Dear Friends,
Thank you for providing your contact information, expressing your interest in Grieving Grandmothers of Military Suicides’ work, and allowing me to keep you abreast of our efforts to spread awareness and engage in advocacy. Your continued interest and support are crucial to our success.
I would like to begin this November & December 2025 update letter by wishing you all that you wish for yourselves in the year ahead. My hope is that you find peace and joy in 2026.
From the outset, my focus has been on spreading awareness of the tragedy of suicides among our active-duty service members, and advocating for changes in the military’s systemic and cultural elements leading to self-harm behaviors. These efforts continue, but as the new year was approaching, I began the process of looking at ways we may expand our impact in other meaningful ways.
My focus thus far has been on:
- Advocating for, and when funds permit, sponsoring, Therapy Dogs on military installations.
- There is more than just anecdotal evidence of the physical and mental health benefits of interactions with dogs (and other friendly and cuddly animals). Numerous scientific studies show that the presence of therapy dogs reduces stress and anxiety, uplifts spirits and lifts morale, and it enhances physical wellbeing and speeds healing.
- The USO and America’s VetDogs train and provide Facility Dogs. Facility Dogs support the general population in a given facility, as opposed to Service Dogs that are trained to support the specific needs of individuals, and are assigned to those individuals.
- My attempts to learn more about the USO’s program are at a standstill; promises to supply information have not yet been fulfilled.
- As the name suggests, America’s VetDogs’s focus is on providing both service and facility dogs to veterans and veterans’ facilities. They would, however, place facility dogs on military installations stateside only, but the process is complicated — a base commander has to request a dog and assign two handlers: a primary handler who is responsible for the ongoing housing and caring for the dog; the secondary handler takes over whenever the primary one is unavailable. Both handlers have to be trained and approved by America’s VetDogs.
- In light of all we know about the benefits and complexities of placing Facility Dogs on military installations, what could our role be? I welcome your suggestions.
- Learning more about, and possibly partnering with the University of William & Mary’s Clinical Mental Health & Military and Veteran Counseling M.Ed. program.
- One of our supporters brought this program to my attention (Thank you, Blaire!), and I am scheduled to have an informational phone interview with the program’s coordinator later this month. I should be able to share a lot more about it in my next update.
As always, I am deeply grateful to those of you who made donations, wrote to lawmakers, and shared the website with others. Lawmakers begin to pay attention when they get multiple communications focused on the same topic — in our case, ending self-harm behaviors among our service members — so please continue to reach out to them. Our ultimate success depends on your continued support.
Please note: 100% of donations go towards website hosting and maintenance, advocacy work, office supplies and equipment, printing services, and postage. We pay no rent or utilities (my office is in my home) and we neither get nor pay wages.