“I Have Served to Tell”: A Qualitative Study of Veterans’ Reactions on Participating in a Living Library Project

Abstract

Living Libraries Founded in 2000 in Denmark, the Living Library (LL) 1 has spread worldwide, operating on six continents and in hundreds of cities (Calderon, 2014). At Living Library events, invited attendees (Readers) and enlisted participants (Books) commune in a public library to engage in 20-minute one-on-one intimate conversations. Guided by volunteer organizers, Readers are encouraged to "check out" as many Books as they would like in a three-hour period. The Books are screened and selected by organizers via the story they

Empowering Female [Student] Veterans through Community Writing and Experiential Learning in the Classroom

“…With experience teaching nursing at a local Long Island college for nearly 20 years, Dr. Breen was an ideal facilitator for the initiative and, because she was formally trained and certified in counseling, her expertise helped assuage civilian student and female [student] veterans whose "page one" moments were difficult to express and process into a cohesive narrative. Though a Story Theory approach can be highly therapeutic for certain individuals, it can lead to a reliving or retraumatization upon the retelling; consequently, such stories should be shared only within safe environments and among trusted listeners (Giesler & Juarez, 2019). As many of the female [student] veterans in the group explicitly brought up highly traumatic memories from their service-such as coming home to find a fiancé had committed suicide, as well as implied MST from a male commanding officer-knowing that the person facilitating the workshop each week was qualified to do so from both a pedagogical and professional standpoint was comforting to all participants.…”

“…Each week, both the students and veterans would form one circle where each participant would share their writing for that week and were encouraged to offer their feedback to others. This model meant that all workshop participants shouldered equal emotional vulnerability, and symbolized to the female veterans that the workshop was able to provide them the important group therapy attributes of secure emotional expression (i.e., hearing others echo their concerns helped normalize and validate the way they felt), and interpersonal impact (increased/replicated feelings of community from their military life; Cox et al, 2017;Giesler & Juarez, 2019).…”