Who We Are
Warming the Heart of Families
Individuals no longer believe they have time for the importance of face-to-face interaction or possess the ability to truly communicate with their families and friends. Additionally, this could stem from not learning interpersonal skills during childhood or from trauma they suffered as part of their Service, which could lead to a multitude of mental health issues to include anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and even suicide.
We as a nation have created numerous Federal and State programs, as well as commercial and nonprofit organizations to help deserving Service members, their families, Gold-Star families, Wounded Warriors, and first responders which are all needed to ensure they have the love and support they deserve to tackle the challenges they are facing in life and within the family.
Some find it difficult to communicate with family and friends whether it is due to the time and distance they face because of military serves in faraway places or the long duties that hinder their abilities to spend time with their them. This difficulty in communicating has led to a suicide epidemic within our Department of Defense and First Responder community. Which is a direct result of individuals no longer knowing how to communicate with one another and asking for help.
Time and distance are primary reasons for their inability to communicated, and they then turn to social media “friends” for help. However, according to a 2016 Oxford University study, conducted by Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology, researched how Facebook friendship correlates with real-life friendship. “Dunbar studied the results from 3,375 Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 65 in the U.K. These users had an average of about 150 friends, of which 4.1 were dependable and 13.6 expressed sympathy during an "emotional crisis. In this study, the sizes of the two inner friendship circles did not differ from those previously identified in offline samples,” said Dunbar in his research. Respondents who had unusually large networks did not increase the numbers of close friendships they had, but rather added more loosely defined acquaintances into their friendship circle. Younger users are likely to have more Facebook friends, but older users tend to have more friends in real life. That is because social media encourages "promiscuous 'friending' of individuals who often have very tenuous links." And while social media gives users a great communication opportunity, time is a constraint, and that lack of time limits the ability to have face-to-face interaction in-turn making it harder to invest in friendships.
Therefore, an organization focused on deliberately providing time for building the bonds and resiliency, which are garnered through direct communication and experiences will allow members and their families that time to invest in their relationships.