Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD - Nov 15,2012

The November 15, 2012, Episode of American Heroes Radio features a conversation with Dr. Christal Presley, Ph.D., the author of Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD. Christal Presley, PhD, is the founder of United Children of Veterans (www.unitedchildrenofveterans.com), a website that provides resources about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children of war veterans. She obtained her PhD in education in 2009, and is an instructional mentor teacher in Atlanta Public Schools. Publisher's Weekly said of Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD, “A soldiers return home from war is often just the beginning of another, more internalized battle. In her memoir, Presley recounts 30 days of interviews with her Vietnam veteran father—conversations in which she attempts to understand her father, his PTSD, and her own lifetime of vicarious traumas. Each day is given a chapter, and each chapter concludes with a "Journal" entry that revisits Presleys tumultuous childhood memories. What emerges from this format is a harrowing portrait of the pasts ability to haunt the present; Presleys descriptions of the troubled child she was blend all too easily into the confused and searching adult she becomes. In some cases, she is compelled to go to a Veterans Affairs hospital and even to Vietnam. The books division into 30 days feels increasingly forced and fragmented with the passing of each chapter. Such a story is, by its very nature, fractured, and by the end of the book Presleys father is no less tormented than he was at Day One. Yet Presley has found stability in her fathers story, and her willingness to share it—and her own revelations—will be appreciated by readers who deal with any form of wartime PTSD.”

chistal presley | post traumatic stress disorder | wartime ptsd | ptsd | war veterans