Briar Hollow

“We won’t touch your church. Promise. Tee hee.”

Birthright International

Sisters of Life

Option Line

The Nurturing Network

Good Counsel Maternity Homes

The Good Counsel Network (UK)

LIFE Charity (UK)

Cardinal Winning Pro Life Initiative (UK)

National Life Center

American Pregnancy Helpline

Teen Mother Choices

Life Call

Vifac (Mexico)

Life Pregnancy Care (Ireland)

Cura Crisis Pregnancy Support (Ireland)

SOS bébé (France)

Donne-moi la vie (France)

Sos Futures Mamans (Switzerland)

Pregnancy Counselling Services (New Zealand)

Family Life Crisis Pregnancy Centre (New Zealand)

Voice for Life New Zealand

SOS Vita (Italy)

Centri di Aiuto alla VITA (Italy)

La quercia millenaria (Italy)

Bethany Christian Services

Independent Adoption Center

Catholic Charities Adoption

Gladney Center for Adoption

Cúnamh Adoption Services (Ireland)

“Bobby Shaw, a 77-year old Tyler, Texas, homeowner shot and killed a burglar who allegedly invaded Shaw’s home. Shaw, who was in his bedroom, heard glass breaking late one December night. He grabbed a shotgun and went to investigate. Shaw spotted an intruder wielding a large too. When the man charged, Shaw shot him. (Tyler Morning Telegraph, Tyler Texas, 12/10/2014). “

PTSD AND THE CIVIL WAR SOLDIER-HIDDEN LEGACY

“nostalgia,” “moral turpitude” “feeble will,” “camp disease,” “soldiers heart”

Mental ills were a source of shame, especially for soldiers bred on Victorian notions of manliness and courage

Civil War combat, by comparison, was concentrated and personal, featuring large-scale battles in which bullets rather than bombs or missiles caused over 90 percent of the carnage. Most troops fought on foot, marching in tight formation and firing at relatively close range.  As a result, units were often cut down en masse, showering survivors with the blood, brains and body parts of their comrades.

Though geographically less distant from home than soldiers in foreign wars, most Civil War servicemen were farm boys, in their teens or early 20s, who had rarely if ever traveled far from family and familiar surrounds. Enlistments typically lasted three years and in contrast to today, soldiers couldn’t phone or Skype with loved ones. These conditions contributed to what Civil War doctors called “nostalgia,” a centuries-old term for despair and homesickness so severe that soldiers became listless and emaciated and sometimes died.

Soldiers carried on for years before killing themselves or being committed to insane asylums.

Wallace Woodford flailed in his sleep, dreaming that he was still searching for food at Andersonville. He perished at age 22, and was buried beneath a headstone that reads: “8 months a sufferer in Rebel prison; He came home to die.”

William Hancock, who had gone off to war “a strong young man,” his sister wrote, returned so “broken in body and mind” that he didn’t know his own name. 

Elijah Bos­well, who “Sobbed & cried & imagined that some one was going to kill him,” screaming “the rebels was after him.” Others were brought to the asylum because they barricaded themselves in rooms, awake all night with weapons at the ready.

A veteran who narrowly survived an artillery barrage would shout at his wife, “Don’t you hear them bombarding?” Another, shot in the side during the war, was described upon admission as sleepless, suicidal and convinced “he is bleeding to death from imaginary wounds.”

One file includes a photograph of the patient, in old age, still wearing his uniform four decades after being admitted at the end of the Civil War with “Acute Suicidal Melancholia.”

The Maiden in Black

This is the type of cat that would try to sell me magical potions in the woods.

Matilda in Black 064 Original Mirkwood Elf from Lord of the Rings Trimmed the lace and pinned some of it away from my face in an elven style.  Cosplayer: Spockspeak Photographer: Papanotzzi

“All people deserve to be treated equally.”