booktv's live monthly three our interview program where authors take your questions about their books. this past year guests included walter isaacson, catch us smiley, ronald kessler and john watson and pulitzer prize winner lawrence wright. coming month we will speak with medea benjamin, a former second lady lynne cheney korea those, hartman, economist and political commentator walter williams and cokie roberts of npr and abc news. this weekend peter schweitzer is our guest, author of nine books including his most recent bestseller clinton cash where he looks at the money made by bill and hillary clinton since leaving the white house. in depth is live on booktv the first sunday of agreement beginning at noon eastern time and you can take part by calling in or sending questions or comments to facebook.com/booktv or on twitter at booktv. all previous in-depth programs are available to watch on our web site go to booktv.org.

and now "after words" on booktv elaine lowry brye mother of four military officers talk about what families go to during times of deployment, she discusses her book "be safe, love mom: a military mom's stories of courage, comfort, and surviving life on the homefront" with patricia kime senior writer for "military times". >> welcome. i am here with elaine lowry brye to discuss safe, love mom: a military mom's stories of courage, comfort, and surviving life on the homefront". welcome to washington. >> thank you for being here to talk with me about it. >> host: tell me a bit about your book. >> guest: i never intended to write a book. what happened was in 2001, my oldest son headed to the naval academy and at that time to communicate with each other,

just kind of connect and i began posting on that list. on 9/11 everything change. my son had gone to a peacetime navy and with in a few short hours everything changed and i began to write more. i would write about being encouraged and to remember our roots and ultimately imus asked to become a moderator suppose that started a series of 14 years of me advising, encouraging and supporting naval academy parents. through this time i had two more children who decided to apply and attend the naval academy's so as the years went by, not only did i have children at the naval academy, now head on active duty and parents that you need to write this down in the book, write this all down and as our life continued and twist

and turns my husband after his airline declared bankruptcy lost his penchant he end ed up working for an airline in afghanistan. followed him and taught for a year in afghanistan so i had this unique perspective of being a mom who had children deployed to afghanistan and now i was there in cobble at the same time our youngest son, the rubble, decided to joy when the military not through the naval academy but through army rotc and now i had four children, all serving. i had been in a war zone and when i came back the boat kept saying you need to write this down. first i would just write it down for my family and so i did and a parent said you need to do more than that with this and he contacted a publisher and the

result is "be safe, love mom". >> host: three goes to the naval academy, want this to the university of north dakota, one the rotc but all serving in different branches of the service. how did that come about? >> guest: when you go to the naval academy you can select the navy or the marine corps and there are a limited number of opportunities to cross commissions of my daughter end ed up cross commissioning to the air force primarily because she wanted to try to fly and she had a medical condition that was -- precluded her from doing that in the navy but the air force had different standards. she had an exchange at the air force academy. she also was very interested in space. says she was allowed to make that cross commission. so it was a total fluke we end ed up with children in every branch. it was never intentional. it kind of fits with each of their passions and what they wanted to do in the active duty

military service. >> who do you feel your audience is for this book? >> my first audience is military moms, and dads, i get the e-mails from dad saying what about us? i know you care as deeply about your children but my first audience is mom. that they know that they are not alone that they can be encouraged and inspired and we can share information, and that is what we're trying to do, build a community, and find information. we don't get family readiness briefings, we don't live on the base we don't get that support from the traditional military. that is my first audience, my second audience is greater community. i understand what this is like i want you to realize it is not the same as sending your

children off to college. are there a lot of differences? i want you to understand there are people around you that are carrying heavier burden than it may appear ended is what we do end to gladly because we love our country but it is a heavy burden. i have two audiences, i hope. >> host: you grew up in a military family. your father served in army i believe ken 22 vietnam. you write a little bit about your experiences as a military child with your father deploying. talk about that a bit. >> guest: i went to 12 different schools, my father was in the army signal corps. he met my mother when she was in the army as well so i joke that my first military duty was giving my mother and honorable discharge because in those days you couldn't have a child and be a woman in the military.

