At the center of the group sits U.S. Army veteran KC Shaw, a 41-year-old former master sergeant who spent 20 years fighting in Iraq and slipping unnoticed into battle zones as a member of the special operations forces.
The story is all too familiar to Richard Casper, an Iraq combat vet himself and co-founder ofCreatiVets, the program that brought Shaw from his Baltimore home to Music City to write a song based on his service.
Jimmie Allen and KC Shaw.Jason Myers
Jimmie Allen, KC Shaw Brian White.Jason Myers
“With all these injuries—physical, psychological, moral—it’s trying to find a positive way of looking at their stories. Songwriting helps repurpose memories,” says Casper, 37, whose own struggles with TBI and post-traumatic stress left him suicidal until he began creating sculpture and music. “Art and music can save veterans' lives. It changed me.”
Since it was launched in 2013, CreatiVets has helped more than 850 veterans through its songwriting and other arts programs.
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For Shaw, who finally found help through both traditional and art therapy as well as medication after losing two Army friends to suicide in 2019, the songwriting experience is one more step toward a healthier life — and a way to spread the message that things can get better.
“After the Army, you don’t know who you are anymore,” he says. “I’m just starting to figure it out.”
KC Shaw.courtesy kC Shaw
“One minute he was there, and the next you’re picking up body parts like it’s nothing,” says Shaw, who retired from the Army in 2021 and now works for a technology company. “You get so used to almost dying that it becomes second nature.”
Desperate for a change, Shaw joined the special operation forces, but that work caused a different sort of wound: “I spent so much time being someone else, I forgot who I was.”
The trauma of combat and covert missions left hidden scars that revealed themselves in outbursts when he was stateside with his wife and their family.
For Allen, whose father is a veteran, Shaw’s experiences ring true. “We send people overseas and teach them to kill to protect yourself and your country,” he says. “You can’t come back and expect things to be different without proper help.”
Over the next two hours, Shaw’s story is woven into a song, later titled “Find Me Again”. The chorus echoes Shaw’s own hopeful vision for the future:
I wanna be a man that ain’t giving up
Who ain’t running when things get tough
Lover, father, son and brother
A man who’s a damn good friend
Just trying to find me again
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Even after vets like Shaw return home, their songs resonate, says Casper: “I’ve had a veteran tell me that the song he wrote kept him alive. He listened to it every day.”
White, who has volunteered with CreatiVets for nearly five years, says the experience can be profound for the vets who go through it. “I’ve seen military men and women with a tough outer shell weep,” White says. “It’s a place for healing to begin.”
For confidential support, vets and loved ones can contact the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 or text 838255.
source: people.com
