Check on Your People Today
- Brian Nichols
- Mar 1
- 2 min read
There have been attacks that hit U.S. bases in the Middle East. Manama. Camp Arifjan. Buehring.
I have been to every one of those places. I have stood on that ground. After I got out of the Navy, I spent years recruiting veterans to go back as contractors. I know people who are there right now.
For a lot of you reading this, those are not just places in a news alert. Those are places you sweated through, places you built something, places you may have said goodbye to people you will never forget.
Four service members are gone. Four families just became Gold Star families. That is not a statistic. That is real, and it is heavy.
However you are processing this, whatever you are feeling, that is okay. Anger. Grief. Confusion. Numbness. Maybe guilt. Maybe you are questioning whether you got out too soon. Maybe memories are surfacing that you thought you had filed away for good.
That is not weakness. That is what happens when your body and your brain remember somewhere real.
You might notice it as bad sleep, irritability, pulling away from people, or just a flat feeling you cannot explain. None of that means you are broken. It means you served somewhere that mattered.
And when we lose service members, even ones we never met personally, it lands differently than other news. Because we all wore the same uniform. We all know what that knock on the door means.
So if you are carrying something today, please do not carry it alone.
Call someone you served with. Call a family member. Call a friend. Call anyone. If you need to talk to a professional, here are resources that exist specifically for this:
Veterans Crisis Line: Dial 988, press 1. Text 838255. Chat at veteranscrisisline.net.
Military OneSource: 800-342-9647. Available 24/7.
Your nearest VA facility.
You can always call me. I would rather pick up at a bad time than not pick up at all.
This is not about politics. People will process events like this from every direction, and that is okay. What matters right now is that you are not sitting alone with something heavy, pretending it is not there.
You are not alone. Not even close.
Comments