and so my father's first tour in vietnam, he was an adviser and i was 8 years old. i joy and have a concept of what that meant except halfway through, there was the coup, the military took over the government and we started sending in troops and those things changed rapidly from then on. it was very difficult. i hear a lot of controversy about should troops -- i am like yes, troops need to be thanked. everyone needs to be thanked. i grew up where i had to defend my father and even when i was in rotc in the late 70s on the campus of arizona state univ. i was harassed, i was catcall and spit at when i would wear my rotc uniform. i don't ever want to go back to those days feeling you needed to apologize and defend your appearance because someone was

calling them a baby killer. as i look at the way the current generation of troops are being valued it is heartwarming to me as a mother. is a great thing. i have six younger brothers and sisters, some of them struggled with the constant moving and it was a very difficult time. on the other hand there is no place where i feel more at home and on not based or post and there was a connection between family that was so tight because no matter where we were. maybe not my dad, i treasure that, treasurer of the people i

met. and we were also trained so that part of military life was -- continues to be very special. i find it interesting. >> host: you grew up in that environment and married somebody who was in the air force and move to a small town, ohio form in ohio and but as a military myself, and long extended period it is very frightening. you are going to raise your children in one place for most of their childhood. talked-about that transition. >> guest: i thought that was what i wanted, to know what it felt like to have stuff pile up in my basement and not have to have one box of my special things every time i move, there is a part of that that is very comforting and i know who my

mechanic is, and i know who my doctor is but i get in trouble all the time because i don't wave when people drive by. when you live in expenses you don't expect to know anybody you don't looking somebody's but in small-town america everybody knows everybody. but the joke is don't come into my house in the dark because i do miss moving and i do miss being in new places so one of the ways i would cope with that is move furniture and i am not talking about moving justin couch, i might turn the living room into the dining room and move the bed room around so my husband would come in late at night and wouldn't know which room to go to and that is a running joke but there are parts of it that are just wonderful and parts of it that i do feel like that dandelion dead is the symbol for of brats, ready to

fly on and be in a new environment. >> how did that experience of growing up on of farm in ohio influence your children to go into the service if it did, and joy tell me a little bit about what you thought when your son, your first son talked about joining the navy? >> guest: one of the things we did, we lived in an area that is not predominantly military at all. very few people are in the military but we had my dad, we were fortunate because my husband flew for an airline so we would travel to visit them a lot. heard the family stories. we would come to d.c. law we had a family tradition to come to the memorial day concert, we did that eight years and they

would stand up and so we made sure is that they knew their family legacy of service and in that this was something to be valued so they were exposed to it that. at the same time my husband wanted them to learn to work hard and be uncomfortable because he felt that was preparation for life. if you can follow through and be responsible, work hard and indoor discomfort there isn't a lot that can be thrown at you that you cannot handle. they learned to be okay, they lend to be the animals before they were allowed to eat all these things. ultimately when eric spent his first summer at the naval academy one of the letters we got home was this is a lot easier than being at home baling hay. we thought we succeeded. we have him prepared. but we knew from the time he was the very little boy he wanted to be top gun. brother in law was an navy recruiter and we would get boxes

and airplane pictures and my husband was like he is going to go in the air force. i was in the air force but he had that dream and that vision and as he got older we visited that the academy's, look that different options. because he knew he wanted to be a military pilot. when he was accepted to the naval academy i was so excited and proud of him because he was realizing the beginning of his dream. there is a lot more to happen before he would get his wings. at the same time it wasn't until that very first day, induction date even though i had grown up in the military and understood and respected it as an institution that first day all of a sudden it hit me and this

was going to be totally different than any other military family experience i had had to that point. >> host: have you been involved? we have social media, we have a lot, had you been contacting naval academy parents up until that point or were you aware of this sort of great big parents' groups that is out there? >> back in the day there was no facebook at that point. your town had an appointment, you could participate. so it was probably april and a kind of questions you asked where what do they need to bring? what, tennis shoes to they need and all that manutius that when you are apparent horse especially imam you feel you are in control because you are making sure that they have everything they need and that is

part of the reality of once they hit that door there is nothing else that i can do that is going to prepare them any more than i have and it is up to them. that for me was very difficult because i wanted to be able to do everything i needed to them to be successful. but apron strings are cut, not just cut but hacked with a machete and now is up to him and he was going to sink or swim based on his passion and ability to survive and it was an immediate he is out of the next moment. >>, joy hands on parent were you prior? would you describe yourself as a helicopter mom? >> no. i call myself an eagle mom.

