I Am What You Made Me

It is interesting to think back on my military career, particularly my time in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Six years after retiring, much of the work itself is beginning to blur. As a Naval Combat Information Operator, I spent a lot of time organizing information, preparing reports, and managing details.

Most days followed a similar routine. The individual tasks and events have blended, and much of what once occupied my working life no longer feels particularly significant.

What I remember are the people.

The men and women I worked with, including those in other departments whose responsibilities were different from mine, are what made that career what it was. They are the part of that life that has stayed with me.

I was never particularly close to many people. I was not part of a clique, and I often kept to myself. Even aboard ship, I found ways to get some time alone and decompress after spending a week surrounded by other people.

But there were moments when someone would sit across from me and start talking.

They would tell me about something happening in their lives. Sometimes it was something they could change. Sometimes it was something entirely outside their control. They talked about things that weighed on their minds, things that distracted them from the work they needed to do, and things they did not necessarily know how to manage.

They talked, and I listened.

I tried not to offer advice unless they asked for it. I did not want to give them answers they had not requested or tell them what they should do when what they needed was simply someone willing to hear them.

Those conversations made me feel valued in a way I had not often experienced elsewhere in my career.

I did not realize it at the time, but those moments would eventually influence the work I do today.

They helped me recognize that I could sit with someone else's difficulties without needing to solve them. I could listen without rushing to fill the silence. I could acknowledge that someone was struggling without assuming I had to make the struggle disappear.

I was not a counsellor then. I was a shipmate.

But something about those conversations stayed with me.

The losses that come with service...

My experience in the military also shaped my interest in grief and loss.

I understand something about what service asks of people, particularly when it comes to time, relationships, and the parts of life that continue without you.

Service members miss birthdays, anniversaries, school events, and ordinary evenings at home. They miss watching their children grow up. They miss the small routines that help keep relationships connected.

Sometimes those absences are manageable. Sometimes they accumulate.

Relationships change while you are away. Children grow older. Partners take on responsibilities that would otherwise have been shared. Families learn to function without you because they have to.

You return home expecting to resume your place in the family, but the family has changed.

You have changed too.

You may need to get to know your partner again. Your children may not relate to you in the same way they did before you left. The routines you remember may no longer exist.

You have come home, but coming home does not necessarily mean returning to the life you left.

For some service members, that adjustment is difficult to explain to people who have never experienced it.

The military has its own expectations, routines, and demands. Much of what happens during service is understood by the people living it, even when the same experiences might seem extraordinary to someone outside that environment.

You become accustomed to certain things. You learn to manage them because the work continues regardless of what you are feeling.

But becoming accustomed to something does not mean it does not affect you.

There are also things you cannot easily share with the people waiting for you at home.

Operational security may prevent you from discussing particular experiences. Sometimes you choose not to talk about what happened because you do not want your family to worry about you.

You know they are already concerned. You do not want to add to that concern.

But silence has its own consequences.

You return carrying experiences that your loved ones may not understand, while they have their own experiences of living without you. You may both be trying to protect each other by withholding what has been difficult.

And so you can find yourselves living together while struggling to understand what the other person has been through.

There are losses in that experience that are not always recognized as grief.

There is the loss of time. The loss of familiarity. The loss of relationships as they once existed. There is the loss of the expectation that coming home will make everything feel right again.

And sometimes there are more devastating losses.

Some service members return to find that their relationships have ended. Others struggle with the effects of what they have experienced. Some carry the deaths of people they served alongside, including the memories of those they could not save.

There can be grief, guilt, regret, and questions about responsibility that do not have easy answers.

When someone dies in service, the people who remain may find themselves carrying more than the loss of a friend or colleague. They may carry memories of what happened, questions about what could have been done differently, and the difficult reality of continuing to live when someone else did not.

For those who served alongside them, that loss can follow them long after they leave the military.

I have known that world. I have seen what it asks of people, and I know that service members do not all carry those experiences in the same way.

Some struggle openly. Others carry their difficulties privately. Some find ways to live with what happened, while others reach a point where continuing becomes difficult to imagine.

Suicidal thoughts and suicide have been part of that reality too.

I do not believe we can understand military service without acknowledging the losses that accompany it, including the losses that are difficult to discuss.

Learning to sit with what cannot be fixed...

Looking back, I understand why those conversations with my shipmates mattered so much to me.

Things were happening in their lives that they could not control. There were situations I could not change for them. I could not bring them closer to home, repair their relationships, remove their grief, or make difficult experiences disappear.

But I could sit with them.

I could listen to what they were carrying.

For a while, they did not have to carry it entirely on their own.

I think that is an important part of the work I do now.

Counselling is not about having an answer for everything. It is not about convincing someone to feel differently or telling them how to resolve a situation that may not have a resolution.

Sometimes the work is simply being present with someone while they try to make sense of what has happened.

Sometimes it means allowing someone to speak honestly about something they have never felt able to say aloud.

Sometimes it means acknowledging that a loss has changed their life and that they are still figuring out what that means.

I learned the beginnings of that work long before I had the training or the language to describe it.

I learned it from the people who sat across from me.

They helped me recognize that I could listen to difficult things without needing to turn away from them. They showed me that there was value in making room for experiences that could not be fixed with advice or resolved through a simple conversation.

I did not know then that this could become my work.

I only knew that those conversations mattered.

The work that stayed with me...

When I retired from the military, I left the uniform behind. I left the routine, the responsibilities, and the particular demands of that life.

But I did not leave everything behind.

The people I served with helped shape how I understand loss, responsibility, and the importance of having someone willing to listen.

They influenced the direction I eventually took in my professional life. My interest in grief, loss, and change did not emerge from theory alone. It grew from experience, from the people I knew, and from the conversations I remember.

That does not mean I understand every service member's experience. I do not. Each person has their own circumstances, relationships, and ways of making sense of what they have lived through.

But I understand enough to recognize that some losses are difficult to explain to people who have not experienced them.

I understand that coming home can be complicated.

I understand that the end of service can bring its own grief.

And I understand that sometimes people need a place where they do not have to explain everything before they can begin talking about what matters.

I can offer that now in a different role.

I am no longer serving aboard ship. I am no longer the person responsible for my particular part of the operation. But I can still sit across from a service member and listen.

I can still make room for the things they need to talk about.

I can still recognize that some of what they carry may not be visible to the people around them.

And I can still do my best not to give them what they have not asked for.

I am retired from the military, but I do not feel finished with the people who helped shape my life.

I sometimes think about those conversations and wonder whether my shipmates knew what they were giving me. They probably did not. I certainly did not understand it at the time.

They were simply talking to someone they trusted enough to listen.

But those moments helped me discover a direction I might not otherwise have found.

I became a counsellor years later, but the beginnings of that work were already there.

They were in those conversations, in the trust they placed in me, and in the experience of being able to sit with another person when life was difficult.

I am grateful for that.

I am grateful for the people who let me listen, even when I did not know how much those conversations would come to mean.

I am what I am because of them.

And although I have taken off the uniform, I am not done yet.