My mother was a Marine sergeant and served at Pearl Harbor. Those of you who know my writing, or know me, know she died several years ago and was honored with a full-military funeral. Women who served are working to raise money with quilt sales and bake sales to turn a pitiful wreck of a crumbling wall into a permanent memorial at Arlington National Cemetary. These women who served in World War II are dying now, one by one.

Soon, as with all of that generation, they’ll only be memories. How sad to see the material reminders of the service go down.

Here’s the story of the women who are hoping new generations of women, and men, will pick up the slack and allow women to be remembered for their contribution. Today’s military women, as the story points out, serve in combat, while our military mothers couldn’t as much. But the generations that came before us did what they could, gladly, and as volunteers to pave the way for todays’ women to serve the way they wish to.

The msnbc article says,

“Most of them are in wheelchairs and they are ill. All of their hair is white, and I look and I think, who knows how long we’ve got left. We just want to do our best while we’re here,” said Lorraine Dieterle, 84, a World War II veteran stationed in New York as a photographer for the Coast Guard who volunteers at the memorial.”

In 1997 when the current memorial was dedicated, a 100 year-old retired soldier named Freida Mae Hardin spoke to the crowd of 40,000 onlookers. I expect she’s gone now, but what she wanted was clear. If you have any way of getting involved or of helping, please do it.

More:

On rape in the military

For families, war is about fear

Resources for military women and military families

Take a moment to check out my guest post at HealMyPTSD.com for PTSD and Invisible Illness Awareness Week. I was invited to do a guest column because two of my family members are dealing with PTSD. It’s really tough to cope with an illness or condition that is invisible. There are physical symptoms, but often, people chalk those up to some other cause. HealMyPTSD is a valuable website by people who have knowledge and great concern.

While we’re at it, let’s visit some of my favorite posts over the years of compiling WomenDayByDay and Ontext:

A guest post from Thistle Farm, where women work to fix the hugely challenging problems in their lives. This one is terrific.

Women who read us honor their military loved ones for Memorial Day.

Proof that Jesus was a woman, and other funny stuff.

The courts are failing to help battered women.

22 ways to earn aliving at home - work at home

Basing marriage on positive thinking

Dr. Phil and the drunken teenage girls

Half dozen good ways for women to enter the blogsphere

Light therapy for pregnant women

There. That’s a little journey through the last few years of Women Day By Day. It’s rewarding to spend time digging up great information for my readers and empowering women to manage some of the things we face everyday. I’ve really loved finding guest writers to do a post here and there this year. Let me know if you know someone with something important, funny, or entertaining to tell us. Write me — maryan at ontext.com

As empowerers of women, we’re interested in how PTSD recovery, or any health outcome, may be in our own hands. My family is intimately familiar with PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some of our readers understand the condition, too, especially among the many military families following this column. Michele Rosenthal is an empathetic, informed, caring professional with excellent thoughts for us.

Healing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: 5 Tips for Empowering Your Recovery

By Michele Rosenthal, Heal My PTSD

Let’s just get to the problem straight up: The single most challenging component of trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is that horrible experience of powerlessness. During you trauma you feel it, and then for weeks or months or years afterward your PTSD struggle reinforces in every moment the idea that you are powerless to overcome. But is that really true?

Survivors are tough. They have, after all, survived something challenging. This means they have courage, determination, creativity and resources. The problem is that in the PTSD fog it’s easy to forget the innate capabilities you have to heal.

While all traumas are individual the PTSD experience is universal. Whether you survived a theater of war, violent sexual assault, childhood abuse, domestic violence, freak accident or medical drama the aftermath is the same: Functionally debilitating flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, anxiety, rage, hyperarousal, hypervigilance and emotional numbing.

The good news is you are not destined to live this way forever. It is fundamentally possible to heal PTSD and go on to live a joyful, productive life. First, however, you need to take back your power. Healing begins and ends with your own ascension back to the powerdome. In healing this means taking control of the healing process, participating in it and being responsible for it.

The following five tips will jumpstart any mental health recovery process. As they focus on taking back your power both in your communication and connection with yourself and with those around you, these five actions will move you from a position of powerless to powerful.

1 - Intention: You can’t heal if your focus is scattered. It’s time to be very specific about your healing desire. This means approaching the healing journey methodically and with well planned outcomes. The more you imagine and plan your success the more you will become able to achieve it. What do you want? Be very specific in how you visualize the end result of your healing, plus each step you plan to take. Make a plan, follow through. Healing is like any other goal, it must be worked at with deliberate dedication.

