Pat Wynn Brown

ROYAL ROOTS: REIMAGINING A LIFE THROUGH HUMOR, A CASTLE, AND THE US NAVY | Book, 2024

OUR STORIES CAN HELP HEAL US: Narrative Medicine

Stories and the arts evoke mythologies that can facilitate resilience and the strength to carry on. Storytelling is a helpful tool in trauma therapy.

In ROYAL ROOTS: REIMAGINING A LIFE THROUGH HUMOR, A CASTLE, AND THE US NAVY, the tragedy of my father’s WWII PTSD, and his decades later headline grabbing death, brought chaos and the stigma of mental illness to our family in the 1950s through 1980. No one in our home spoke of these difficulties, and we did not know what actually happened to Dad during his seven- year hitch in the Navy. Mom only knew, “Some explosion.”

In writing this book, I found out. The revelations have completely changed my perspective of our days with Dad’s psychosis and depression and my resulting clinical anxiety. Casting its healing magic, these stories are told with an ample sprinkling of the powerful antidote…humor.

Medical Considerations:

- Trauma is associated with eight out of 10 leading causes of death

- People experiencing trauma are 37.5% more likely to commit suicide

- Ohio is home to 700,000 military veterans and their families

- Trauma is intergenerational

- More than 2/3 of Ohioans are subject to Adverse Childhood Experiences on the (ACE) scale

- There are 22 military veteran suicides a day

“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease the person has.” ---- Hippocrates

FROM ONE AMAZON REVIEW: RCSColumbus

“…Patricia Wynn Brown searches for the truth behind her father’s decades of erratic and sometimes abusive behavior and the mysteries that led to his freakish death. As we travel with her from the Catholic Schools of central Ohio to a castle in Wales and on the world’s largest naval base, we come to understand her father better, and begin to forgive. It’s a story of determination and grit, of discovery and acceptance, beautifully told with humor and grace…”

Pat is a member of the Medicine & the Arts Board.