My family encouraged me to reach out to VA

Kenn:

My name's Kenn. I was in the Navy. I was in from November of ‘69 until September of ‘71. A lot was going in the country, anti-Vietnam and anti-Veterans, and adjusting to civilian life was in some ways not so bad, in other ways kind of tough, because it's a whole different way of life. You're looking for work. There's a lot of pressure on that, and you're trying to adjust. You have to have something steady to have to be able to afford your own place. You need steady income and I just didn't really have that all the time.

Family, more or less, encouraged me to go to the VA. You’re a Veteran. See what they can do to help you, and I thought well, maybe they can help me, because I’d been through a lot of different jobs, lot of different things and all that. Maybe, I can go over there for counseling and see what they can tell me. So, I went over and told the guy, this man that I talked to, and said, “I need a place, I kind of need a place to live. I don’t really have a place, and I really can’t afford it.” So, he says, “Okay, let me see.” And he took my information down, and then I had to keep checking back with him, and finally they called me and said, “Yeah, there’s an opening.” There was Nurses there, and there was a male Nurse that had been in the military. I appreciated the Veterans you know that were medical people, because they could relate to you more, and they had been through a lot of the same stuff that we went through.

It’s private when you talk to somebody over there. The Veterans respect each other, and they treat each other with decency and understanding, and the Doctors and Nurses are pretty good over there, and they’ll help you out. I think I was good for us to get to meet and once a week or whatever and talk about whatever we needed to talk about, you know what was hurting us or what was helping us or how we’re improving, and I can still go back if I need to if I feel like I need it, but I think it helped me enough where it gave me some confidence to just thinking right and knowing that there’s the help there, that they have helped me, and I’ve kind of gone picked up from there.

If you can help each other out, if you can help somebody, and if you let them help you, you can avoid a longtime of going through all kinds of issues. It always helps to talk to somebody. If you can just go over there and talk to a Doctor or Psychologist or get into a group session with somebody. Let somebody help you.