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On this episode, we have a conversation with Susie Dicker Sitzer, a public relations expert who most recently served as the Executive Director of Drawn From Valor, and an upcoming project that Drawn From Valor is partnering with PsychArmor to produce, Tales of the Golden Acorn
Because fewer than 7% of Americans have served in uniform, most Americans are unfamiliar with military service and culture. As a result, members of the military and Veteran community are at greater risk for disconnection and lack of belonging with the civilian community. PsychArmor’s mission is to bridge the military-civilian divide by educating and training a Nation. Each week, Duane France, a combat Veteran and Clinical Mental Health Counselor, will dig deep into the stories “Behind The Mission” - and create a conversation with organizations and leaders on how they are utilizing their expertise and networks to support the military-connected community.
Welcome to Episode 68 of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversations with PsychArmor trusted partners and educational experts.
My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans and their families. Find the show on all the podcast players by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.
Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors, who also believe that education changes lives. This episode is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military cultural content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. You can find more PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org.
On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Susie Dicker Sitzer. Susie is an experienced organizer, connector and public relations maven who is highly dedicated to the mission of helping others. Susie has most recently served as the Executive Director of Drawn From Valor, an award-winning nonprofit, digital first content studio devoted to empowering kids and their families to understand and manage their mental and physical health conditions. Drawn From Valor is passing the baton of one of their projects onto PsychArmor. Susie joins me to talk about how PsychArmor is carrying on the mission to share how tales of the golden acorn is being developed to help children and families understand post traumatic stress disorder and help them learn, grow, and thrive during what can often be a confusing time. You can find out more about Susie and the project by checking out her bio in our show notes. So let's get into my conversation with her and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points.
DUANE: So on the show, we like to hear about the story behind the mission that our guests dedicate themselves to.You've worked in the media and communications for much of your career. What brought you to working in the health education space in general and drawn from valor in particular?
SUSIE: I have been very fortunate. As you mentioned, working in media and communications to work with a number of nonprofit organizations as my clients, as organizations with whom we partnered at the various companies for which I worked, in order to help them achieve their mission. So philanthropy and nonprofit work and education have always been a huge part of my career.
I worked as doing corporate social responsibility for an organization. And a lot of the partners that we had were in the health space, it was breast cancer and ovarian cancer awareness. It was HIV aids awareness. It was bullying. It was work with the military and the USO. And anytime I had an opportunity to go out and see their mission in action, I always left feeling like I wanted to do more and I wanted to be more of service.
And so when I first met with the founder of Drawn From Valor, he knew my background. He knew where my passions lie, specifically in regard to the philanthropic field and mental health and education and children. He asked me if I would be willing to come on board to support Drawn from Valor's mission, which was, and is to help kids and families understand chronic mental and health conditions in partnership with subject matter experts.
So it was a matter of saying yes immediately. That was the easiest yes I've ever given. And then shortly after I joined in a communications role, they asked me to interview for an executive role. And I took on that role as well. And have been doing it, subsequently.
DUANE: No, it's always interesting, especially to hear about corporate social responsibility. This is obviously something I'd say even the last 15, 20 years has really come about. Maybe there were some, some early companies doing it, in the eighties and nineties. But this is really that merge in between, social enterprise, social impact that a for-profit company doesn't have to be only about the bottom line and a nonprofit company doesn't only have to be about no profit. There's this growing concern about how companies provide more social impacts, through the community work that they're doing.
SUSIE: I felt very fortunate that I was able to go out into the community and create as many relationships as I was able to with those non-profits and help them expand their mission in ways they may not have been able to do otherwise with the traditional means allocated to non-profits. It really truly was impactful in numerous ways.Working with USO and going to Walter Reed and Bethesda at the time and meeting with the men and women, who were impacted and their families, They went to Fisher Houses and, got to hear more than just the person who may have been being treated at Walter Reed and Bethesda. We got to hear what the impacts were on their families. So I feel like I got an education that many people have not been as fortunate to receive. And it really motivated me to do what I could to help in as many ways possible.
DUANE: And really the work that Drawn From Valor really did, as you said, was about educating families about these medical and mental health conditions, which are complicated subjects, right? These are complicated subjects for adults. And as you said, the Fisher House, houses the families of the service members that were going through the treatment.
My kids were in kindergarten and first grade, when I first started deployed to Iraq and they were approaching high school when I stopped my deployment cycles. So I think, it's interesting to hear that, that you really saw a need to take these really complicated subjects, like you said, from subject matter experts and present it in such a way that could not just help the service member, but help the family members.