we did a lot of things to have them be independent and to help them sort. we don't run interference for them when they had difficulties. it was like okay, you signed up for in this, you are not quitting the team, you need to work it out show the coach what you can do. anything they were excited about or passionate about and i was there for is them they were all involved in different sports did community theater. katrina at decided when she was 13 to climbed to mount everest. i found an expedition that she could earn money, she and my has been joined an expedition, for less than what it would cost to take the family to disneyland but she raised the money herself so i was that kind of supportive if that is what you want to do,

but i did not fight battles for them i did not use my connections to help them improve their lot in life. my husband didn't coach, that is the perception that when i think of the helicopter it is trying to smooth away instead of letting people fight their battle. that is how i still know they are ok because i know they can fight these whenever obstacle comes in their path i know they have the internal skills to handle it. do i feel like i am standing on the sidelines biting my fingernails, cheering them on? of course. but i need to have confidence

that they are prepared for what is in front of them so that was -- my husband's goal creating an environment where independents and hard work is going to pay off and sometimes it wasn't there. sometimes things happen to where i really wanted to get more involved but i held myself back because that wasn't going to hell. now what i tell naval academy parents, a helicopter parent, you create helicoptered parents when you don't give people enough information so part of my goal is to give them information about what to expect because when i know what to expect, i can relax and ease off and don't need to be hovering. i say the same thing to my grandchildren. if you don't want me hovering it just give me some crumbs of information. i need to know you are okay. if you tell me you are okay i

don't need to hover and now it boils down sometimes it is once every two months especially when they are deployed, i don't expect to hear from them every day. i am grateful for second hand news, but when i know that all i need to know is it is okay. then i back off. >> host: not so much of how to parenting book about how to navigate this new world and culture that is the military and you have a background being a military family, you encounter everyday people who think it is completely a foreign country. talk about a little bit about the unique culture that is the military family and how hard it is to convey to brand new parents, brand new people whose

kids justin list or went to the naval academy norwest point, how do you sort of held from navigate this new world? >> guest: we do a series and a face book page where i joy series called free 101 for naval academy parents but it is pretty much basic truth for example in the military, rules are rules, rules are not made to be broken and i used to teach in a junior high school environment and most of my students are not used to that kind of environment where a rule means it is a rule. for example i grew up walking on sidewalks never the grass. that is second nature to me. that was part of military order and discipline so the first thing is to explain that concept of military order and discipline, that whether you think it is a stupid rule or not or whether you want to express

your individuality or whatever it there is the reason we need uniformity, there's a reason we need a chain of command and there's a reason why we need to follow as that for good order and discipline and every military unit in the world has to have that basis so explaining to parents it doesn't matter if the underclass is stupid, they are modeling behavior that later on in a time of war or a difficult time they need to count on people doing what they are supposed to do when they are told to do it. it is basic truth. people who didn't grow up in the military many times do not have the confidence in the institution that i have growing up in it because as you get older and look back you see reason, a message in all the madness. why should people be trained to

behave this way? because there are times that it is critical that they need to follow procedures and i go back to -- my son flies the 767. they have procedures they need to follow in the event of emergency to the letter in order to keep everyone on board or keep themselves safe. it is the same thing, so many things they do in the military are with nuclear-weapons or they have men and women in their command that they are responsible for. there is a reason you need to follow the rules and follow procedures. so it begins with that. the second part especially when they are in a training environment is what are they going to be doing three, four, ten years from now? if there training to become officers they will be responsible for other people in life or death situations. it is important for them to be pushed to their limits to note

that they can perform even in the most difficult circumstances. that is why they do these things that seem ridiculous. because they need to know that they can be unemotional in a time when most people would not. as we go through these different phases then we get to the heart -- hardest one of all which is you have absolutely no control over anything. you can counsel, you can give advice but if they have a medical problem, the military will take care of that. if they have a leadership problem they need to go through the chain of command to take care of the situation they are dealing with. that is probably the most difficult part of all of it you

can't call the counselor. >> host: i would see that as a great relief. my job is over. >> guest: you don't. >> host: at do now. in the beginning of first time i went through it it was a shock. i don't have that to worry about. i have other things i need to worry about for many new parents, or when their son or daughter hits a bump in the road and they get a phone call or text messages that sense this guy is doing this or whatever and it is just like when they went on the bus the first time, what do you want to do? just get in and fix it and you can't anymore. you can because it is not appropriate and it is what they need to take care of and so that is one of the hardest parts and it also coincides with the time

for a lot of women when their nests is starting to empty and we start to redefine who we are. our role as mother changes. you still parent, your parents are still parenting you if they're still alive, it is really hard. there is no what to expect when you are expecting, parenting and adult child. that is where mother-in-law jokes come from. how do we navigate this new world especially when we have children that are fiercely independent warriors? but they will always be my child's, not maturity level but biologically. >> let's talk about the experience of having your children go into combat zones, war zones, military that is at

war. in the beginning, there were discussions, obviously programs for families programs for spouses, seminars a family readiness programs, whole unit programs to help spouses, but parents are sort of left out of that close-knit community. what was that like for you and what did you do to build your own community with other parents? >> this is something, the first time one of them went to ed dangerous place i felt like i was coming under water for good part of that time partly because i had been there before.

