RICHMOND, Va. -- This Veterans Day a Virginia couple is sharing their journey to healing after the realities of combat left them with a broken marriage.
In her new book, “Recalibrated,” Anne Smith shares how the couple is using their experiences to change the lives of others.
Nelson and Anne Smith met in the most unlikely of circumstances — a war zone in Afghanistan.
He was in Special Forces and she was a civilian with the Department of Defense.
“They asked me to come in and brief them,” Anne recalled. “And so they all marched in and sat down, he took one side glance at me and I was like, 'Oh, game over.’”
A little over a year later, the couple married in 2013 just a few days before Nelson was deployed on another dangerous mission.
But when he returned home, Anne said their marriage was not the same and “just started to crumble.”
“I was waking up multiple times in the night and walking through my house with my gun to make sure I locked all the doors and windows and that was almost every night,” Nelson said.
The couple’s pastor suggested that Nelson might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
“That was the first time someone had ever said that to me,” he recalled. “And I was like, ‘I’m not weak. That doesn’t make sense.’”
Together the couple sought spiritual help.
“Nothing I could say or do would fix him," Anne said. "No amount of words that I could argue or yell or scream or cry would change what was going on so that’s when I just looked up and said, ‘Lord, I can’t do this.”
By looking at her own behavior and finding the tools to help respond to Nelson’s episodes, Anne says she was able to reach out to her husband with more compassion and from a place of love.
Nelson also began professional counseling after realizing the pain he was causing his wife. He said he paced in front of the counselor’s door for several minutes before his first session because he was too nervous to knock.
“It’s almost like jumping off a high dive you just have to take the courage,” Nelson said.
Anne chronicles the couple’s journey to healing in “Recalibrated.” It launched this past week during a book signing at the Virginia War Memorial attended by friends, family, and Virginia's first lady, Suzanne Youngkin.
Nelson now serves as the Commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services and has helped launch the state’s 988 crisis hotlineand several programs aimed at assisting veterans.
“I think about myself, and I was pretty blessed to have people who walked beside me,” Nelson said. “There’s so many people that don’t. They don’t know where to go, they don’t know what to do, I’ve heard it from every corner of Virginia.”
Today the couple’s large blended family is their greatest joy. But they have also found the blessing of giving back to others who are walking in their shoes.
“We got through it with our faith and our community and counseling,” Anne said.
Anne says the three-strand cord helped them through the darkest of days.
“You look back and say there is hope,” she said. “You just have to seek it and seek it with all your heart.”
“Recalibrated” is now available at bookstores and Amazon.
If you are a veteran or family member looking for help, click here for the Virginia Department of Veterans Services website.
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