A HEALER, A HERO:
CAPTAIN MARY ANN BARBER ON
occasions like Remembrance Day, Canadians come together to honour the service and sacrifices of our many brave soldiers and Veterans who work in conditions that would send most of us running for cover. But the impact of war on those who serve is felt long after their deployment ends.
Captain Mary Ann Barber is one of those heroes. A passionate nurse and healer, the Sault Ste. Marie native’s time in the Canadian Armed Forces started in June of 1997. After graduating from the regular officer training plan, she started her career as a new grad nurse. Her first deployment was in Bosnia as a Critical Care Nursing Officer, where she assisted in the management of the Unit Medical Station in Velika Kladuša in 2002. Upon her return the following April, she began working in the ICU. In 2005, she was deployed 24
to Kabul, Afghanistan, as the Nurse in Charge of the Resuscitation department. “Nurses in the military were the first women in the military—the first commissioned officers in the Canadian military. They were these trailblazer women…there’s this incredible legacy of what it is to be a military nurse. I was pretty proud to be a part of that” —Captain Mary Ann Barber Captain Barber was deployed for two years in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and recounts her experiences there as heart-wrenching, yet incredibly rewarding. “During the war, everything came to us. It was a non-stop flow of mangled bodies for the time that I was there. It was some of the most heartbreaking times of my life.” She began showing signs of PTSD in 2008, and recalls experiencing nightmares and graphic flashbacks from her 2007 tour.
When she returned home in 2009, her mental health was at an all-time low. She was officially diagnosed with PTSD in 2009, but it wouldn’t be until 2012 that Captain Barber accepted the help that she needed and began doing the work to heal. “It really was an uphill battle, but it’s one that needed to be done. I didn’t want to become a statistic. I didn’t want my life to be what it was. I was really unhappy and I knew that if I wanted to be happy, it was me who had to change it. There was never going to be a magic pill, or one magic counselling session or one magic wave of some wand that was going to happen and all of a sudden my life was going to be better and my PTSD was going to be gone and that everything would be OK. It was an ‘aha’ moment like ‘OK, time to go. Off we go; start climbing this mountain.’ And I did!”
© All photos courtesy of Mary Ann Barber
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-CARE