Save a Warrior Heals Veterans From Post Traumatic Stress With Compassion and Unity
Jake Clark is a US Army veteran of the Cold War era and the California Army National Guard. He founded Save a Warrior (SAW) because he wanted to make a difference and for his life to matter. According to Clark, 30 percent or somewhere between 800,000 to a million returning home in the post 9/11 era suffer some form of post-traumatic stress.
Save A Warrior has changed countless lives through their “War Detox” program, which supports the psychological healing. Their specialty is connecting active duty military, returning veterans, and first responders who experiencing psychological trauma. Save A Warrior™ takes timeless virtues – ideals like compassion, empathy, humility – and presents what is beautiful and good in a powerfully sacred experience. The Warrior Village is located near Columbus, Ohio.
Q&A
Our program differs in that we actually know what’s really the thing that’s underneath the thing: unresolved childhood trauma and the attendant unmourned grief of our lost childhood innocence. There is a time for us to have certain needs met that comes and goes in everyone’s life. When that time passes, all we’re left to do is mourn and grieve those losses and move on to the possibility of a new way of being. It’s incredible.
2. Walk us through the “War Detox” program?
A war detox – or a secular spiritual initiation – is designed to follow the monomyth (or narrative) of the Hero’s Journey. Using ceremony, ritual, initiation, mindfulness-based meditation practices, equine supported learning & aspects of Jungian (Depth) psychology, we create the ideal conditions for a “moment of discovery” followed by a change in circumstances or reversal in fortune. This narrative device originated during the time of Aristotle. We just dusted it off and made it contemporary.
3. Can you share a success story?
Most people tell us that we saved their lives when in reality we just returned them “home” as if the first time to begin anew. It really comes down to practicing daily what was learned at SAW. William Jamssreferredd to this next level of healing as a ”spiritual experience of the educational variety.” This practice is key for long-term growth and continued healing and psychospiritual transformation.
4. Can What is “Justs Save One” and how can readers become involved?
That’s a motto and marketing slogan that started with my late father almost as his own resignation when he understood I wasn’t seeking his approval – or permission – to invent Save A Warrior. He told me it was all worth it if we “just save one.”Just Save One pays for one returning Veteran or first responder to attend this lifesaving experience. Currently, the cost is $3,500 dollars. We raise all the funds privately through donations.
For more information about Save a Warrior, go to saveawarrior.org/.
This piece was featured in the Sept. 23rd edition of The Sunday Paper, Maria Shriver’s free weekly newsletter for people with passion and purpose. To get inspiring and informative content like this piece delivered straight to your inbox each Sunday morning, click here to subscribe.
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