Wounded Warriors find community and confidence through sports
When Army veteran Christina Gardner first sat down with her doctors to discuss her service-related injuries in 2006, she kept reading two words typed again and again on her discharge papers: “severely handicapped.”
She felt confined by the label as she listened to the hospital staff elaborate on her condition.
“They went through this whole list of things I’d never be able to do again, and it was completely devastating,” she says. “Hearing those limits was worse than the injury itself.”
A hockey player in college, Gardner couldn’t imagine a life without physical activity and decided to challenge her doctors’ dire diagnosis with a revised perspective. And with three years of therapy and support from nonprofit organizations like Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), Gardner began to manifest that change. She learned how to snowboard and kayak in new ways, while also meeting other warriors with similar experiences — struggling not just with physical loss, but also emotional and mental challenges. And she developed a dogged determination to redefine her “severely handicapped” label, starting with that list from the hospital of activities she could no longer perform.
“Some of the things on that list that they said I would never do, I can do now,” says the 29-year-old Gardner. Such as becoming a competitive athlete. Gardner currently is training for the 2014 Winter Paralympics, where she hopes to become a part of the U.S. Paralympic team for ice sledge hockey. She’s also in the process of obtaining certification to become a personal trainer.
She developed the confidence to try new things, she says, with support from organizations like WWP and the Adaptive Sports Foundation (ASF) — nonprofits funded entirely from private donations who sponsor events for wounded veterans and their families to establish what they deem “the new norm,” such as a recent four-day ski trip for veterans and their families.
“It’s a holistic approach of mind, body, spirit and economic empowerment,” says Rich Stieglitz, WWP’s executive vice president of physical health and wellness. “Some individuals just want to be able to play golf or tennis for leisure, which is great. And some want to become competitive athletes. Whatever they want to do, we support them.”
The sense of community among the warriors also encourages healing. Army National Guard veteran Ed Afanador was one of the responders during the Sept. 11 recovery effort. Due to the traumatic events, Afanador, 41, struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a collection of respiratory disorders due to poorly constructed masks and prolonged exposure to unknown chemicals, as well as knee injuries that limit his mobility. By 2008, he hit the worst period in his life, which ended in an in-patient PTSD program through the Veteran’s Affairs office.
Things began to change when he attended his first WWP-sponsored athletic event. There, he met 14 other veterans who, together, worked to deal with their physical and emotional struggles.
“It gave me a venue to say, ‘Hey, I can’t really use my legs anymore, but I have a lot of upper body strength.’ I’d always loved skiing prior to my injuries and thought I’d have to give it up, but now I’m able to mono ski,” he says of the skiing style that requires special adaptive equipment. “Having this brought me and my family back to life.”
Like Afanador, 29-year-old Army veteran Jess Dey developed PTSD from her service. She was part of the Iraq invasion in 2003 and had to rescue colleagues after a bombing at the Baghdad U.N. where she worked. She also developed internal injuries from drinking untreated water, which has forced her to completely alter her lifestyle. But the trauma of the U.N. bombing, she says, was far worse than the physical injuries she suffered. “I was only 20 years old at the time, and I had to medevac all of these people I had worked with and known; I had spoken on the phone to their spouses and children.”
She initially resisted any Wounded Warrior events, thinking her internal physical and emotional injuries didn’t qualify her for them. But once she started participating, she realized it was exactly what she needed.
“It’s an amazing feeling to know nothing is off limits and to look back and say, ‘Wow, I just did all of that,’” she says. She’s participated in running races, just learned how to ski at a recent WWP and ASP event, and is hoping to enter a bike race this summer.
For Dey and the other veterans, the events are more than just physical competitions. They’re a way to connect with others, in an effort to begin the healing process. “I feel like I can say things and these people will understand,” Dey says.
“Through sports and outdoor activities, you gain confidence and get pushed into social activities,” explains Cherisse Young, executive director of the Adaptive Sports Foundation, which has an 8,000-sq. ft. sports center in Wyndam, N.Y. equipped with the latest gear to help individuals with a range of disabilities learn how to perform familiar sports in a new way. “We work on the mental state by working through the physical.”
