Ask the Question: The Searles Family Story

Transcript of video:

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My husband and I have been married since August of 2010, and five days later, after we got married, he deployed to Iraq. He was gone for over a year. When Dave came home, I thought that his deployment was going to be the hard part, but in reality it was actually the reintegration process that was really hard for us. Dave had gone through a lot of things over in Iraq and really struggled when coming back into civilian life and being part of our family. 

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As time went on, we ended up having a beautiful little boy named Daniel in 2013. And Daniel was born with a lot of medical complexities. I was a first-time mom really struggling to keep my son alive and also keep my family together, and that was really hard. The hardest part was that nobody really knew what we were going through. From the outside looking in, we looked like a perfect family and had our life together, but in reality we weren't doing well. 

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And Dave's PTSD, which was undiagnosed at the time, was really affecting him and affecting our family as a whole. We were at the doctors all the time because of our son's medical conditions, yet no one ever knew that there was something wrong because nobody asked. No one knew that we were a military family. They might have checked it off on a box, but our doctors who saw us and who cared for us didn't know. And so they didn't know to ask if we were okay. 

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The turning point for our family was when Dave's PTSD started to include flashbacks. My fear at that moment was for our young son, who would never understand. So in that moment, we 

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took some time and separated so that we could come up with a plan to keep everyone safe and to also keep our family together. Part of that plan included treatment at the VA for PTSD, which was a lifesaver. And without it, I don't think that our family would be together. He chose us, which I am very thankful for. He did what he needed to do to get the help. As a military family, we need people to understand what we go through. 

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We need people who can recognize that we have unique struggles because we're a military family. And you don't know that your patients are in the military or have a military connection unless you ask the question. A simple question of, “Have you or someone in your family ever served in the military?” back when we were struggling as a family may have changed the course of what we were going through. I probably would have just broken down at that point and said, Yeah, like my husband was in the military and served in Iraq and we are not doing well and I don't know what to do. 

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A lot of people have asked me, “Well, why? Why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn't you tell us?” And the answer is actually pretty simple. It's that just as my husband was very proud, I was a very proud Army wife, and my job was to keep my family together. And so having to reach out and connect with somebody to say, like, we're not doing well was was really hard for me. And so it's really important that providers here in New Hampshire and across the country take the initiative and open that door for conversation so that families don't feel that burden. Because it's a lot easier when someone else opens the door. 

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Today, Dave is doing incredible. He had been working at the VA. He is now a registered nurse and loves working and serving other veterans. For us, that's a huge piece of it. It was helping Dave to find his place again within the civilian community because his purpose and his his life was serving our country and having the ability to reconnect into something that gives him purpose and meaning like that was a huge turning point for us. 

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The Ask the Question campaign is not just about asking a question and checking a box. It's about opening a door to conversation and opening doors to military families so that they feel like you want to hear their story and that you want to support them. Because honestly, our families made a lot of sacrifices so that Dave could be in the service and, it's just really important to us that all of our service members and veterans have a chance to reconnect at home in the way that they did when they were overseas.