Abstract
Spiritual wellness in service members is vital. It is at once founded on establishing and reaffirming one’s purpose, a task all the more important for military members. There are countless ways to exercise spiritual wellness, and writing in particular provides unique benefits. The benefits are personal in that writing can serve as an outlet for finding and reminding service members of their purpose. The benefits are also sociocultural in that such the products of such writing can help bridge the civil-military divide. This divide is a gap in understanding and experiences between a nation’s civilian population and its military. In recent years, this gap has grown significantly in the United States. Within this context, and somewhat paradoxically, there has been consistent interest in military narratives, both from veterans of military service and current service members. These works help military authors to reckon with their service and its implications, which is at times traumatic and often complex. These works also help civilian readers better understand the shared humanity between those who serve and themselves. The objective of this paper is to explore the writing of such narratives with relation to spirituality and spiritual wellness. First it investigates the role of writing in traumatic healing, at the act-of-writing level. Then it considers the broader application of such writing in American society. This paper reviews current research on military storytelling and spiritual wellness with suggestions to how it may be supportive of a broader objective: bridging the civil-military divide.
Presenters
Marissa LemarMaster Instructor, Humanities and Social Sciences/English, United States Naval Academy, Maryland, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Religious Community and Socialization
KEYWORDS
Writing, Trauma, Healing, Military, Wellness, Spirituality, Civil-Military Divide
