Goosebumps + Gratitude: The Call to Give Back

There’s a moment at the beginning of every rodeo that unites everyone gathered. The crowd stands still. The arena quiets. And someone steps forward to sing the national anthem.

The American flag flies center stage. As “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is sung, your arms prickle with goosebumps, and your chest surges with gratitude for those who have served our country.

For Clarissa Shepherd, this annual moment at the St. Paul Rodeo in Oregon is brief but spiritual. And it captures her hope for how our community would aways revere and support our veterans and military families.

Clarissa is a mental health therapist in Aurora, Oregon. Although her dad and brother served in the military, she never felt immersed in military culture.

A few years ago, Clarissa began working with a client who was a military veteran. She discovered how little she knew about military culture and the extra burdens that veterans and their families carry. She said, “I realized that was a whole culture that I didn’t have enough information about.”

She began to see how the stress, camaraderie, deployments, and grief of military life exacerbate the common challenges people face. And she wanted to deliver more tailored support. But to do so, she would need more specialized training.

One after another, Clarissa started taking trainings. There, she learned that other health providers like her were donating free services through the Returning Veterans Project. It got her thinking: if others could do it, could she?

Despite having new insights and skills through the trainings, Clarissa wondered if she really knew enough to support more veterans. She also wondered if she had the capacity to make yet another commitment in her already busy life.

The need for volunteers to support the mental health of veterans is immense. Not every veteran and military family gets the care they need through regular channels. But a mother to five children, Clarissa runs her household, her business, and supports the family farm. Taking on volunteer work had to be carefully considered.

As she thought about the opportunity, Clarissa remembered her veteran client. She realized that there was an element of military culture that she was well-equipped to support – military families. As a mother and wife, Clarissa knew the challenges of supporting a family and being a spouse. As a professional, she now understood the additional complexity and trauma military families endure.

The pieces were coming together for Clarissa. She could clearly see the opportunity volunteering offered her – to combine her personal experience with professional knowledge and deliver high-quality support to military family members.

Clarissa knew she had what it took to support military families. So she committed. She began volunteering with RVP and was quickly connected to a military spouse in need of support.

Many patients who need therapeutic support benefit from weekly visits with a counselor. But weekly therapy is often too expensive, so people schedule fewer visits and have less effective results. But for Clarissa’s RVP Client, frequency and cost were no longer a barrier.

Free, weekly support is making a big difference in the life of Clarissa’s current RVP Client. “People trust you with their deepest wounds and struggles… Through therapy, people learn to trust themselves and to grow confidence and love themselves.”

Serving as an RVP Volunteer has been immensely satisfying. Clarissa is making a difference for a military family that otherwise might not get the support they need.

She feels appreciated and fulfilled by the work. She’s confident that when she finishes working with her current RVP Client, she’ll open her schedule to another and then another.

Clarissa turned her gratitude for those who served our country into action. The reverence that wells up every time she hears the national anthem is something she feels more frequently these days. Now she sees more clearly the sacrifices and challenges made not just by veterans, but by their families. And she discovered that she has her own valuable way to offer service in return.