Return to Honor Offers Three Day Retreat for Returning Soldiers

Free 3 Day Retreat for Combat Veterans from the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge

2 Workshops to be held June 15-17 and August 24-26

Return to Honor is a FREE three day retreat and decompression weekend designed to assist you – our service men and women in your transition to the home front – whether it is active duty or civilian life.  YOU DESERVE IT. 

You put your life on the line (and on hold) now it's time to take an opportunity to process your experience and move your life forward powerfully.  Do it for yourself.  Do it for your family.

• An opportunity to be recognized for your service.
• Learn new skills to reconnect to family and friends
• Take charge of your health-mind, body and spirit
• Rest and recharge
• Regain a new sense of purpose and ability to serve others
• Integrating who you were before, who you were in-theatre and who you are now.

Return to Honor Mission: Honor, Support and Well-Being; a process to move through your experience with other combat veterans.  Return to Honor offers understanding, coping skills, re-alignment, and a renewed sense of purpose and mission.

What you may be experiencing:

• Inability to connect with family and loved ones
• Constantly on “alert”
• Unwanted daytime memories, thought or images of traumatic events
• Strong physical and emotional reactions
• Avoidance behavior of people, places and things
• Feeling emotionally numb
• Problems with sleeping
• Problems with anger
• Problems with concentration and memory
• Possible substance abuse

Compounding Factors of Reintegration

•Friends, Family, Society – Non-combat Experience
•Political Climate on War
•Economic and Job Considerations
•Family Changes – Spousal Roles, Parenting, Children
•Values Systems – Shattered
•Combat High/Adrenalin Rush/Power/Responsibilities
•Guilt – Why alive, Comrades still in theatre
•Grief/Loss
•No Fanfare Return
•Little to No Transition Time
•Sensory Overload – sight, sound, smell, sleep & food deprivation
•Disabilities (and unseen scars)
•Hyper-vigilance, nightmares, depression, anxiety, isolation
•Combat Experience/Traumatic Events
 

What you can expect from the workshop: 

• Ability to separate what happened to me from who I am
• Ability to identify emotional reactions in the body and respond appropriately
• Identify and separate “hypervigilance”
• Reconnect with family and friends at your own pace
• Know that you are not alone and enjoy and larger connection with other Vets
• Engage in helping other Vets through the process
• Gauge your own emotional reactions and learn tools to de-escalate
• Feel connected to the world and your community
• Know your limitations and share them with others
• Personal safety issues
• Share your experience with other Vets and continue to heal your wounds 

NEXT WORKSHOP (FREE)

June 15-17, 2007
August 24-26, 2007
Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge
Route 23 W, just off 252 North
Valley Forge, PA
RSVP to Martin Richardson
610-717-7797 day or evening
Sign up TODAY online at www.freedomandhonor.org
(Combat Vets welcome to staff and Sponsors Needed – Show your Organizations Support. Also available to facilitate at your location.)

Spend time in the peaceful historic setting of the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge.  Meals and accommodations are included.  You will have plenty of free time to experience our beautiful 85 acre campus.  A safe, non-military setting, this workshop is not a mental health program but an opportunity through cognitive and experiential processes to renew your life. 

"We allowed them to bear the burden of our freedom; we are obligated to bear the burden of their welfare."
www.returntohonorworkshop.com, 610-933-8825 x241 Ask for Martin Richardson