may be different, their relationship with a loved one may be
different, but they're offering each other hope for the
future.”
Meagan Staats said she has found healing by serving as a
peer mentor. But just four years earlier, she never imagined
being able to undertake the task. On Dec. 16, 2006, two
soldiers came to her home to notify her of her husband's
death. Her husband, Army Staff Sgt. David Staats, had been
killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The devastation was
immediate and life-altering, she said.
“My stomach still hurts when I see soldiers in Class A's,”
she said, referring to the dress uniforms the notification
team members were wearing.
Staats sat with the soldiers for several hours, showing them
pictures and sharing stories about her husband. But her
thoughts were on her daughter, whom she had dropped off at a
birthday party a few hours earlier, and how she was going to
tell the 7-year-old that her father was now dead.
When her daughter arrived home, Staats said, she didn't
sugarcoat the news; she told her daughter that her father
had died in Iraq. Her daughter went into her room and
screamed into a pillow. “I felt so hopeless,” she said. “It
was traumatic.”
Staats avoided counseling, and she and her daughter
struggled with the weight of the loss. Having heard about
TAPS, Staats and her daughter went to their first TAPS
regional meeting eight months out from their loss, marking
“the start of our healing,” she said.
Two years later, Staats was asked to become a mentor. After
extensive online and in-person training, she was assigned to
be a mentor for a woman in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“I was scared to take that on, because I felt responsible
and didn't know if I could help her,” she said. “I weighed
the decision for a few days.”
Staats decided to make the call and “just listened and
listened,” she said. “Hopefully, that was helpful for her.”
She since has mentored nearly a dozen other widows through
TAPS. She's now mentoring two women, one of whom she has
never met. But they exchange text messages and e-mails
frequently, she said.
Staats has benefited so much from her volunteer work she
refers to it as self-serving. “We really help each other on
our journey,” she said. “It's healing to me to feel like I'm
serving a purpose.”
Warner describes being a mentor as “paying it forward.”
“The only people that can understand and really help other
people are the people who have walked in the steps that
they're walking,” he said.
But like Staats, Warner has had his moments of self-doubt.
He recently was called on to mentor a father from California
whose son had died while home on leave from a deployment.
The servicemember died in his father's arms. The father took
a leave of absence from work, but due to a procedural
glitch, he was terminated from his job. The family dipped
into most of their financial assets and was heading toward
foreclosure.
“It was the worst-case scenario in trying to provide some
type of encouragement,” Warner said. “Not only did they lose
their son and their life turned upside-down, their whole
life was coming unglued. It was really hard.”
Warner talked the family into attending a TAPS national
conference, where he and other TAPS members offered as much
emotional support as they could. This was a tough situation,
Warner noted, but still rewarding to him to help.
“Being a peer mentor has been a very positive thing,” he
said. “Having relationships with people who don't judge, who
offer encouragement, those are positive things. There's no
wrong way to grieve. It's the journey you're on. You have to
walk it.”
Mentor relationships can become lasting ones, Dey noted.
She's heard of families staying in close contact or taking
vacations together. But whether they stay in touch for a
month or for years, “the bond is very genuine,” she said.
“It's a beautiful and unique relationship.”
Staats said she's just grateful for the opportunity to help
others, and herself along the way.
“The loss is profound, but what we've gained is
immeasurable,” she said. “I've never known friendships like
this.” |
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By Elaine Wilson
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2010 |
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