i had had my dad, i had experienced that as a child so it was like at deja vu experience for me. i don't sleep well when i have a child in that circumstance. i wake up in the middle of the night, i will have bad dreams and so i decided very quickly data instead of responding to that i had to be proactive to manage the way i felt because i knew i had four of them and was going to be doing this a lot. i have a deep perishable face that helped me a lot but i also learned that it was good for me to be busy and the busy doing something different. each deployment i had some kind of a project. one time i logged as many miles as it would take to get to where he was the plight and back. >> host: you mean running the?

>> guest: we would be very loose it would be loosely described as running. i did complete the marine corps marathon in 2003 in 7 hours 4 minutes and 56 seconds so there were no drinks, no oranges and very few left at the finish line when i crossed that that is one example of a challenge i used to help myself manage the stress of having a child beat floyd. i also started -- i started in it when my youngest was playing football and i didn't want to be that parent on the sideline screaming at the coach and i realized if my hands were busy i could keep my mouth shut but now what i'd do is i use it as the medication replacing nervous energy and i try to actively for

a for each of my kids. some of the other things i do is i planted a blue and gold garden. i have gotten out side and i really try -- i know it sounds silly but i try to take care of myself. i give myself permission to take a 20 minute nap or to understand that i am walking around with an extra week, i call it my mom backpack and it is there because the second and something happens, i hear something on the tv news about afghanistan or i hear something about in aviation crashes i am on red alert because that might be one of my kids. and it has been some of my kids and dearest friends so as those lists bills as they deploy it again the backpack is heavier

but finding connections with other military parents who get it having that person again paulette 2:00 in the morning and say i had the worst dream, my husband is very calm comment and he is a great wait for me but he doesn't worry about anything and so sometimes just being able to talk to another mom and we are both kind of like -- is so helpful and that is one of the reasons why i really wanted to reach out to other parents because we don't have -- we find support in that. just like my daughter in law and my son-in-law when they are on base they have that unit already there, they have the family readiness briefing, they have all that. we don't have that so how can we build that network and find that

support? because i am just as worried as their spouse is. >> when you were young your mom sent you to you went to the program when your dad was deployed. with your parents have described you as a worried personality, as a worrier before hand? >> i don't think as a worrier. i was just very response. i carries huge weight. isil do kerri a cute weight of responsibility in my family my sister was born a year and a week after i was and i was already helping her, helping my mom. so i think she knew that -- i would not at that time i would never have admitted to use that i was worried about my dad ever. in fact writing this play in some ways has been really hard because this we don't talk about how hard things are. we just sucked it up.

that is my family. so -- i think she knew i needed a break and needed to do something that would give me a way to define myself as a young adult and it was a great thing, it was a great thing that i did it. >> host: out of four branches your children surf in, do any of them stand out as being more accommodating or doing more for parents especially during deployment time? obviously when people are in garrison there doesn't tend to be a lot of communication, in the pre deployment work out which you talk about an joy while they are gone, any of the services? >> i still have a bachelor son but when my first son was a bachelor, he turned my name in to the family readiness so i at

least got the bulletin but really nothing. everything, everything depends for the ones that are married what they convey to me and that is why i tell my fellow moms, be nice to your daughter-in-laws. i totally agree that they should be first in line for information and they should be the one that gets most of the communication, that is how it needs to be. i am grateful for whatever it they have, especially in situations where they don't have a chance to communicate to multiple people which happens. >> host: interesting bits of wisdom you pass on in this book. i have one that is not on your list of tips but your husband and you wait, you go visit

before hand well before they go on deployment. i gather when there is a homecoming you wait a few days and then go see them afterwards. that is vital to spouses but many parents don't. where do your tips come from? is it just experience? >> guest: experience, communicating with other military parents growing up. i remember what it felt like when my dad laughed and i wasn't driving and i came home and when i got in the car he had a heart attack. there are so many changes and so many things that happened in six months or nine months to change your family dynamics and joy you really, it is like the plant that has to be cultivated and