SUSIE: Yeah, I think that's part of what the founders of the organization resonated with my background because that's what led them to actually start Tales Of The Golden Acorn and Drawn From Valor was they separate from my experiences, saw that men and women of the military were returning with mental health impacts and having no real way and sometimes physical health impacts, but having not a lot of resources at their disposal in order to explain it to their family members so that their kids and their loved ones would understand what was going on with them and understand how they could best help and how they could best participate. Because my understanding as I've subsequently learned is when one person has been impacted by it, the entire family and the community has been impacted by it. So in founding Drawn From Valor, the founders really wanted to, similar to my experiences, really wanted to reach out to everyone involved and say, “Hey, you're not alone. There's always room for hope. And here are some resources.” And create resources that were accessible to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, regardless of geography, regardless of the boundaries of the temporal boundaries. So if you can't get in to see a doctor or someone because of the limitations of appointments, here's a resource online that you can access and that you can use in order to help you and your family moving forward.
And so that's really what Drawn From Valor and the Tales Of The Golden Acorn, which is the program about post-traumatic stress disorder, really intended. And it's what started the organization. And it subsequently moved into other areas. That's really the foundation upon which we were built.
DUANE: And there's a measure of storytelling, right, especially as we'll talk about here in a minute, Tales Of The Golden Acorn. So there is a story around this because the data is there, but the data needs the vehicle of the story to be able to get it across, especially for A complicated issues and B for children and young people.
But also, animation in an engaging way. I'm thinking about we had a previous show, about Sesame Street and while Sesame Street, obviously, I did a lot with their military children and they had a lot of inputs. But this is specifically focused on mental health, where you were bringing in subject matter experts with the knowledge, but pairing it in a storytelling and in animation and accessible ways. `
SUSIE: Exactly. We understood early on that art can transcend language. If you can put something on a comic book, if you can put something in animation, if you can put something in an image, it often will help people who don't have the language, because they're too young and they don't, they literally don't have the words. Or if you, as the person who has been impacted, don't have the language, you can sit together and look at this and say, what do you see? Here's what I'm experiencing. Here's what I'm seeing and really engage with it in a way that prevents it essentially.
DUANE: But that's not the way that clinicians necessarily think. I, as a mental health professional, I'm not thinking about it. And I don't work with children. I have colleagues that obviously work with children. And I would say, and I have used comic books, for example, in some clinical sessions to be able to have break these things through.
But traditionally, what people think of as clinicians, they're not thinking about using things like this, the art, or even, the result of art to be able to have some of these harder conversations, not in a simple way, but in an easier way.
SUSIE: Yeah, I know that that's why and how the founders started with animation is they really, truly wanted what they felt was the easiest access point for everybody involved. And so we started with animation and we ended up moving into digital comics and sort of short form digital media in order to ensure we achieved our mission as much as humanly possible. And that's why we're so happy that PsychArmor is going to carry on that mission and is going to have Tales Of The Golden Acorn, for people in the future.
DUANE: Yeah. And I would like to definitely talk about that. So, Tales Of The Golden Acorn is a series that looks at the impact, as you mentioned about post-traumatic stress on both individuals and a family group. I'd like to hear more about that project and how it may support the military affiliated population.
SUSIE: Sure. So Tales Of The Golden Acorn looks at, as I mentioned before, the impact of PTS on a family, and follows it's actually a family of squirrels and it follows each.
DUANE: But they're cool squirrels. These aren't just the squirrels, my dog chases.
SUSIE: They are not. They are squirrels who mom and dad went off and were impacted, had traumatic events happen to them and came back and the three kids try to figure out. The whole family tries to figure out the new paradigm. And so it is intended to follow each family member as they experienced this together. Unfortunately we were not able to do as much with it as we had hoped. But we're hoping that PsychArmor will be able to carry that in, in the future.But we were able to put out a digital comic that does lay the groundwork and that does share the basic story and shares one of my favorite messages, which is just because something is changed doesn't mean it's any less beautiful. It doesn't mean there's any less love. Doesn't mean there's any less of a family unit. It just means it's different. And so I really, I love the squirrels. What can I say? I'm really excited about Tales Of The Golden Acorns future.
DUANE: No, I appreciate that message. I'm even thinking back to an Inn in listeners would probably. So my father was a Vietnam Veteran. I was born after Vietnam and so I never knew my father before and not only was he in Vietnam, he left the Army and became a St. Louis city cop in the seventies. So we don't know where PTSD from one ended and the other began.
