The Three Sided Mirror

When I performed my play recently in California, a veteran stood up in the Q &A and shared an incredibly powerful story with me that I think goes to the heart of why many of our vets and their families struggle. Instead of trying to explain it, I will let him express it in his own words.

“The one thing I was to encourage people to understand is, and one thing that you depicted that I hadn't seen was the things that we learned. And what thing that struck me the most was the three-sided mirror.

Which was who you were before you went into the military, who you became as you were in the military, and then who came home. And I think it's very important that people realize that person that went isn't the person that came home.

That person never comes home. Somebody completely different comes home, and this awareness that you're bringing to the public, I think, is very important because we seem more and more to be involved more and more in wars, and this experience of war and the three-sided mirror never seems to go away. And I feel for the families, because it's not just the veteran that is experiencing the difficulties of coming back to what we used to call the world. It's the families.”