The Wellness Compass Initiative is our partner community wellness initative that serves schools, counseling centers, nonprofits, universities, and other community wellness organizations. Each week Holly Hughes Stoner and Scott Stoner, who are both licensed marriage and family therapists, co- write a column for Wellness Compass and we are pleased to share it here on our Living Compass site. There is also a Wellness Compass podcast, where Scott and Holly elaborate on the topic of this column each week, at www.wellnesscompass.org/podcast. or in any podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc).
Honoring Those Whose Service We Benefit From Today
We have a very special diary that we keep in a secure box in our home. It is the diary Scott’s father kept when he was serving in combat during World War II. His war service greatly shaped the home in which Scott grew up, and because he was on the front line of the D-Day invasion, both that day (June 6th) and Veterans Day were special times of remembrance. Across the country this week there were many public and private remembrances as we honored Veterans Day, and we of course thought of Scott’s dad and his service to our country, service we still benefit from today.
While Veterans Day is a national holiday, it is also a family day for many families, as every veteran belongs to a family. And in a very real sense, every military family serves too. When we thank veterans, it’s worth remembering everyone in their families who served alongside them without wearing a uniform. Spouses who kept households running through long deployments. Children who changed schools again and again and missed a parent at birthdays and ballgames. Parents and siblings who waited by the phone. Families who welcomed someone home and then learned, slowly, that coming home is not a single day but a long process. And those who waited for someone who never returned.
As many of us know, many veterans of earlier generations came home and rarely spoke about what they had seen. That silence was often a way of protecting themselves, and of protecting their families, from memories that were too difficult to speak about at that moment. And so it was also something their families lived with. Children, spouses, and others grew up and lived alongside a weight they couldn’t name. Honoring veterans also means honoring the whole family: the sacrifice, the service to others, and the stories still waiting to be told.
After more than forty years as family therapists, we’ve come to believe that none of us begins life with a blank slate. Every family, military or not, is shaped by those who came before: by their courage, their sacrifices, their choices, and sometimes by their wounds. We live in homes we didn’t build, enjoy freedoms we didn’t earn, and carry values handed to us by people who often paid a high price to pass them on. Those in our families who paved the way for us shaped us in innumerable ways, some of which we may not even be aware of. Some of what we can learn from veterans and their families is clear: resilience, a sense of duty, the conviction that you show up for other people. Some of what we inherit from earlier generations, again, military or not, is harder to name: grief that was never spoken, silence about painful experiences, secrets no one dared to mention, patterns that pass from one generation to the next without anyone quite knowing why.
Not every family has a military story, but every family has people whose sacrifices made today possible. A grandparent who came to our country with almost nothing. A parent who worked several jobs. Parents who raised children who weren’t their own. A neighbor who stepped in when it mattered most.
For some, Veterans Day brings simple, uncomplicated pride. For others it brings grief for a loved one who was lost in service or lost in the years afterward. Some feel mixed emotions about a family legacy that held both courage and pain. All of these responses are human and normal. Honoring someone doesn’t require us to pretend everything was simple. We can honor what someone gave while also acknowledging what it cost them, and what it cost those who loved them.
If you are lucky enough to still be able to talk with those who prepared the way for you, through military service or otherwise, here are a few ways to honor them:
Ask for a story. Invite an older family member to tell you something you’ve never heard. Then listen, without hurrying to the next question.
Go beyond “thank you.” If there’s a veteran in your life, or someone else who served your family in some way, try asking, “What was it like for you?” Let them share as much or as little as they choose.
Pass a story on. Tell your children, nieces, nephews, or grandchildren about one person in your family’s history and what that person made possible.
Reflect on your inheritance. What do you want to carry forward? And what, with care, would you like to stop handing down?
One day we will be the ones who came before. Our extended families will live in a world shaped, in part, by the choices we make now: how we love, how we serve, how we handle hard things, and whether we are willing to talk about them.
So in honor of Veterans Day, let’s all take a moment to remember those whose sacrifices shaped our families, and to consider what we hope to hand on to those who come after us.
We extend our gratitude to all who shared responses to our question last time of “How’s the Family?” Thank you for sharing the joys and challenges in your extended family.
We welcome your feedback as well as your questions. If there is a particular question you have about family relationships that you would like us to address in a future column, please email it to us. (You can simply reply to this email, or you can email Holly at holly@WellnessCompass.org or Scott at Scott@WellnessCompass.org.)
If we share your question and our response to it, we will guarantee your anonymity and make sure that no personally identifying details are shared. There's a good chance that if you have a question about something happening in your family, many other readers of our column and listeners to our podcast have a very similar question.
Our column and podcast will appear every other week through next Memorial Day.
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