ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2023-08-02 05:26 am
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2023-08-02 05:26 am
Entry tags:
Poem: "Soldier's Heart"
This is today's freebie. It was inspired by prompts from rix_scaedu, see_also_friend, and mama_kestrel. It also fills the "high pain tolerance" square in my 8-1-23 card for the New Adventures Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.
"Soldier's Heart"
[1866]
The War Between the States
left lives and families shattered.
The North had lost many good men,
and the South had lost so many
that it struggled to function at all.
Numerous women were left widows,
children were left orphans, and
girls had few marriage prospects.
The men who survived the war
were often broken in body and
spirit by the wounds that they had
sustained in combat or otherwise.
Many of them could no longer work,
left with missing limbs or weak chests.
Soldier's heart was a common affliction,
its skittering pulse and shortened breath
turning once healthy men into invalids
ashamed of their faltering health.
Others had learned a little too well
how to ignore their body's complaints,
so they could no longer tell if they had
been burned or cut or otherwise injured.
One fellow went hours with a broken arm
before noticing that it no longer worked right.
Everything was in turmoil. Some Southerners
wanted to move north where it was less damaged,
while some Northerners went to take advantage
of the ravaged land and economy to the south.
Some industrious women decided to try
solving the problems simply by putting
the pieces together in a new configuration.
There were not enough men, they reasoned,
so the women could share what men they
had and that would be better than nothing.
The wounded men needed help doing
many things, but they could still contribute
to a household in some other ways.
In Boston, line marriage was legal.
So the young maidens got together
with older widows who had lost
their husbands, brothers, and sons.
They gathered up veterans who
had lost their health in some way.
In this new relationship, there were
enough women to care for the men,
and enough men to do their duty
for the women who wanted children.
The oldest of the wives became
the memory keepers of the line,
telling stories to the children so
they would know where the family
had come from and what it meant.
It wasn't always easy, but they
found that in time, they could
hold each other hard enough for
their broken pieces to stick together.
* * *
Notes:
"Soldier's heart" is an old term for PTSD from the Civil War era.
The War Between the States is one name for the Civil War.
Extreme casualties caused problems in both the North and the South, although the South was hit much harder. Women found it harder to get married, and even the surviving men weren't always fully functional.
Per "The Pursuit of Happiness," line marriage first became legal in Terramagne-Boston, Massachusetts.
rix_scaedu, see_also_friend, and mama_kestrel. It also fills the "high pain tolerance" square in my 8-1-23 card for the New Adventures Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics."Soldier's Heart"
[1866]
The War Between the States
left lives and families shattered.
The North had lost many good men,
and the South had lost so many
that it struggled to function at all.
Numerous women were left widows,
children were left orphans, and
girls had few marriage prospects.
The men who survived the war
were often broken in body and
spirit by the wounds that they had
sustained in combat or otherwise.
Many of them could no longer work,
left with missing limbs or weak chests.
Soldier's heart was a common affliction,
its skittering pulse and shortened breath
turning once healthy men into invalids
ashamed of their faltering health.
Others had learned a little too well
how to ignore their body's complaints,
so they could no longer tell if they had
been burned or cut or otherwise injured.
One fellow went hours with a broken arm
before noticing that it no longer worked right.
Everything was in turmoil. Some Southerners
wanted to move north where it was less damaged,
while some Northerners went to take advantage
of the ravaged land and economy to the south.
Some industrious women decided to try
solving the problems simply by putting
the pieces together in a new configuration.
There were not enough men, they reasoned,
so the women could share what men they
had and that would be better than nothing.
The wounded men needed help doing
many things, but they could still contribute
to a household in some other ways.
In Boston, line marriage was legal.
So the young maidens got together
with older widows who had lost
their husbands, brothers, and sons.
They gathered up veterans who
had lost their health in some way.
In this new relationship, there were
enough women to care for the men,
and enough men to do their duty
for the women who wanted children.
The oldest of the wives became
the memory keepers of the line,
telling stories to the children so
they would know where the family
had come from and what it meant.
It wasn't always easy, but they
found that in time, they could
hold each other hard enough for
their broken pieces to stick together.
* * *
Notes:
"Soldier's heart" is an old term for PTSD from the Civil War era.
The War Between the States is one name for the Civil War.
Extreme casualties caused problems in both the North and the South, although the South was hit much harder. Women found it harder to get married, and even the surviving men weren't always fully functional.
