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The hardest wounds to name are the ones that whisper you’re not good. We sit down with a VA chaplain, Army veteran, and moral health scholar to explore moral injury as a shame-rooted fracture of identity—not just a cluster of symptoms. Together we draw a clear line between fear-based PTSD and the moral injuries that follow betrayal, military sexual trauma, and violations of conscience, and we examine why the path to repair runs through truth, presence, and belonging.

We dig into a four-part model of moral health—belief, identity, integrity, responsibility—and show how trauma can collapse trust, autonomy, and competence until isolation takes over. From the debate around DSM recognition and compensation to the reality that loneliness is a massive suicide risk factor, we challenge systems that only pay for diagnoses while missing the person. The conversation turns practical: how to create spaces where survivors can be believed without pressure, how moral truth-telling restores voice, and why clinicians and chaplains should be trained to see the ethical dimension of trauma.

We also step outside. The chaplain shares insights from Healing in the Wild, where nature becomes a clinic without walls. No checklists, no judgment—just presence that helps people shift from performance to awareness so the nervous system can settle and the story can be told honestly. For women veterans, caregivers, and anyone living in the aftermath of moral harm, this episode offers language, tools, and hope: healing isn’t forgetting; it’s remembering differently in community. If moral injury has touched your life or your work, you’ll leave with a deeper map and immediate steps to support moral repair.

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Help Moral Injury Support Network for Servicewomen, Inc. provide the support it needs to women veterans by donating to our cause at: https://misns.org/donation or send a check or money order to Moral Injury Support Network, 136 Sunset Drive, Robbins, NC 27325. Every amount helps and we are so grateful for your loving support. Thanks!

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