And so I only ever knew my father as someone who was struggling with many of the different things we knew later, post-traumatic stress, obviously substance concerns and even later homelessness and things like that. But I never knew him before the trauma. I only knew him as my father and loved him as my father.
I really, how that resonates with, there are some children who understand the change. There's a pre-charge moment and the post-trauma moment and there's other children that just understand, this is just my parent.
SUSIE: Yeah, and I think that's what the story, hopefully we'll be able to continue in the future. And we'll also be able to continue to look at, because there's so many other characters in the story. There's the youngest character, Anya, who will mostly grow up in a family that has been changed. Whereas the older sister and the middle brother will have different experiences than her.
And so I think the age appropriate nature of the story, also will be helpful to people in different places in their family histories, as a way to describe it.
DUANE: And I think that sounds like a very effective way to describe the complexities of how trauma may impact a family unit, because you have the parents. One experienced the trauma. The other is experiencing the change of their spouse squirrel. So to speak is no longer the person they married.But then you have each of these spread out children that are having different experiences within their own period of life development, but also as it goes through.
SUSIE: I’ll say yes to that.
DUANE: So, you’ve mentioned that, Drawn From Valor has started with the Tales Of The Golden Acorn. Like you said, you do have the digital comic and some downloads and some activities and things like that. What do you see as the future? What do you hope to see as the future of Tales Of The Golden Acorn or other age-accessible media to be able to really talk about these difficult subjects?
SUSIE: So one of the things I'm really heartened about is the surgeon general recently put out a report saying that children's mental health needs work. We need to put out more resources. We need to put out more support systems in place. And, I've really seen the mental health organization step up around that. There's the Mental Health Storytelling Coalition that has put out a guide with a number of experts across the various components of mental health. Talking about everything from how to talk to kids about suicide and suicide prevention to, I believe there are some substance abuse organizations in there, but it's also about partnering with content creators, like John from Valor. One of the things that we were both content creators and people who worked with experts in order to create that content. And so I think it's about getting new stories out there, because so much of at least family interactions, these days revolve around story and content. Whether it's a teenager on TikToK, or even a kid on TikTok, a family member on Instagram or Facebook, someone jumping on YouTube. There's a lot of bite-sized shareable information out there. And I'm seeing an increase, which is heartening to me of the focus being on mental health. And so what I hope for the future is that trend continues that it's not just entertainment, it's edutainment, essentially. And I know that PsychArmor with all its partner organizations and all the programs and projects that it does is a great home for Tales Of The Golden Acorn specifically because of that, because there are different components and different target audiences that can be addressed using a framework such as the Tales Of The Golden Acorn. It's sort of a pun, it's a big wood. The forest can really serve as a jumping off point to address a lot of different stories and a lot of topics and audiences, and it doesn't just have to stay with the core family that we have. In fact, there were some other characters that were in development that could potentially still be grown, moving forward.
DUANE: And again, as you identified, we're understanding more about the impacts of adverse childhood experiences. And we've known that we've known that for decades. But the nine-year-old, for example, now that starts to normalize this consumption of mental health valid and appropriate mental health-related content supported by professionals and SMEs, in 20 years, they're going to be the 29 year old, that it is normal for them. This is, we're talking about getting the information in the hands of people now, to be able to make this generational shift because that's what's going to change ideas in the long term.
SUSIE: That is absolutely something that we hoped to accomplish and look forward to seeing, be accomplished with these tools moving forward. If you can help with emotional intelligence and help kids and families be able to talk about things that might previously have been swept under the rug or that, the older generations may not have had the language for. Then I think we'll hopefully see a shift in the future where that is no longer a problem where it is normal to talk about your feelings. It is normal to talk about and say, “Hey, I need help.” It is normal for you are not alone. And there's always room for hope to be more than just catchphrases. It is legit statements of fact, because there are so many resources available and so many community members and so many possibilities in order to help people get what they need to be a fully realized and happy, healthy human and mental health is health. And I think we're starting to see that get recognized more and more. And so I'm really excited to see where this goes in the future with PsychArmor.
DUANE: Absolutely. And even using the technology and the digital platforms, if only our emotional intelligence grew at the same exponential rate as our technological development, I think we would all be at a great place. Susie, this has been really great. So thanks for coming on the show today.
SUSIE: My pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. And, this has been a really lovely conversation. I appreciate it.
Once again, this show is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory. That's free to individual learners. As well as custom training options for organizations, you can find out more about what they're doing www.psycharmor.org.
So glad to have been able to have a conversation with Susie, to give listeners a preview of what we have coming up with Tales Of The Golden Acorn. If you're interested in checking out what's been done so far, I have links to some of the digital content that's already been produced in the show notes.
