Rights of passage for soldiers with Kevin Stacy

How soldiers can come back home and into community

Programming note: I took a bit of a hiatus. But we are so, so back. About every 3 or 4 weeks or so. So smash that ❤️ right above so more folks can discover it on Substack. Thanks!

Kevin Stacy is a decorated combat leader and served as a pilot with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment - the Army’s elite special operations aviation unit. He is also the Founder and Executive Director of Station Foundation, which helps Special Operations warfighters and their families transition to coming back home through retreats and community support.

It is work I hope the military, and even American society more broadly, can widely adopt one day.

Note: This interview has been edited so it can fit in an email.

What men carry home

Johnny Bowman: What issues are you seeing from folks coming back from Special Operations?

Kevin Stacy: I'd start off by saying most folks that make it to the Special Operations community have already served for a while - particularly the folks that I work with. It's incredibly physically demanding to be in this community. Often, their bodies are broken down. They're also exposed in combat and in training to things that impact cognitive functions. So you think TBI, CTE - even the things that you can't see, these concussion blasts, these direct hits, they're feeling that physically. We're also seeing a lot of exposure to, I would say, toxic chemicals hard to pinpoint or nail down yet, and that's showing up in the form of cancer. We have an incredibly high rate of cancer within our community.

Because of what we put the body through, hormones are completely out of whack. For example, when I got my blood tested, my testosterone was just below 200. These levels would be similar for our Nation’s warfighters we’re expecting to go out the door and engage in combat operations, which is insane. You're seeing guys come home just depleted in all these areas.

Not dismissing it, but much of this is being associated with this level of service, something that Dr. Frueh calls “Operator’s Syndrome”. The cumulative effects of serving in combat. Our responses are becoming far better in addressing these aspects before they are out of hand, but much of it isn’t going away. That's what we deal with when we serve in this area.

But what I don't think has been fully addressed, and it's happening now, is coming home from war with the “invisible wounds” of moral injury and, and the loss of identity and purpose as we move away from uniformed service.

With moral injury, the idea is that I'm acting or watching events unfold that I do not agree with morally. It conflicts with how I live my life from a values-based standpoint and I carry that home with me. Often moral injury is layered with survivor guilt, meaning I'm coming home but my teammate’s not. And all of a sudden now you're plopped back in a country that forgot you were even fighting in the first place. And now you may be out of service.

You may be trying to find employment or trying to figure out life beyond the military. With a loss of community, a loss of purpose, and on top of all the things that you gave physically, this is what shows up at my doorstep. And sometimes guys don't even realize it. I didn't realize it. I didn't realize how much my body got beaten down. I just thought this is normal for us. And it's not.

Johnny Bowman: If someone doesn't have a Station Foundation, what are men's options for dealing with moral injury or these issues that you're talking about?

Kevin Stacy: There's not a lot. There's great stuff for financial readiness, college assistance, or vocational rehabilitation. There's great stuff for physical health as well. Those things tend to be covered. I think the gap in service and where I think we fit best is that spiritual reconditioning from war.

We look at going to war as something that's more sacred than our society has absorbed. Treating it as more than just a deployment, but rather a very sacred process that warriors go into fully. America is world class at going to war…terrible in coming home. In the spiritual area, I think it takes a lot of work to get into that space with men. Men in general are often a bit reluctant to go to these places. And so I'm dealing with a hyper masculine, hyper aggressive kind of archetype, but deep down they want to come home.

Another path with elders and community

Johnny Bowman: If you could redesign what coming home looks like for our military, what does that look like?

Kevin Stacy: So when we're done (and there are guys that do 20, 25, 30 years of service), we hang it up and get sent out to pasture. There's little to no architecture within the current structure to keep these guys around for their wisdom, insights, and experiences. We need to do a better job at creating ways to retain these warriors for far more than their tactical prowess. We need them for their decades of leadership and understanding of what war does. They're not interfering with the leadership or organizational requirements, but rather serving as a council of elders that help the next generation navigate what it means to go to war. When I was at West Point, and in the early years of GWOT, there were very few, if any, elders to help us. I think about where we're at now in society, and in our military where there's this exodus of experience - more importantly exodus of wisdom - and we have to retain that.

How we retain that is by taking influential warrior-leaders who embody the values and attributes of the warrior archetype, and train them to serve now as healers and guides home from war. What we've done is created a program that helps men come home from war through ceremony.

