01/17/2026
Asking For Help is not a weakness...
I used to think asking for help meant I’d failed. That’s soldier wiring. In uniform, you don’t raise your hand unless it’s mission critical. You carry your weight. You push through. You don’t slow the section down because your head is loud or your body is tired or your soul is cracked. You deal with it later. Later it becomes a habit. Habit becomes identity. And then one day the uniform comes off, but the wiring stays. That’s where things started to go sideways for me. I had discipline. Work ethic. Pain tolerance. I could out-grind almost anyone in the room. What I didn’t have was permission, internal or external, to say “I’m not okay” without feeling like I was compromising the mission. There was no enemy in front of me anymore, but my nervous system didn’t get the memo. Everything still felt like life or death.
So I kept pushing.
And pushing works. Until it doesn’t.
The truth is, I didn’t avoid asking for help because I didn’t believe in it. I avoided it because asking for help meant slowing down long enough to feel what I’d been outrunning for years. It meant admitting that the tools that kept me alive overseas were now cutting me open at home.
That’s a hard realization for a soldier. Here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough: asking for help didn’t weaken me. It gave me range. It gave me options. It gave me a fighting chance to rewire instead of just survive. When I finally reached out, not once, but over and over, to doctors, therapists, peers, other veterans who were further down the road, something shifted. Not overnight. Not cleanly. But steadily. I stopped treating my nervous system like an enemy and started treating it like injured equipment that needed maintenance, calibration, and patience. Soldiers understand maintenance.
You don’t ignore a cracked frame or a misfiring weapon and call it toughness. You fix it because lives depend on it. Healing is no different. The difference is, this time, the life depending on it is yours. This is where places like Ground Zero matter. Because asking for help isn’t just about appointments, paperwork, or programs. Most of the time, it starts with proximity. With a place where you can showcase up without an explanation. Where you don’t have to perform wellness or translate your thoughts into a civilian language. Where being quiet is acceptable and laughing too loud is normal. Where nobody flinches at dark humor or long pauses.
Ground Zero isn’t about fixing veterans. It’s about giving them a place to belong while they figure things out. For a lot of us, isolation is the danger zone. Not because we want to be alone, but because we don’t know where we fit anymore. Ground Zero puts veterans back into the rhythm of the day. Coffee. Conversation. Working with your hands. Sitting by a fire. Showing up for something small that turns into something steady.
That sense of purpose, even on a low-key Tuesday, matters more than people realize. Healing doesn’t always happen in offices. Sometimes it happens by leaning on a workbench. Sometimes it happens over bad coffee and honest stories. Sometimes it happens just by being seen without being assessed.
Ground Zero creates space for that. It reminds us that we’re still useful. Still wanted. Still part of the team. Not because of what we did, but because of who we are now. Asking for help didn’t erase my past. It didn’t make the memories polite or the nights quiet right away. What it did was interrupt the isolation loop. It reminded me I wasn’t meant to do this part alone. That veterans heal better in proximity to other veterans. That shared language matters. That brotherhood doesn’t end when the posting message does. There’s a lie floating around that strong people don’t ask for help.
That lie has buried too many good soldiers. Strength isn’t silence. Strength is adaptability. Strength is knowing when the mission has changed and adjusting tactics accordingly. Strength is saying, “This worked then, but it’s hurting me now, and I need a new way forward.”
That’s not quitting. That’s leadership. Ground Zero exists because too many veterans were trying to heal in isolation, thinking they had to have it all figured out before showing up.
You don’t. You just have to show up.I’m still a work in progress. Always will be. Healing isn’t a finish line, it’s a practice. Some days I lead. Some days I learn. Both count. If you’re reading this and you’re stuck in that quiet place where everything looks fine on the outside but feels heavy on the inside, hear this clearly: asking for help doesn’t make you less of a soldier. And places like Ground Zero exist so you don’t have to do it alone.
We fought together. We build together. We ride together. And when we create spaces where veterans belong again, we heal together.
Stay Toasty 💚
Yance
