[calm music]
- My name is Ryan. I served in the United States Army
for 12 years.
I did three tours in Afghanistan
and one in Iraq.
- My name's Melissa. I'm a counselor at the VA.
- I got out in 2011.
I found myself going through a divorce,
homeless, jobless,
purposeless. Um..
It kind of went in phases
as far as how I dealt with it.
Phase one was a lot of self-medication.
In my case it was usually through alcohol.
Phase two is, "Man, that's a really bad idea. I'm gonna go get help."
So then it's doctor-prescribed medication.
So that certainly helped.
Phase three and four is just
getting back to a-- a truly healthy lifestyle.
My girlfriend--I was talking to her, and she had said,
"I'm getting ready to go to Eastern Michigan University.
"They gave me, you know, this-- this course outline.
"I think it sounds like what it is you're saying
you want to do with your life."
- You had an idea of what you wanted to do,
and you knew where you wanted to go to school for that,
but it was that, "How do I then turn that into a career
after I complete the degree?"
- The program I did to go to school
was vocational rehabilitation,
and I got a phone call one day
saying, "Hey, my name is Melissa.
I just wanted to let you know, I'm your new voc rehab counselor."
And the timely fashion
and the amount of communication
that Melissa had with me
was the start of,
this lady's not playing around.
I need to make sure I'm at least matching her effort.
- As a rehabilitation counselor,
my job is to help the veteran identify
what their unique strengths are
and abilities, and then try to help them plug that into a career path.
And what we do is, we identify that job that they want,
and then we work our way backwards from there.
And my role is to identify all the different services
that the veteran might need in order to reach that potential.
- I didn't need a lot of accomodations,
but I had a little memo that I gave to all of my professors
that said if I choose to sit in the back of the class
when I might normally sit up front,
don't say anything to him about it; leave it alone.
He's sitting there for a reason.
If there's a test coming up, make sure he knows about it
so that I can go sit in a quiet room
with a proctor and nobody else around,
because I do have test anxiety.
- Yeah, it's more about working smarter instead of working harder,
and getting a level playing to compensate
for the aspects of the disability that create that limitation.
- By the time I got to Eastern, I felt like
my head was mostly screwed on straight.
But there were still a lot of rough times, even then.
One of my guys had committed suicide,
so it--there were a lot of struggles.
And sometimes, I just needed to vent.
Melissa is absolutely great.
She would say, "Okay, are you actually looking for a solution
to try and figure out how to approach it?"
"Yeah, I am." She would go it through with me.
To this day, when I think about where I was,
and where I am now, it brings me to tears.
I wish I would've had somebody like me
that was willing to turn around and reach back
and be like, "Hey, I've already been there,
"been through that.
Let me help you up."
- As a human being, we need to have something that we can connect to
that connects us to other people.
And I think when you were at your most lost,
it was when you had the least amount of connections.
Having somewhere to go, something to do...
- Yeah. - And then have it on top of all that,
be something really meaningful...
is, I think, what led you to where you are today more than anything.
- There's a lot of people along the way that have contributed
to me being where I am.
- We're here; we want to help. We're ready to help.
It's just... takes that step.
- You got to be willing to ask for help.