“But, but,” was their reply. “You should be aware of the options ...”

I was resolute.

“I want to talk about how I’m feeling, why I feel like bawling my eyes out, how freaked out I am by how my body’s been shredded, how I feel about losing my friends,” I told them. “I don’t want to cover it up.”

I asked them if I could talk to a counselor or join an injured troops support group, where everyone in the room would understand because we’d all gone through the same thing. The psychiatrists didn’t reply. Maybe they thought I was avoiding the issue by avoiding drugs. Or perhaps there are no such support groups. Or maybe there are, but they thought an outsider, especially a reporter, would make it even harder for injured troops to open up.

“Well,” one of them began. “You might want to consider antidepressants for a short time.”

“No,” I said, and I meant it. Now I was going to have to explain. I told them I’d learned that talk therapy worked for me, helping me cope after being beaten, menaced, and threatened both as a child and an adult in the Mideast. Then it helped me figure out my divorce and ultimately gave me the coping skills to survive the ever-present tension of living in Baghdad’s Red Zone for three years, without developing posttraumatic stress disorder.

“Ah, our patients don’t usually come in with that kind of background, nor those types of coping skills,” one of the delegation said. They might not have believed I was making the best decision by rejecting their expertise, but they respected my choice.

Thankfully, two visitors appeared who were of like mind regarding talk therapy. First was Brother David, a Franciscan monk who stopped by in full brown-robed wool regalia and a painstakingly trimmed white beard. I always felt bad when he had to put the disposable surgical gown and gloves over his already hot outfit to visit my often-sweltering room. I wasn’t Catholic, and it didn’t matter. Brother David had worked with 9/11 victims, and in a former life as a fire chaplain, he’d seen plenty of loss and grief. He’d already guided many others through what I was dealing with. He told me about the people he’d met and how they’d managed. He told me about some of the other troops on my hallway and how they were coping and not coping.

Most of all, he reminded me in the gentlest way possible that “God has a purpose, and you’re part of it. You know that.” He handed me a Franciscan prayer that basically said: This will pass. And with faith, you’ll get through it.

When I doubted my ability to turn this experience into something more positive, he said, “After all these weeks of talking with you, there’s one thing I know: You have a great internal compass. Listen to it.”

And he told me to write as soon as I could. I wasn’t ready to step back and absorb the whole story yet, so I started with smaller bites. I answered the 1,500-plus emails, which had piled up since Memorial Day, from friends and hundreds of people I’d never met, except through being on TV.

Excerpted from “Breathing the Fire” by Kimberly Dozier. Copyright 2008 Kimberly Dozier. Reprinted with permission from Meredith Books. All rights reserved.

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