The first point that I'd like to make is how closely the foundational elements of both PsychArmor and Drawn From Valor aligned. The desire to develop easily accessible content that's understandable and applicable to people in their everyday lives and to do so in partnership with, and with the input of subject matter experts in the field. How many times have you watched a movie on a certain subject and cringed when the actors and actresses acted in a way that is no way reflective of reality, where things and say things that are totally wrong and generally screw everything up.
My wife can't watch a military movie with me for 10 minutes before I start criticizing the ranks, the uniforms, the locations, and everything else. And don't even get me started on the popular portrayals of therapists and mental health professionals. The ones who do it right of course, are the ones who hire consultants to advise them on what's correct and what's not correct. And that includes portrayals of mental health and behavioral health conditions. Without the subject matter experts publicly accessible portrayals of these conditions, or at least an effective and at worst potentially harmful.
On the other side of the equation, however, the mental health community has not done a really great job making what we know, very accessible to those who are living with these conditions every day. I recently did some traveling for work. And I usually take the travel time to read through some journal articles that are applicable to the work that I'm doing. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I'm a smart guy with a few college degrees. And I find reading journal articles kind of difficult sometimes.
Lots of jargon and complicated language, difficult terminology and unfamiliar concepts presented in challenging ways. Very important, extremely necessary, but not exactly easily accessible which is where the value in content creators, like PsychArmor teaming up with subject matter experts, which in this case also happens to be PsychArmor comes in. So I'm really glad that Drawn From Valor saw the value in a partnership with PsychArmor to carry on the Tales Of The Golden Acorn.
The second point that I'd like to bring up is about the Tales Of The Golden Acorn itself. Some listeners out there may be thinking to themselves why use a cartoon about squirrels to help children learn more about PTSD? I mean, when you think of trauma recovery, you don't think about squirrels. But there's a long tradition of using animal characters and stories to tackle complicated and important subjects. Starting with Aesop's fables. Think about Watership down, which is a story about an epic quest dealing with themes, like the struggle between tyranny, and freedom, rational response and emotional response and the rights of an individual compared to the rights of the group all using a story of rabbits. Considered the Chronicles of Narnia books, where the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, are one of a series of seven books that address not only Fonz and magic realms, but political social in spirituality themes. But one of the all time classics is Winnie the Pooh, which many don't realize was created by a combat Veteran who is trying to explain the psychological impact of war to his son.
I'm going to link an article in the show notes about this, But AA Milne was a combat Veteran for the British Army who fought in the battle of the Somme during World War One. In this single battle, more than 3 million fought on both sides and over a million were killed and wounded. Upon returning home, Milne experienced the impact of combat exposure. He thought a swarm of bees was whizzing bullets and popping balloons and sent him diving for the floor. So Milne started writing a collection of short stories, entitled Winnie the Pooh. I will also link a journal article which describes the various characters in the Winnie the Pooh stories from a neurodevelopmental perspective in which Dr. Sarah Sze theorizes that each character represents a different psychological disorder but the articles author proposes that Milne wrote the stories with the child-friendly representation of a different aspect of post-traumatic stress. Piglet is paranoia. Eeyore is depression. Tigger is impulsive behaviors. Rabbit is perfectionism caused aggression. Owl is memory loss and Kanga and Roo represent overprotection. Winnie the Pooh himself, however, is known to desire and have a compassionate and gentle guide for his son, Christopher Robin. As both navigate the strange and dangerous world of the hundred acre wood. You see, we all know that stories are important. They give context to the facts and reality of our everyday lives. Things happen to us and we build stories around these events. Stories are powerful and sometimes even magical in the way that they help us make sense of the world. That was true when we were children and it's true for our children. It's great to see how Drawn From Valor is carrying on this tradition. And I'm excited to see where it goes from here as PsychArmor develops the Tales Of The Golden Acorn. So I appreciate being able to bring you this episode with Susie and the Tales Of The Golden Acorn.
If you appreciated it as much as I did, we'd like to hear about it. If your podcast player allows you to leave reviews for shows, you can do that where you can drop us an email, info@psycharmor.org. Or you can reach out over social media. All of those are going to be linked in the show notes, but reach out and let us know what you think about the show and what suggestions you may have about future guests.
For this week, PsychArmor Resource Of The Week, I'd like to share the PsychArmor course, 15 Things Military Kids Want You To Know. This short on-demand video brings the voices of military connected youth life and allows us to take important steps towards cultural humility when interacting with these resilient and amazing kids. You can find a link to the course in our show notes.