Rights of passage

Johnny Bowman: What does that look like?

Kevin Stacy: The Station is incredibly fortunate to be in a place in the country where there are tribes that did a brilliant job of bringing their warriors home. Their legacies and homecoming traditions serve as our model on how we get back there. Not to steal their culture, but to learn from them. And there's so many wonderful men around here that have helped us do just that.

To share on a high level, there's four rights Warriors move through in our Program called “The Return”. This is a 9-day hero journey based on ancient warrior traditions of what it means to walk the Warrior path. The first rite is to share their story amongst other warriors. This requires deep reflection on the points in life that brought you to the present moment. It demands authenticity and vulnerability – key traits of a true Warrior. And it takes the tribe to sit and listen, recognizing themselves in their fellow Warrior's path and come to appreciate and respect one another on a deeper level. You think you know someone until they share their story.

The second is “to sing the songs of our Fallen”. Those that can't be here, we walk for them and we do it in a very particular way – carrying a large rock, in silence, through the woods, at night. We hear stories about guys from combat, guys in training, and then guys that we've lost to suicide. We learn about Warriors who matter to our tribe. When we walk down that hill, we're all better Warriors for it. We go home as better husbands and fathers. Because those songs take a little weight off our chest.

We participate in a three-day mini-journey. We depart our comforts and move into the backcountry, experiencing the peace and majesty of Nature, experiencing true stillness and silence, where I can begin to digest the journey and take time to reflect on what truly matters to me.

And through that process, they come out of the woods and write a letter. Often those letters are to their families and are of gratitude and thanks… or it might be a letter of forgiveness. They may ask for forgiveness or they may give it to someone who may or may not deserve it. When we come back together as a group, we sit around a fire and read these letters aloud to other Warriors…in a similar way to sharing our story but with a specific direction of our kindness. We then complete the homecoming through a purifying process. Once they come out of that, they enter into this beautiful homecoming ceremony to where they're finally cleansed and brought into a new experience of grace and reconciliation.

What family needs

Johnny Bowman: You also work with family members of special operations forces. What needs are you seeing from family members?

Kevin Stacy: Let's start with spouses. These are amazing women that ride till there's nothing left. These are the people that take care of all the children, the family business, the home. They keep everything together and stable, so that guys like me don't have to worry about it when you go overseas. They put off careers. They completely sacrifice their identity and wellness so that their husbands can be safe. So when they show up to us, there can be a lifetime of experiences to unpack–just like the Warriors. Sometimes it's a challenge to know who you are amidst all of the requirements to care for others, putting yourself on the back burner when everything is directed in support of someone else. And it becomes incredibly difficult to take care of myself. I feel guilty even just thinking about taking care of myself because there's so much else to do.

The kids desperately want to know their dads. As Dads who serve in SOF, we are absent in really critical times in our childrens’ lives and it's not by choice. We don't ask to go away for first baseball games, birthdays, holidays - we go because the mission calls and there is no choice.

I'll tell you a personal experience and hopefully this helps. My son was really young and I was deploying all the time. During a trip to Afghanistan, my wife shared with me that she found our son in his crib banging his head saying he was a bad boy. He connected all the other guys in our neighborhood coming home every day in uniform seeing their families, but his dad doesn't come home. So his first thought was, "It has to be me. Why is he not coming home?" He had no idea that I was constantly coming and going out of the country. And for me, that struck me dead in the heart. They always say kids are very resilient, but how do you become resilient? You got to go through really traumatic events.

And that was a wakeup call for me. And that's why as my wife and I began building The Station, it was absolutely critical to not only include, but to place them as a priority, the spouses and the children. Serving in SOF is a family mission…make no mistake.

Johnny Bowman: Thank you. Anything else?

Kevin Stacy: If what we've talked about resonates, and people are interested in figuring out ways they can be part of something bigger than yourself that is making a lasting difference, reach out and to be part of a solution. Coming home from war takes a community. This is not a military issue, but an American issue.

---

Do you have the Spicy Questions PDF?

Get a free and very special PDF for referring this newsletter to 1 other friend.

The PDF is my definitive list of Spicy Questions - the spiciest conversation starters I know of for friends, family, and Uber drivers. If you don’t know if you want this now, you will once you get it.

The button below gets you a referral code link you can use to then send to friend.