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Refocus time; June is PTSD awareness month

 Sometimes we get away from our core focus and skills. This blog is about the craft, but I'm not the expert or master, I'm still learning. I enjoy my work with the Gettysburg Writers Brigade (hereafter GWB) and I am an active contributor. My primary focus needs to be on my voice and my writing and my fans. Today at GWB we focused on branding.

I think I write from a place of great hurt. My brand is dark, suspicious, subversive, angry, but it's also hopeful, healing, and even loving. My heroes overcome with great sacrifice, they succeed because of their hurt, they're limitations. Certain important ideals I hold dear shine through. 

One of my compatriots in the GWB, lets call him Tumbleweed, said after reading Salem that the best part was the afterword (he enjoyed the story too). The message about my own hurt and experience with healing, the resources listed and my offer to help anyone who asks, anyone that finds them in those haunted places near death where that story came from. That's what's most important, that's my focus and brand. 

I've spoken on the phone with fans who reached out to talk about how the story helped them heal. One fan in particular is in California, her brother suffered with and was done in by PTSD. Salem and our convo helped her gain a new understanding and a little more peace. This PTSD awareness month, lets all stop take a look around at the faces of trauma, much of it is hidden. Lets remember that it could easily be us, there is no telling when some horror will come along and injure our minds forever. Don't judge us, know that if we are afraid, angry and suspicious, we are more than anything just afraid, desperately afraid that something we can't name is about to hurt us, or we might hurt you and that possibility is unbearable. 

So to my sister in California, thank you for reaching out to me. For all of you, you can always find me here - oxandscorpio@gmail.com is my mail email I read daily. Injured warriors visit https://www.ptsd.va.gov for resources. If you are in crisis, talk to anyone - email me, call a friend, even one you may have neglected a while, walk to a fire hall or a police station, a hospital and talk to whoever is at the desk. Get a cup of coffee and see who is there that might want to talk - anybody, before the dark becomes too much.  

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