Segment 2: A Loss of Faith. Sarah was flown to Vietnam and got her orders to be a nurse at the 67th Evacuation Hospital, but ended up switching with someone and going to the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Cu Chi. It was a desolate area. She was allowed a few days to get situated and “make a space for herself” before going to work in the operating room. She quickly became a trauma nurse, as the hospital was situated where all the fighting was taking place and was the largest user of fresh blood. Emotionally it was very disturbing. Over time it had a detrimental effect on her spirituality. She couldn’t believe the Divine would allow something so horrible to take place.
Segment 3: Their Minds and Hearts Were Still Injured. Sarah eventually experienced a breaking point and in order to get through her tour as a nurse she imagined building a thick brick wall around her heart. She was so successful with the wall that all her memories of the 2nd half of her tour are not in color; they are in tones of brown.
When she came back to the U.S. she was assigned to a hospital in Tacoma, Washington. She began noticing that the wounds the soldiers experienced were not healing the way they should be healing. She realized the wounds weren’t healing because the soldiers’ minds and hearts were still injured. That was the impetus for her to become psychotherapists. She first became an intuitive healer, and although she didn’t have any formal education, she did the work helped a lot of veterans. Ultimately she went back to school and studied psychotherapy in college and graduate school. She learned about trauma, how it affects people and how to help heal it.
Segment 4: National Pride and Past Trauma. In 1996 she became part of an organization called Peace Trees, and traveled to Vietnam to plant indigenous trees on the land that was destroyed by the war. Sarah was the only woman veteran on the trip. They first removed all the live land mines out of the land so the area was safe for Vietnamese children. The goal of the trip was to highlight the devastation done by America, and then plant trees to beautify the area. The area is now a grown forest called Friendship Forest. At the end of the trip she went back to the area she had been stationed in during the war. She visited the tunnels that thousands of Vietnamese people lived in. Although very traumatic, she experienced a tremendous spiritual healing and a heart opening as well. She realized there was no difference between the Vietnamese and the Americans. They both had national pride as well as past trauma from which to heal.
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