being gone really hurts the plan so when they come home you need time to kind of regroup. for meet my husband went to afghanistan in 2008 and was there for four years and for two years i was at home and he was at home six months, so i have had our fresh experience in how that feels and how hard that is and when i was in afghanistan trying to maintain communication and relationships with just my immediate family is so exhausting. i have a higher level of appreciation for how precious that time is and while i would love to come to homecomings they need to invite me. i will never just go because that is a precious family time and that nuclear family time and

i appreciate the fact the we are no longer in the nuclear family. a lot of moms that is hard. that is where mother-in-law jokes come from. i expect especially in my situation it is the best. because i want their marriages and their families to 5 despite the challenges despite the challenge of being a military family. >> host: you are a teacher and you decided to go to a couple and teach. walk me through that thought process and what inspired you to do it. you have a chapter in the book. >> guest: my mother had loss of pension and they raised it to 65, no u.s. airlines would bring back any of those pilots, there are 2800 of them that ended up

being left at the curb. the only place they could go would be overseas and he ultimately took a job with an afghan airline and we decided, he was very excited about it because they were rebuilding it to international standards, so it was kind of like the perfect end to his career. got to teach people of raucous avoidance again in his 60s and i went to visit him, the first summer where all the children were launched and i went to visit him and it was summer of 2009 and we weren't taken on a tour in the city and buy it at point, more and more of my children's friends were deployed to afghanistan and it was not a

good time but while i was there i just felt drawn in to the country and the people because the afghan people are the most hospitable people on the planet. i can remember driving on the countryside where they have that terrible attack last year and there were little small children on the side of the road begging and i looked at this little guy in his eyes and there was nothing i could give him and i just thought maybe if i could be a teacher maybe if i could come and teach, that is because what is going to change is going to be education. that is the key to change in any country. as people become more educated and it seemed like a crazy idea but then as i came home, more and more it gripped me and i

discovered there was a school, the purpose of the school was to teach english to afghan students so they could go on and go to europe for the united states or college and come back to afghanistan and as luck would have it they needed an anatomy and environmental science teacher which i happened to be able to teach and joy i ended up securing a position. it meant giving up my tenure teaching position and it meant being 55 years old and totally doing something radical but i really felt called to do it so i found myself in a head scarf and my toes covered and off i went to afghanistan. >> host: you were not able to live with your husband. >> guest: i was hoping to see him more, as luck would have a i

saw once, and the whole time, he was fined in frankfurt and i know it sounds ridiculous but the airport was eight miles from the school, on the western part of kabul and the airport was over here and to get from here to here you had to drive through the downtown area of couple which is very dangerous so many times security concerns were that i couldn't leave or it might take three hours for him to navigate and only had a 12 hour layover and so it literally was many times he was just over there and i was here but i couldn't see him so that was very difficult. i call it my deployment year. i am not saying i was deployed, but for be, it felt like a fraction of what it must feel

like to be deployed, to be away from home, to be away from anybody who knows your history, to be in a place with no central heat, very little hot water no mail, it was up with year and there were bad things that happened, really bad things. >> host: you were obviously inspired to help children of repair and teach children but earlier you said you would love to have information and in the book part of your afghanistan stint was getting some information knowing what was going on, how deal as a parent you can't run off to afghanistan, how do you get that information? >> i would not recommend running

to afghanistan at this point. it is a different time and a different place even when i was there. finding books about that particular region, right now so many of us have sons and daughters going to africa and most of us i don't know much about africa or the dynamics. i know a lot more about the middle east. read about some of the history of what has gone beyond so you can understand, the physical geography, the number of people who talk about the sand box, can the heart is in the sandbox but, bull is much like denver surrounded by high mountains. try and learn about it but not from the spin that you get on the news kind of show.

investigate, learned about the history so you can understand learn about the people. a lot of people just care about their families and that is true from afghanistan we went to bangladesh. most moms in the world want their children to have a better life, that is our humanity and so that is what i recommend. become an educated parent and understand where you are children are in asia. i never knew very much about okinawa and now i know a lot more because i make myself a student of where they are. >> host: you went to bangladesh. so many stories.

