I’m all for raising awareness of the impact of trauma, but I’m somewhat overloaded at the moment. I will contact you privately, however, because there’s some ways we can do something about this with relatively little effort. Well, little from me anyway.

I printed this out and read it months ago.

As the granddaughter of Percival Frank Jones who was in the ambulance corps in Gallipoli etc… and now as a psychotherapist, every year when Anzac Day comes around I want to get on the radio and talk about Trauma. I want to talk about the causes of trauma, the symptoms of trauma and the consequences for generations to come.

Last year I took my then 7 yo boy to George St and we stood with a friend who’s worked in defence. He loved watching the marching Air Force, navy and army in their uniforms, he came home and drew pictures of men marching.

Do you know the Eric Bogle song ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda?’ http://bit.ly/a5b5DP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFjToKuZQM

If you want to chat with me about trauma, we could organise to video it and I could finally voice what I’ve wanted to say every Anzac Day for years.

http://twitter.com/FrancieJones

It would be an experience that only others who were by their side could hope to understand, whereas family and loved ones could only try to understand the memories they would carry with them and how it would affect them for the rest of their lives.

No matter what services and support they are given by their country on their return (and it is usually lacking somewhat), they will never, ever be able to undo the damage that will remain with them and forever change their lives and those of their families and loved ones. As ‘War Weary’ so eloquently points out, the destruction of War continues to take its toll long after ‘peace’ has been declared.

We already know, but when will we actually decide that not one more person should be sacrificed to the futility that is War?