THE WALTER REED SOCIETY IN STEP WITH WARRIORS ON THE WAY
Several years ago your Board of Directors decided that they would provide support to other non-profits assisting patients and families. We thought this would allow us to become a “force multiplier” reaching be-yond ourselves to others with a similar mission. In addition to assisting like-minded organiza-tions within the National Capital Region (NCR) we have on a case-by-case basis provides assistance to non-profits outside the NCR. All of these non-profits and their activity are well known to at least one of our Board members.
We are very excited to inform you of a new collaboration be-tween the Walter Reed Society and Warriors on the Way, a non -profit founded by Father Steven Rindahl, a retired US Army Chaplain. Steven had a 31 year enlisted and officer career having served in combat as well as at the Army Medical Department Center and School.
Since 2017 Warriors on the Way has sponsored combat vet-erans on a pilgrimage on the Camino De Santiago or Way of St. James, a network of Europe-an pilgrimage routes leading to the tomb of St. James the Greater in Santiago de Compo-stela, Spain. The purpose of the pilgrimage is to facilitate a com-bat veteran’s healing from PTSD and moral injury. Over the years of these pilgrimages, they have had multiple former Walter Reed patients and staff journey towards their own need-ed healing.
PTSD and moral injury are both directly linked to an overall re-duction in quality of life and in-creased veteran suicides. The Warriors on the Way pilgrimage for combat veterans, through the reduction of PTSD and mor-al injury symptoms, improves quality of life and helps in the effort to reduce the veteran sui-cide rate.
Fr. Steven Rindahl (US Army, Retired) leads the pilgrimage. Having made multiple pilgrimag-es focusing on veteran healing, Fr. Steve is an experienced pil-grim and has designed this pil-grimage based on those experi-ences and what he learned completing a doctorate in re-sponding to combat trauma, and developing and teaching the US Army Chaplaincy course on how to provide a Ministerial Re-sponse to Moral Injury.