2 - Education: Knowledge is power. The more you know about what ails you the more intentional you can be in fixing it. Understanding PTSD symptoms, how and why they function, plus what and when you need for healing helps you devise a better gameplan for action.

3 - Connection: Support during healing is key. PTSD recovery is a tough goal and you’ll need the support of yourself and others you can depend on. Building a support network can be a critical element in the healing process. This includes family, friends, colleagues and practitioners who are devoted to helping you evolve. You are strong, yes, and it’s always nice to have extra reserves of strength from those around you.

4 - Communication: Part of healing means being able to tell yourself and others what is wrong, why it is wrong, when it all went wrong, who was involved and how you feel. It’s tough to talk about trauma but healing begins and reaches deeper levels when you develop language and vocabulary. Communicating allows you to pinpoint what part of the PTSD process is really driving you; from there you can develop a plan for healing that is direct and effective.

5 - Commitment: PTSD healing doesn’t happen overnight. Despite the difficulties that ensue and the challenges that arise you must give 100% of yourself and never waver. There will be good days and bad ones but your oath to heal at all costs must remain strong. Doubt has no place in healing. You must commit to the idea and then follow through despite all obstacles.

The major crux of healing any mental illness lies in your ability to imagine a better self and then work hard to get there. By empowering your recovery with these easy steps you begin the process of placing the strategy and resources for healing squarely in your own lap - exactly where it should be. The brain likes to learn. Give it options. It wants new things to think and see and contemplate. Feed it with self-empowered healing thoughts and actions and you will heal, one day at a time.

Michele Rosenthal is a PTSD healing coach and the founder of Heal My PTSD, LLC, (www.healmyptsd.com), an organization that advocates for PTSD awareness, education, treatment and self-empowered healing. She is a licensed practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

(photo was provided)

Women keep each other afloat (Photo by Oddsock)

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Doing some housekeeping today, I dove way back into the contents of Women Day By Day and found some articles our newer readers may have overlooked. Here, then, are some of the best web articles for women from Women Day By Day.

Sexy Stories for a Hot Summer Beach Read

Women in need find recovery and independence

Low Cost Activity Books for Young Children and Moms

Pro-Life Thinking: Understanding the Basics

Pro-Choice: The Basic Issues

Aging Tissue Can Be a Risk Factor for Breast Cancer

Lose Weight or Lose Yourself - Truths About Dieting

Resources for Military Women, Women Veterans and Families

Women-Fix Your Own PC? Windows Ailing? Tips from Computer Guru

Our site for writers and freelancers

Take a look at some of these and then dip into our archives. Tell me what you think - add your comments or contact me about doing a guest blog! I want to engage with you.

Please take some time amid the picnics, boating, partying and fun this weekend to have a moment of silence in which you honor our veterans and service women and men this Memorial Day.

I honor my father, R. Buczek, U. S. Navy Corpsman WWII, Pearl Harbor

I honor my mother, M. Braun, U.S. Marines WWII, Pearl Harbor

I honor my brother R.J. B. U. S. navy Viet Nam

I honor my brother W.D. B., U.S. Army, Germany

I honor my husband, D.W.P., U.S. Army, Viet Nam

I honor my son A.D.K., U.S Army, Operation Iraqii Freedom

I honor my daughter, E.M.K., U.S. Navy

I honor my son, M.A.K., U.S. Federal Government

I honor my niece, K.B., U.S. Air Force, in training

We are fortunate enough to have lost none of our family to these wars and services, but that doesn’t mean we have escaped unscathed. I offer my gratitude, pride and respect to all of mine, and to all the others who have chosen to serve.

We will remember.

CSI, or one of those shows, talked about rape kits last week. Their premise was that thousands, even tens of thousands of rape evidence kits languish on dusty shelves throughout the U.S. Those kits have never been processed. I was astonished, and deeply upset.

Kits unprocessed means women who have been assaulted at the most traumatic level are waiting for justice. And justice sits immobilized. If the kit isn’t processed, chances are the perpetrator has been released. No trail took place.

The victim is trying to move on, but has no closure. She went through an incredibly tragic trauma and will have to go through it all over again if the authorities ever get down to processing the evidence of a crime committed against her. Look, put yourself in the position of these victims. How devalued would you feel?

But that’s just a TV show. Right? Not. I found a real story in exactly the same vein written by Courtney E. Martin. Martin is a columnist on youth and political culture at The American Prospect Online and a blogger at Feministing. She authored Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and is part of the Progressive Women

Please visit this site and read the entire post. It’s one of the most valuable things I’ve read in a while. Thanks. Pass it on.

In this lifetime.