Many soldiers are returning home with different degrees of mental trauma. It is you womenfolk of the household who nourish and nurture them towards normality. It is your resilience that helps your returning soldier come to terms with life and start afresh. What can you do to strengthen your resilience?

Have a plan, a strategy, goals that you can refer to, reassess and alter according to results.

What do you wish to achieve? A plan that is written 60% well is better than having no goal at all. Choose to ‘just do it’, and do the fine-tuning afterwards.

Make them SMART goals or strategies.

Specific: simple, well defined and clear, telling you exactly what is expected. It answers the questions: how much, fro whom, for what?

Measurable: let it be obtainable, so that you remain motivated

Achievable: a result that is realistic given your current situation, resources and time available, else it may be more of a ‘stretch’ if the outcome is tough or you have a weak starting position.

Realistic: within the availability of resources, knowledge and time

Time-bound: have a starting and end point, a deadline to focus your efforts

Limit your goals to between 5 and 7 at any one time so that you can focus your efforts and attention. As you progress and complete goals, you may add new goals. If you find yourself with more than 7 goals, you are probably writing mini -goals or tasks. Remember to keep your goals focussed on a major area of change.

I have found it very useful to keep a diary. On paging through these diaries many years later, I am always amazed at the progress I have made. Very heart warming and deeply encouraging as well as learning for others.

In Part Two we will look at writing down the tasks to achieve these goals.

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