ADAM M. RAUMA, USMC - OIF

JIM VINES, ARMY - VIETNAM

BRYAN DIAGLE, USMC - OEF

CODY DENHAM, ARMY - OEF

GREGORY M. LEWIS, NAVY - SOF

LARRY MEDOFF, ARMY - VIETNAM

WASHINGTON GOLD STAR FAMILIES

We are grateful and honored to share the names of the Veterans, Friends, and Families named In Memory and Honor Of this Giving Tuesday. Behind every name there there are stories we as a community all need to witness and remember. Behind every photo there are loved ones tenderly holding on to their living memories in the deepest parts of their being. We see you. We see them. We remember, and are listening. We feel these stories in our bones. They ground us into the uncomfortable reality of the long journey home for Veterans and Military Families. Every one is the greatest story ever told. We will carry their names and wholeness into our circles. May we carry them in a good way with Love and Honor. Together.

Our Giving Tuesday really began the Wednesday before, when our community gathered online to share our gratitude for all we’ve been given and for each other. It’s become a bit of a VetsGiving ritual.

It continued on Sunday, where the Seahawks and Task Force 12 treated a few of our All-Star Volunteer Veterans to a game experience like no other. We saved a seat in memory of OIF USMC Veteran Adam M. Rauma and his mother Katie. Special Guests Nino, Monica, and Jane made us all feel right at home.

It’s an odd thing being spoiled as a veteran. There is always a pull on the heart thinking on who else could be sitting in your seat if they were still playing this game of being alive. Then you get caught up in the atmosphere and the company. Of the artistry and wisdom of the game and how it mirrors the military experience in its own way. The training, sacrifice, uniforms, strategies, injuries, and tactics. The reality that a good heap of the humans in the NFL or the Armed Forces grew up with duct tape on their sneakers running towards a dream for a better life and a hero’s journey.

Of suiting up and showing up with all we got with short memories and laser focus urgency for the next mission or play. Of the Who Am I? feeling once we’ve taken off the uniform identity.

We wondered what it would look like if that stadium was filled by 12’s on an regular rotation to witness the stories of Veterans and Families. Not a ticker tape. A pin drop quiet listening, but of course Pearl Jam would headline or something. Maybe then we might get to the place where no more of our people die with their stories inside of them. Until then, we will do what we can do in our own small way, one circle and Welcome Home in the wilderness at a time.

Which brought us to Giving Tuesday, which we began on the Circles voices group support app hosting a council focused on thanking those that have had our backs on our journeys back to civilian life. We thanked our mentors, battle buddies, civilian angels, board, our wives, nature, our formerly unintegrated wild selves for surviving, and each other. Vets, partners, and friends from Israel to Ohio to Washington shared the gifts within the grime of their sacrifice in a circle with people who get it. Joining our Task Force 12 veteran nature amigos Growing Veterans we left inspired to continue leveraging Circles as a FOB to share gratitude and return to belonging.

Slowly the online donations with names In Memory and Honor Of started to appear. Have to admit those evoked immediate emotional Seabee sweat from these eye sockets. Some had been inspired to the VR mission by Dmitri’s testimony, and many were our community giving back for their VR experience in circle or ceremony.

With no space to get too emotional, it was time to suit up for a special zoom with those that have donated to VR so we could get face to digital face and share the inspiring stories from the land that they have made possible. 30 minutes of gratitude, tears, powerful memories, hilarity, technical FUBARs, and cross-sector supporters combining hearts across the screen to share in the Writing of a New Story on Welcoming Veterans Home. As in any circle, whoever ends up there is who was supposed to be there. It got to the heart of the matter and reminded us on how important that EVERYONE connected to the mission gather for a cup of tea and share stories. That is a whole community welcoming our people back. And we are so blessed.

So blessed that by the end of the day Veteran Rites could account for $14,122.24 new dollars to initiate veterans into whole idenTity, purpose, and belonging in 2023!

Initiates, friends, board members, foundations, corporations, civilian angels, survivors, guides, all suited up and showed up to fill the Veteran Rites #GivingTuesday gift basket. Then that basket was matched by a civilian angel deeply invested in carrying this mission forward.

It was the perfect day. As perfect as the eyes of our people when they come back from their solo after four courageous days and nights of deep solitude in the wilderness to lay down what no longer serves and step into who they are truly called to be after military service.

And then, after the hugs, the food, the celebration, the sharing and mirroring of stories we get to tell them “That was the easy part.”

Like our initiates, now that we have received the gift we have the responsibility and the privilege to suit up and show up with laser focus and open hearts to bring our people home. So we end this Giving Tuesday story where we will begin our next ceremony, in The Memory and Honor Of…