Chris Allen

Meet The V&B Staff: what follows is a lengthy description of some fictitious Vine and Branch Staff members. I wrote these descriptions while in Afghanistan and have chosen to include them in a post today. It’s easy to use this material for today’s post, because I’ve already written everything. My goal is for the reader to get a feel for what an integrated staff will look like while I work on writing Day 3 stuff. Sometimes my writing style makes it appear that the V&B is reality already, but it’s just the way I think.

The morning goes well for Jim and Fran. They’ve enjoyed a great night’s sleep and feel very well rested. In typical military fashion, the Smith’s leave the confines of their cabin 20 minutes early for their initial appointment with Kamiah. Jim wants to make sure that the couple does not get lost along the way. The cabin in which they walk to really only takes about 10 minutes. On their walk, Jim and Fran enjoyed the sights and smells of the V&B Ranch. Jim wondered out loud to his wife about how the fish were biting, while Fran thought about what it would be like to help out in the vegetable garden they just walked past.

What follows is the beginning of a fictitious example of what a couple’s stay at the Vine and Branch can look like. Over the coming months, my intent is to show how elements of Counseling, Psychology, Psychiatry, and Social Work can successfully be integrated into a ranch / vacation resort setting to help Veterans and their families. Some posts will be longer than others, so thanks for your patience.

I’ve spent the past couple of months working on laying out the groundwork for Vine & Branch (V&B), the nonprofit that I’m starting. For those of you not familiar with the V&B, the goal is to create a vacation / resort / ranch type setting where Veterans and their family members can receive professional services on site. During this blog post, I will introduce the reader to the TPME concept, a concept described later in this post.

My bet is that those of you counseling Veterans, especially Veterans with families, have experienced some of what I am about to describe, in one form or another anyway. Today is the 10th of May. I arrived back home from Afghanistan on the 5th to my wife Jen, 5 year old Mackenzie, 3 year old Isabelle, and 2 year old Addison. Homecoming was great after the long plane rides.