[images from my time at Yongsan]

It would seem November is going to be one wild, crazy & cold month.

Between traveling to Seoul for two weeks for my training class, my mother’s fall & subsequent partial hip replacement surgery, Thanksgiving coming up fast, the pact Eric & I made to not turn on the heat until January…yes, not till January, a milestone birthday this week and planning a trip home…well, let’s just say that there are a lot of moving pieces.

But first & foremost, thank you to everyone who commented with words of support & advice, to everyone who emailed me their thoughts & ideas…I can’t tell you how much that has helped.

As it stands now, my mother has had her surgery & is apparently making some really good strides in her recovery. My sister has been researching nursing homes with rehab capabilities. The first was a Steven-King-esque nightmare, the second a brilliant beacon of hope. Obviously we’d prefer hope to horror. But she will have to be assessed by the staff at the home first, then they’ll make their decision on whether or not they will accept her.

And I got an email tonight from the medical logistics planner asking for the recently trained spouses to get together next week to go over how to implement the program to the spouses here in Korea. It looks like I’ll have to travel to Camp Red Cloud (between Yongsan & the DMZ) in order to attend….can you say ‘fun’?

I’ve had a lot of people ask about how the training went, if I thought it was going to be a viable & valuable program, etc. So here’s my post-graduate thoughts.

Yes, it’s a great program. They’ve managed to take psychology 101 and turn it into common, everyday language…none of the “touchy-feely” words that would make soldiers run out of the room screaming. And the University of Pennsylvania instructor that trained us was perfect.

He managed to get the soldiers respect on day one & hold it through the entire two weeks…a feat in itself, especially for a civilian psychologist.

The goal of course is for soldiers to teach soldiers, spouses to teach spouses. And at the moment the focus & pressure from the top is the soldiers.

I know there have been a total of 2500 people globally trained so far to become resiliency trainers, but I have no idea how many of those are spouses. I’m guessing that I’m maybe one of the first 50 they’ve done. And they’ve also already implemented training the first two modules to every soldier in-processing to Korea.

I think I shared with you that General Sharp came to talk to us at one point. But what I didn’t really get into at the time was his request for ideas on “transparency”.

So I know I’ve told you time & again that Korea has been a hardship tour – a place a soldier goes without his family – and that they are on the cusp of changing that.

Well, it turns out they’ve finally realized that they turned on the flood gates a little too soon. There aren’t enough resources here to support so many families – food, school, medical support, on & on.

Of course it didn’t help that they published a big “come to Korea” spread in a military magazine promoting how great things are here. So while the rest of the Army community outside of Korea thinks Korea is “the assignment of choice”, those of us here in Korea are saying “think again”.

And that was the General’s concern. How do we go about making life here…as it is this moment…transparent to those considering heading this way?

It’s a tough question, I’ll grant you that. They have to factor in big picture things like public relations, diplomacy, policy, promoting military strength. As for me, I can just shoot from the hip.

[Obama's wreath on Veteran's Day]

…But I’m going down a rabbit hole here. Let me back up…

Resiliency is crucial. Be it here in South Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq or Ft Hood. And I’m really impressed how they’ve been able to drill it down to the basic skills. The challenge will be in the cultural shift it will take for the entire military community to accept it. You’ve got the old warriors who believe the Army is going soft and the new soldiers who can’t tell the difference between a thought & an emotion.

So yeah…I’m kinda grateful that I will be teaching spouses. But my thought…the idea I didn’t share with the idea-thief…is what I personally want to focus on are the spouses going through the behavioral health system right now.

The counselors are already working with them on their specific issues, but how great would it be for them – the ones struggling right now - to learn resiliency at the same time?

Let the FRG leaders focus on teaching the bulk of spouses. I want to help those who need it the most.

So jot that down…My idea.