THE SOUL
Veteran Rites was born from a desperate prayer of a 14-year Army Infantry ground pounder seeking to find a hole "to scream into it" after returning home from combat in Afghanistan.
With nothing to lose and on the brink of suicide, he answered the call to take his story to the wilderness as warfighters have done since time immemorial to make meaning of their suffering. Through fasting, self-generated ceremony, and a return to community willing to hold his grief with their hearts, he was able to lay down what no longer served, put his pistol back on the shelf, and return initiated into society. He found a wise civilian guide that had walked with hundreds through their dark nights of the soul in their return to wholeness.
In 2017, they put out the call for veterans seeking their own answers to the questions we all struggle with after service;
Who AM I? What's My Purpose? Where do I Belong?
Many started to answer and begin their walk to the land only made possible through Civilian Angels willing to show up for Veteran grief. We started Coming Home Together. In 2023, we continued to live into that question of what it means to be fully human, in a body, and in community after service.
THE STORY
2023 was a threshold crossing in a number of ways. We convened Four Rites of Return, one in each season with a 3-day Mirroring for Empowerment Workshop to help prepare us all for holding the Greatest Stories Ever Told. Three new incredible whole and wise women took the guide seat, one being an elder civilian angel and two veteran women. We had our first Rite of Return with more women then men initiates. A wave of compassionate veterans answering the call from the incredible Progressions Program at the Vancouver, VA have brought their skills, wholeness, and integrity to VR.
The Veteran Rites Board adventured deep into the question of what it would mean for Veteran Rites to steward land as a home for WA State Veteran Suicide Prevention thanks to a planning grant from Washington State. We gathered with bare feet and open hearts for a Memorial Day Veterans Council of Remembrance at American Lake VA. Three initiates undergoing their ordeal in the Spring had enough gusto to come back to assist within the same year at a Rite of Return, that's a month of whole service to us all on the land! Veteran Rites Council training at Frog Creek Retreat Center with Gigi Coyle kept the spirit of our council community in the current. VR sent two veteran women to train and represent VR with Listening to Smile to amplify the healing power of sound for the veteran community. By the end of the year we had widened and diversified our leadership circle with new board members to hold and govern our living prayer together, and hired a new Director of Community Integration take take our long term integration support for our community to the next level.
Veteran Peer Facilitators held Circles of Return for our community with the MST Women's Circle, Mirroring for Empowerment Hybrid Practice, and Veteran Vibrations online and at the Seattle Vet Center. Our Veterans Council Community continues to hold the space and the culture of living from the heart and "Leaving No Story Behind." Our WDVA Vet Connector kept us in the fire with our Partners at Seahawks Task Force 12, Seward Park Audubon, Path With Art, and Nine9Line Veteran Services. Our guides, emerging guides, assistants, peer facilitators, and net keepers showed up and served the people. So many volunteers carried the living prayer of our School of Lost Borders, Wilderness Guides Council, and Veteran Rites lineage. Our donor fellowship got our backs. We were able to touch and be touched by the lives of over 300 souls, initiating 30 into the line of 99 and 99 million that have come before on the lands that still hold their stories.
We laughed, celebrated, cried, joked, let our inner loyal soldiers get away, rebalanced, played, served, planned, grieved, bore witness, opened up, sang, got dirty, surrendered, held fast, fumbled, prayed, and practiced. Mentors, mirrors, and teachers, including our initiates, showed us kindness and inconvenient truths. Nature held us the whole time. We were grateful just to have another day to experience a day, always close to the grief of conflict, those no longer with us, and especially the children. Then we tripped over our own feet to remember to not take ourselves so seriously. Most of all, our people showed up with grit, grace, and BIG generosity of spirit.
THE QUESTIONS
And now we turn into the questions for the next Four Seasons of Human Nature. Who will answer the call into Rite of Return and Guide Training? How do we honor a reinforced Community Integration Program and the freedom of self-autonomy? What are we learning about living, serving, and healing TOGETHER as one human family in Unity and Difference?
What would a home for VR look, smell, and feel like? Can the way we hold the culture and protocol for council be a way to Welcome Home our veterans as they are handed their DD-214? What stories will break us open? Which will challenge and change us? How can we stay as close to the ground and keep it simple as we grow and strengthen? How can we partner better, be more culturally competent, listen deeper, AND soften with the self-care we espouse? How do we carry these gifts in a good way? I have no idea right now, but I do know that somewhere a Veteran is desperately seeking to find their home in the peace of wild things, and we will show up for that AS ONE COMMUNITY.
Because our scars from service are half the story, the community we come back to writes the rest. Thank you for the privilige to write it with you.
Cj Ryan Euegene Mielcarek
Seabee OIF Veteran
Executive Director, Veteran Rites
