The path Fitha Dahana-Ellis took toward getting help for herself started with a big statement. She had been struggling to encourage her husband, an Army veteran, to get treatment for what she now recognizes as signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD.
“I opened my big mouth and said: If they had a program where the family member could just go, focus on themselves for two weeks and really process these big emotions that we have and learn how to live with them and have the tools, I would be the first person to go,” she said.
It turns out that Rush’s Road Home Program has such an opportunity — and proved to be just the thing for both Fitha and her husband. Road Home’s approach is that when one person serves the country, the whole family serves. While the program supports veterans and active service members, it also helps family members address their needs.
“As family members, we have our own PTSD — secondary PTSD,” Fitha said. “And a lot of times, veterans — and the caregivers — come out of the military, where they had a really strong support system, and all of a sudden they’re alone.”
From paradise to problems
Fitha met her husband — an infantryman then stationed at the Schofield Barracks — in Hawaii, where she lived at the time. He had just come back from an 18-month deployment to Iraq.
“He was glad to be back in Hawaii,” she recalled. “He wanted to run around town, see movies together, explore the island. He was really outgoing and funny. We share the same dark humor.”
They were married within a year. Then, he redeployed to Iraq.
After he returned, he received orders to Fort Campbell, along the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. It was around that time that he started showing signs of PTSD.
“There was a big shift in his personality,” Fitha said.
She noticed he was “wound tighter” than he used to be, short and angry in his communications. He often made a big deal or got upset about things like garbage on the road or people standing too close at the grocery store.
“I felt like I was walking on eggshells,” Fitha said. “I felt like I had to filter myself, because I didn’t know if there was something I was going to bring up that would upset him.”
Fitha was already having a tough time acclimating to her new home. She didn’t have the food options she loved in Hawaii. She couldn’t find the type of public relations and marketing work she’d done before. And her husband’s obligations to the Army meant he wasn’t home much.
“I was in a dark place,” she said. “It was hard. I was taking care of two kids in diapers. I didn’t have friends.”
She felt alone.
Recognizing a need
It was the middle of the night when Fitha and her husband heard a noise, which they later learned was nothing more than something that had fallen in the garage. But in that moment, he ordered her to grab a rifle and “clear rooms” with him. After things calmed, he realized what happened and finally acknowledged he might need help.
“I was so relieved,” Fitha said. “Finally, he was strong enough to admit there was a problem. Now what?”
While her husband was stationed at Fort Campbell, Fitha worked for a couple of years in the Army Career and Alumni Program, now called Soldier for Life, helping veterans and their families transition from military lives back to civilian ones. The week of the incident, Wounded Warrior Project® visited for a presentation about mental health.
“I remember just sitting in that room crying, because for the first time in a long time I didn’t feel alone,” Fitha said. “I knew what was coming and that there were resources to help him.”
Fitha made herself two promises after that presentation. She would get her husband involved in Wounded Warrior Project®. Then, she would get a job there.
Road to recoveries
In 2014, just a year after making those promises, Fitha started working at Wounded Warrior Project® as a career counselor in the Warriors to Work® program. She continues to serve with the Warrior Care Network® team to this day.
Through her work, she became more familiar with Road Home Program. For roughly a decade, as the family moved around, Fitha said her husband had visited a number of veteran-focused centers and private providers, with little progress to show for it. She really wanted him to go to Warrior Care Network®, and he finally agreed to take part virtually in Rush’s Road Home Program.
“I found that everyone at Rush’s Road Home Program is just so nice — the easiest to work with,” she said. “There’s not a lot of egos. I love partnering with them and their teams about Road Home. I was so happy that he agreed to attend.”
After his second day of talking to Jonathan Murphy, PhD, ABPP, clinical psychologist and manager of the virtual accelerated brain health program at Road Home, her husband barged into a room to declare to her that Road Home is “the best program ever.” And Fitha has seen a notable improvement.
“They gave him the tools to not immediately jump to heightened emotions,” she said, noting it is now sometimes in contrast to her own tendencies to tense up in certain situations. “He says, ‘No, let’s think about this.’ That’s the big gift we got from the program. I get to see glimpses of the man I first met.”
When Fitha learned that Road Home had a family cohort, she was one of the first people to register to make good on the pledge she had made before her husband’s decision to attend. But PTSD led to avoidance, and she found herself not returning Road Home’s calls or calling back after hours, when she knew it would be closed for the day. She justified it as being “too busy.”
At that time, she was traveling a lot with the Road Home team and sharing Warrior Care Network® resources with community partners and military service members. Intake clinician Mike O’Connell, LCSW, helped her understand why seeking such help can be difficult for anyone — including her husband.
“He said, ‘When you go out there and ask veterans to leave their homes for two weeks and do something that’s scary, unpack all of that trauma, what you’re going through is very similar to what they’re going through; I want you to think about it that way,’” she recalled. “Unpacking emotions is not fun, especially if you’ve put them into tiny, color-coded boxes that are stored away.”
Fitha noted that working with Benjamin Shulman, MA, LCPC, clinical manager of the accelerated brain health program at Road Home, was also an eye-opening experience. No matter what she “threw at him” in their discussions, he remained calm and asked her to reflect.
“That made me feel really good,” she said. “I’ve been to therapists before where I’ve said things and the therapist said, ‘That’s wrong.’ Not him. He’s so comforting.”
In addition to addressing things related to her husband’s PTSD, Fitha said the program helped her process the recent passing of her mother, with whom she had a complicated relationship.
“For the family members, the reasoning for coming to Road Home does not have to connect directly to the experiences of the veteran or service member,” said Joseph Zolper, manager of veteran outreach and networking for Road Home. “Leave your veterans or service members aside for a moment. What do you need?”
Helping others find their paths
“When I started helping soldiers transition out of the military, I really did find this is what I was meant to do, this is what I want to do,” Fitha said. “From 2012 on, I’ve been working with military service members and veterans. I cannot imagine doing anything else. I’m just so proud to be able to do the work that I do.”
Nowadays, that work includes recounting her family’s story during speaking engagements. Through those events, she often meets other veterans and their families, who connect to different aspects of her story and often share their own. And she encourages anyone she can to use the resources that are available and know they’re not alone.
“If someone comes and talks to me, then I know I’ve made an impact,” she said. “Sometimes it may come back years later. Just putting my story out there makes it more comfortable. It breaks that stigma, too. It makes me feel like I’ve done my part.”
