If you haven’t read Part 1 – go here

We stayed stranded in the mountains for days with no money or clothes. »»]]>

It was the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami....

If you haven’t read Part 1 – go here

We stayed stranded in the mountains for days with no money or clothes. We walked between people digging out dead bodies in the rubble. Ute loads of corpses drove past us. We had survived, unlike the many we saw that had lost their lives. We had an option to go home or to stay on. My husband and I felt if we stayed on for the rest of our planned time it may give our children time to absorb what they had witnessed before they were to be bombarded  by hundreds of questions at home.

We were given a house to live in by the Thai people in the village and stayed on for a further nine days. We did everything to protect our family from the destruction the Tsunami had caused and still managed to enjoy our holiday away from the death. The children,  my husband and I relaxed a little and tried to put the images we had witnessed out of our heads, for a short while anyway.

After arriving home, although feeling very sad, I felt like I was coping okay. I felt I had to be the strong one for my family.

After a few weeks the nightmares started.  I would relive the Tsunami. This time in my dream we weren’t so lucky. Each night I would have the same dream and a different member of my family would be taken by the wave. I started to hear constant screams in my head. I had a feeling of guilt, asking myself how we had all survived. If only’s… were constantly going through my head, if we hadn’t rang our friend that morning we would have been down the busy street when the Tsunami hit and not all survived. If we had stayed in the breakfast room only ten minutes longer, where all the people we had eaten with that morning, we would have also lost our lives. Different scenarios were going through my head. I had gotten to the stage where if anyone spoke to me I would burst into tears. Although I didn’t realise I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. It got to the stage I couldn’t go to work as if anybody so much as looked at me or spoke to me I would burst into tears.

My work insisted that I talk to a counselor, so I did. He told me that I had to get my feelings out of my head.  If I couldn’t talk about it, to put all my thoughts and feelings down on paper. At first it was very hard as I wrote I had to relive every scene I had witnessed. It took me six months to finally write my thoughts down. It did help but I was still unable to talk about that day. If people were to ask me questions I would burst into tears. It took me around two years before I could talk about that day without shedding a tear. It has been nearly six years now, but I can still remember everything as if it was yesterday, and it will still bring a tear to my eyes.

Post Traumatic Stress seems to sneak up on you. It doesn’t matter how strong you think you are overcoming any tragic event in your life, it will have some effect on you. The best thing I feel is to try and talk about the event as much as you can to someone who will listen and for them not to ask you questions.

Crying I feel is good, it does release emotions; just don’t try to be too strong like I did. I felt like I had to keep my emotions to myself for my family. I was more concerned about how they were coping and neglected how I was feeling.

It will take some time to heal.Maybe you will never completely heal, but as long as you have love, understanding and support from your friends and family you will overcome these confusing feelings you feel deep inside your heart and your head.

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Thank you Fran for sharing your story.

Stay tuned for Fran’s upcoming book – due out in early 2011.

Please leave your comments below.  Fran is also checking in and her comments will be published.

We arrived in the afternoon on »»]]>

On Christmas Day 2004, my husband and I together with our four children set off to Phuket, Thailand for a family holiday.

We arrived in the afternoon on Christmas Day. We checked into our hotel, the Patong Beach Hotel,  unpacked and made one quick phonecall, prior to setting off to enjoy the busy streets of Phuket.

My husband and I had been to Phuket many times and had become close friends with a Thai family on our previous visits. Now we had brought our four children with us to meet this family.  We had talked about doing this for a number of years. The phonecall had been to this Thai man.  We had made arrangements to meet him the following day, being Boxing Day, in the afternoon.

The next morning I was woken by a strange movement of our bed shaking, I had a very eerie feeling. My husband was also woken by this movement. We decided to ring our Thai friend and ask if he would like to meet us in the morning instead of the afternoon. He agreed.  We woke all the children and told them to quickly get dressed, as the plans had changed. We went down for breakfast, without our money or personnel belongings, and within 30 minutes, our Thai friend arrived albeit a little early. We thought we would just be saying hello, and then meet up again for our evening meal with him and his family, but he insisted we get in his car and take us for a drive. The children hesitated as they had no money with them or even any shoes on.  I quickly replied “Don’t worry, we will only be gone for a little while, so let’s go.”

Our friend was a taxi driver and owned a tut tut which is like an enclosed small ute.  He took us out of the busy Patong strip, to a quieter location at another beach.

We stopped at a small village restaurant where we all got out and sat down. We ordered a drink each and started to catch up with our good friend.

Before long there was noise, then screaming. It was getting louder. We looked up to see people running. We had no idea what was happening, we stood up to have a look, and to ask people what was all the commotion.  Someone yelled “Run, big water.” As we looked towards the road to the left of us, to our horror it was a wall of dirty water, filled with cars debris and bodies coming our way. We ran to the car which was parked on a slight hill, which gave us enough time to run so the water would slow down. As we sat in the back of the tut tut, safe we watched behind us as the wave took many lives.

It was the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.

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Stay tuned for the next post where Fran shares the impact of PTSD on her own life and how she has overcome it.

Have you or anyone you know suffered from PTSD?  [Share your thoughts by commenting here.]

for Part 2 – go here

On a day to day basis I get to choose my life. Everyone does but unfortunately »»]]>

I am grateful for my life. I love my life.

On a day to day basis I get to choose my life. Everyone does but unfortunately most of us fall into the trap of thinking we have no choice. For example think of the movie, Life is Beautiful, about the father, Guido, and son, Joshua, in the Nazi concentration camp where they choose to live a different reality.

We may have to go through mundane day to day activities where we must endure and at times suffer however we can choose to see life’s blessings rather than be bitter for what we do not have.

We have all heard that there a silver lining in every cloud. However sometimes the bad is so bad that we fail to see the silver lining. One only has to think of the looting following the terrific natural disasters such as the Boxing Day Tsunami or the floods in New Orleans. However there are many inspirational stories that have also come out of these horrific times including many people who have been mobilized to help others even years later. We can choose to focus on the good or the bad. The one we focus on will grow in our lives. Choose to do good to others today.

It is written “I set before you life and death, blessings and curses..” I for one choose life. This has not always been so – so much of my life I drifted. I have always worked especially when I was on holidays where I would do trips to build my business, undertake further studies or write more. Perhaps it even needs to balance out to relax more to stop and smell the roses. But the longer I live the more I realise that life really is not a dress rehearsal – every day matters.

I really love impacting others. I totally support impact trips to places such as Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand.

However the biggest impact can come in the everyday – choose today to listen to that inner voice who says to ring that person, smile at the stranger, or perhaps buy that meal for the homeless person. We never know when either we or someone we love will be in need of someone to help them.