A little history.....

Ok, so we are a few days into this and all you know is our family fights PTSD.  I thought it might be nice for y'all to get to know us.

     We are the Lewis'.  Michael, Kelly, and Audrey.   Michael was in the military for 12 years. Kelly (that's me) followed Michael to each of his duty stations putting on her best military wife face.  Then there is Audrey, a driving teenager, an only child.

In 1999 Michael came home from a deployment shortly after we married somewhat different, but we paid it little mind.  We were too busy being a young family.  We pushed those things aside and shrugged them off as "normal" for the situation. Looking back on it, nothing about it was normal.  It was OUR normal, but not many others thought it was normal.  Then Michael had his last deployment and when he came home he was no longer Michael.  Very little of the things he said or did even vaguely resembled the man I married.  Audrey even felt that "daddy" was different.  The things we brushed off as "normal" before were now up in our face screaming "this is not normal, and just wait for the other stuff that's coming!"   We were blindsided by the events that came next.  Our family was quickly torn in two.  One half of it was outwardly showing the hurt, and trying to put the inside back together while the other half was holding it all together on the outside but quickly crumbling on the inside.  Yeah, you guessed it-Michael totally appeared to be okay with our broken family.  He had decided to move on, and not let this stop him from living his life.  Audrey and I were limping along trying to fix what we could and deal with the hurt.  Nine months, almost to the day, later it was as if a light switch was turned on, and Michael could see what a mess things were and he wanted his family back.  By this time his family was doing fine and getting by, but we were relieved to be able to put our family back together.  And we all lived happily ever after.................................................JUST KIDDING!!  That time was rocky at best. That is the time that PTSD decided it wanted my family, and I decided it would have to kill me for it-that 's the story we will tell as you all get to know us.  As for now though, we are living happily ever after, laughing in the face of everything PTSD tries to pull.