Dear Fellow Veteran,

My name is Ryan Carey, I served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 14 years until being medically discharged in 2016 retiring at the rank of Captain.

I don’t know how you got to this page or in which branch of the armed forces you served. But I do know, if you are here, there is a pain inside you like something you NEVER felt before.

When I returned from Afghanistan, I was living in gratitude,

the honeymoon period of being alive. With time, that wore off. What crept in?

Suicidal ideation, me raging through life and isolating at home, emotionally unstable and unable to string together two days of peace and happiness. Quickly my relationships began to fail and my finances crumbled.

Spinning out I was unable to regulate my emotions. I felt a sense of loss from being released from the military; as if my family had betrayed me

Then I discovered something…

I was not alone. And I’m here to tell you, “You Are Not Alone.”

You, me, and nearly all of us who do serve come home only to struggle. We drown desperate to find ourselves in the civilian world. And if you're like me, you also seek to heal from the wounds and trauma of service.

I’m not just referring to combat wounds but also to the myriad of other risks inherent in military service. Such as rape, sexual assault, racism, discrimination, and non-stop violence.

We have come back to our neighborhoods and changed into civilian cloth, but we have not come home.