REVEALING GRACE: THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICA’S POST-9/11 MILITARY CAREGIVERS JENNIFER J. HUNTER ORCID Scholar ID # 0000-0001-8876-6825 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change Program of Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July, 2017 This is to certify that the Dissertation entitled: REVEALING GRACE: THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF AMERICA’S POST-9/11 MILITARY CAREGIVERS prepared by Jennifer J. Hunter is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership and Change. Approved by: Elizabeth Holloway, Ph.D., Chair date Tony Lingham, Ph.D., Committee Member date Deborah Johnson Hayes, PsyD, LCSW, MPH, Committee Member date Copyright 2017 Jennifer J. Hunter All rights reserved Acknowledgements The writing of this dissertation was an elaborate creation of body, mind, heart, spirit, and soul. My gratitude to everyone extends to infinity in all the 10 directions. To William Yoshin Gennan Jordan, Roshi. Zen training with you was otherworldly and your teachings contribute to my life every day. Thank you for offering me the title of this work. It is perfect. And to Nicolee Jikyo McMahon, Roshi—you are an extraordinary teacher, and I carry your years of training with humility. To my committee: Dr. Tony Lingham—thank you for staying with me when my research design completely shifted. You have added a depth to my thinking that translated into my writing, for which I am extremely appreciative. Dr. Deborah Johnson Hayes—you grounded me in everything “military” that was perfect and right for me. This dissertation would have been about something entirely different had I not met you. To Dr. Elizabeth Holloway, my dissertation Chair—I cannot begin to describe who you have been to me over these past three years. Your graciousness and trust in me kept me safe, especially when I was free-falling into doubt and confusion. Thank you for being such a powerful stand for my success and believing in my work. To my C-14 Cohort—you are miraculous souls committed to leaving legacies in this world that will radiate out over generations. Thank you for your support and encouragement. I admire you all. To the faculty and staff of the PhD in Leadership and Change Program—it is stunning what you do. As faculty, you have fostered new ideas and possibilities in me that have changed my way of thinking forever. Dr. Elaine Gale, you are a brilliant wordsmith who I could just sit and listen to all day long. And to Dr. Laurien Alexandre, Provost of AU’s Graduate School of i Leadership and Change: The first thing you ever said to me was, “I like your hair.” I have been a fan ever since. To Margaret Morgan—you are the ground wire that keeps this program securely connected to the earth. It doesn’t work without you. To Leslee Creighton, extraordinary gatekeeper—I never would have entered this program without your emails; and to Wendy McGrath—you are a technical wizard. Thank you for your kind patience and teaching me how to draw Venn diagrams. To our library research staff: Deb Baldwin, the stuff you know just blows my mind. And Dr. Steve Shaw, you have no idea how grateful I was that you were available on Saturday mornings. And to Dr. Lisa Kreeger, IRB Chair, you worked so fast to accommodate my anxiety, providing the space I needed to take a breath. Or two. Thank you, thank you, all. To Alexia Currie—you handled the editing and formatting of my work with care and respect. Thank you so much for your speed and precision and for making my work look clean and professional. We had some good laughs about Dropbox. And to Barbara Alihosseini—I so appreciate your talking me down off the ledge when I was sure I would never get an audio file to you in one piece. To Diane Curran, author, consultant, artist, designer—you visually elevated my work into the stratosphere. All I can say is wow. Just, wow! My deepest appreciation to Lorie Van Tilburg. You taught me so much about military caregiving from the trenches. My gratitude for your precious time is boundless. An enormous expression of thanks goes to Laurel Rodewald, Programs Director at the Elizabeth Dole Foundation. Yours was the email that allowed this study to begin. Thank you for trusting me with your Fellows. To Senator Elizabeth Dole—you uplifted the country’s ii awareness of the military caregiver in profound and poignant ways. And to Melissa Comeau— your poetry set the exact tone in this study and I am so grateful to you. To Heidi Hiatt, my text buddy this past year—you made it so much more fun. Collaboration, commiseration. You name it. Emoji pizza and cookies never tasted so good. To my best girls—Karen, Francine, and Grisell. You helped me stay out in the world when it was so easy to keep retreating. Thank you for keeping me alive on so many nights. Laughter really is the best medicine. And finally, to my little buddies—Oliver and Beck. Thanks for staying healthy. I’m glad you liked the hard copies of my rough drafts. They made great crinkle beds to nap on, didn’t they? Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to the fourteen Elizabeth Dole Military Caregiving Fellows who so generously participated in this study. You were my gracious teachers and gentle muses. Your husbands served our country with honor, integrity, and heroism in a new era of war we called post-9/11. To you, America’s boots on the ground at home, I owe you a debt of gratitude, as does our country. Through your stories, we are reminded of our universal connection, and the pain and joy that cut through the hearts of us all. May God bless you and keep you safe forever. iii Abstract This research focused on the lived experiences of fourteen military caregiving wives whose husbands were wounded, ill, or injured in a post-9/11 combat theater of war. All wives in this study had been vetted by and appointed to the Elizabeth Dole Military Caregiving Fellows Program and were either actively involved in the Fellowship or had become recent alumni of the two-year commitment at the time of this study. The purpose of this study was to provide a platform for their voices, understand their hopes, struggles, successes, and failures, and to give honor to their stories of military caregiving through the qualitative methodology of narrative inquiry. The stories as data were analyzed in two distinct ways. The first was using a plot analysis that exposed the story lines of the caregivers from the moment of their husbands’ final deployment home to the present day, ranging from three to 13 years post onset. Using eight plot line elements, the arc of the story lines revealed one continuous story that was consistent among all caregivers, yet highly nuanced and unique. Thematic analysis was conducted as the second way of looking at the data. Moving dynamically along the flow of the story line, topical themes and their subthemes deepened the understanding and sense-making the caregivers expressed at each stage of their evolution, providing the thematic road map of each journey. It was within this roadmap that a holistic picture emerged of the wives’ journey through the emergent themes beginning with hope, to their own unraveling, to disillusionment with self, other, and the system, to the factors that eventually allowed them to turn toward a more empowered self, and finally, to the paradigm shift that ultimately allowed for transformative, inspired action. This dissertation is accompanied by the author’s MP4 video introduction. The electronic version of this dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... i Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix List of Supplemental Files .............................................................................................................. x List of Vignettes ............................................................................................................................. xi Prologue .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3 The Elizabeth Dole Foundation Military Caregivers Fellows Program .................................. 5 Statement of Purpose ............................................................................................................... 7 Research Question ................................................................................................................... 8 Significance to Theory, Research, and Practice ...................................................................... 9 Limitations ............................................................................................................................. 13 Overview of the Dissertation