CHAPTER 23Liberation Day
In the summer of 2010, I was invited to Fort Carson, Colorado, to
address an Army unit returning from combat in Afghanistan, a unit
with a high suicide rate. I was there to talk about my own trauma—
how I survived it, how I survived the return to everyday life, how I
chose to be free—so the soldiers might also adjust more easefully to
life aer war. As I climbed up to the podium, I experienced a few brief
internal skirmishes of discomfort, the old habits of being hard on
myself, of wondering what a little Hungarian ballet student has to
offer men and women of war. I reminded myself that I was there to
share the most important truth I know, that the biggest prison is in
your own mind, and in your pocket you already hold the key: the
willingness to take absolute responsibility for your life; the willingness
to risk; the willingness to release yourself from judgment and reclaim
your innocence, accepting and loving yourself for who you really are—
human, imperfect, and whole.
I called on my parents for strength, and my children and
grandchildren and great-grandchildren too. Everything they’ve taught
me, everything they’ve compelled me to discover. “My mama told me
something I will never forget,” I began. “She said, ‘We don’t know
where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one
can take away from you what you put in your own mind.’ ”
I have said these words countless times, to Navy SEALs and crisis
ĕrst responders, to POWs and their advocates at the Department of