Per "The Pursuit of Happiness," line marriage first became legal in Terramagne-Boston, Massachusetts.
no subject
Thoughts
There's a fairly long list of terms, and different clusters of symptoms, that change over time and often do incorporate the signature injuries of a given war. When I'm writing historic stuff, I try to look for a term from or near that timeframe. Shell shock as in concussive injury from nearby blasts is a real thing -- you see it from the Middle Eastern theatre, sometimes from IEDs. It can cause subtle brain injuries. Combat fatigue is also real; troops wear out after successive deployments even without PTSD, but also the rate of PTSD goes up sharply with the second or third deployment to an active war zone. Then there's moral injury, which people are just starting to look at in this society. And all that stuff is tangled together, often comorbid, so it can be really hard to distinguish physical from mental causes or effects.
>> Today we have effective strategies for helping these emotionally wounded people recover.<<
Well, sort of. We have things people can try, if they can afford care and if anyone believes their problems worthy of attention. There's some stuff that works well for a fair number of victims. But there's not nearly enough studies to pin down evidence-based treatment reliably and widely. Then there's the newer things that people haven't had time to test thoroughly yet, like the idea of using Tetris to assist brain-filing functions to prevent or relieve PTSD (actually any stacking-sorting game can help). Still, traumatic stress in its various forms is often intractable, even with help. People just haven't put in enough research, and it's a slippery topic to begin with, and it needs a lot of things that modern society and conventional medicine are just plain bad at. Then of course, there are the things that work but aren't permitted such as LSD, cannabis, or other psychedelics. It's just a patchy field.
Now if you're tribe member, it's different. Some traditions there have had good fixes long since, because the warrior cultures needed ways of repairing the warriors they broke. Once in a while, a tribal veteran would invite a white buddy, and word leaked out, so sometimes you see references to things like a sweat lodge.
Re: Thoughts
Re: Thoughts
A lot of people are trying to help. Some succeed more than others. I suspect that groups by and for veterans may have a higher success rate than civilian therapists; they know what they're talking about.
Terramagne has the Gentle Life communities that treat traumatic stress and other challenges with lifestyle changes. Not everyone wants to make big changes in their life choices, but for those who do, it works quite well.
>> I'm sure that cannabis is one of the best treatments for helping someone re-balance themselves (I have had a lot of experience with that particular one of Nature's gifts.) <<
Sooth.
>> Basically they all set out to give the veteran reassurance that he's not the only person suffering these things, but if we sit down and tell each other our stories, we wind up feeling less anxiety and confusion later on. <<
Normalization helps. However, PTSD is one of those problems where talking about it can make it a lot worse. Depends on whether a person finds that talking helps them file the memories correctly, or amounts to rumination. The widely recommended exposure therapy is especially high-risk, and needlessly brutal given the alternative of counterconditioning.
>> And things like cannabis (and drugs with similar actions, like peyote or even LSD) help a person analyze why they feel and behave in certain ways, and what can be done about that.<<
True. Cannabis especially, like chocolate, is good for generating mellowness. LSD and peyote are good for taking the frame off reality, which can help heal moral or soul injuries.
>> Although a good hypnotist can do it without giving the person any drugs.<<
Well yeah, that's hacking directly into the operating system. But you have to know how it works and what's broken before you can fix things, and not a lot of people know that much. It's a fantastic option if you can find a good hypnotherapist -- for anyone who's a good trance subject. There are three talents in trancework (trance induction, montoring, and entering trance) and not everyone is good at entering trance.
Re: Thoughts
Re: Thoughts
Re: Thoughts
And I can pop into trance with a blink of my eyes. Sometimes when I was driving on a night of the full Moon, I'd have to keep thinking, "Not right now, Lady - I have to drive the car." And once in a while I'd just pull over and enjoy it.
Re: Thoughts
Yup.
Re: Thoughts
I was trying to think of how a particular fantasy setting I am trying to write would call PTSD-and-similar-trauma, and I think I might have finally figured out a good term. (None of the historical ones I know would work - shellshock and soldier's heart both rely on war, and the main traumatic circumstance isn't a war.)
>>Some traditions there have had good fixes long since, because the warrior cultures needed ways of repairing the warriors they broke.<<
It might be worth it to look at historical traditions from other warring societies. I'd suggest starting with the European knights and Japanese samurai.