what did you do overs there? >> guest: my has been transferred in august of 2011, transferred to an airline in bangladesh and we went there. for be there are things as a woman in afghanistan, cultures prescriptions i couldn't walk by myself. had to be with a man and even with security concerns i had very little flexibility but in bangladesh i could walk the streets of bangladesh which was like heaven to me and people were like oh my gosh, so many wonderful friendly people, but our kids were like okay. time for you to come home we're

having. kids. i never thought i would do any of these things. we had a farm in ohio in arizona where we met. we were going to be like normal people. >> host: speaking of not knowing what you are going to do, what is going to happen in your life you send a christmas card one year to the obamas. tell us what happened after that. >> guest: because i care about military families, not just my own children i watched the make that adjustment i watched our young sons and daughters get married and start having babies, i know how it feels to be struggling to hold down the home front if you are a young wife i

worry about my grandchildren and how they cope. always on the radar for anyone who is doing anything to support military families and i started following joining forces what a great idea. this is not political, this is bringing together everybody who can do their part whether it is businesses, universities, health care doing research on brain trauma, we need to be able to support all these young men and women who have gone to serve and their families and what a great idea. my daughter-in-law is the nurse the portability of life, my mom had to get a new teaching license every place we restaging and how to take arizona history and virginia history and so i thought this is phenomenal. i am going to write a thank-you note and send a christmas card and so i did and that was when we were in bangladesh and i had

come home for christmas and sent my christmas cards and went back to bangladesh for two month and got home and had a huge stack of mail and it was the height of the political campaign and here was this calligraphy envelope, they are really doing some pretty fancy political campaign literature and i almost didn't open it and when i opened it i was flabbergasted. i could not figure out why i would get an invitation to let state dinner at the white house so the next morning, it was monday. i called the number and i said i have a question. you are invited. does this have anything to do with the christmas card? everyone in the white house has read your card. what did i say?

i was just floored. i called my husband was in bangladesh, you are going to have to come home i you all right? really, there is really an invitation here. we got him home and what do i wear? i live in eastern ohio, went to the mall, tried on every formal dress, she is going to the white house like this is crazy. all of a sudden the day before that event i turned to my husband and said we have been so busy thinking what do we have to wear, who are we going to talk to? we don't know these people. it turned out that when we got there, the first person we saw was the former commandant of the naval academy when our boys were there -- >> host: general john allen. >> guest: yes. and senator lugar and his wife

adopted us. people were just great. we were prepared to go sit in the back in the quarter so we could take pictures of all these important people and that is when we went through the receiving line and mrs. obama said by the way you are sitting with us tonight. who does that? we are just military parents. we have a farm. we were blown away. we had a lovely night. >> host: did you pick the purple dress? did you wear a purple dress? >> guest: i wore a purple dress. >> host: explain to the viewers what that means. >> guest: purple is the color of joint forces. when our daughter cross commission to the air force the commandant at that time was -- told me, he said wheat -- you

are the joint forces mom. and so i picked up purple dress and later on when i was asked to introduce the first lady an end ed up wearing a purple dress that i already had in my closet, just happened to be purple and i sign with a purple pin because i have four children, four branches. even the bigger idea is that we all need to be a joint force to support our military and their families because they stand in the gatt force against enemies beano and vanities we don't know. purple is right up there on my list, favorite colors. >> host: did you get involved with joining forces? how did the follow-on introduce the first lady at the democratic

national convention in 2012? how did that come about? >> i have no idea. i went back to doing my work with parents, i had the opportunity to meet with the head of join forces where he talked about their major initiatives, wind is women veterans and homelessness with women veterans, the other issue about so i was starting to become very involved with learning more about p t s d because classmates and friends of my sons were starting to exhibit symptoms. what do you do when a mom calls you and says my son has pete espn doesn't want anything to do with me which is typically a first sign is isolation from people that you love. but life was going on. life had gone back to normal and it was a once-in-a-lifetime event, my cinderella story and i kept on doing what i did and

actually when i got a call i thought it was for 4 tickets because they had said if you want to do a cooler and i knew i had a son coming for a reunion so i asked if i could get tickets for a white house to work so that is what i thought it was about. and ultimately they asked me to do that, the first thing that happened is my husband said they could have oprah. they could. they could have anybody they wanted. it was obviously overwhelming. to -- once again, does that? but i wanted to be able to put a personal story with the extended military family community and for people to think about the

fact that we are out here, whether we are moms or wives or husbands or children, we sacrifice every day and so i decided to say yes. that was a whole other experience. it was really -- i couldn't help think i wonder what my dad would be saying. i pictured him watching from heaven. i hope i am doing okay. so. >> host: you talked about pete psc, trying to get calls and questions, how have you approached that? what have you done to learn about those topics? to be a source of advice for of their moms, other dads and how prevalent do you see the issue being?

>> guest: being in a couple for that year there were things that happened that year that were very difficult and i watched the staff that i worked with, many of whom are suffering from delayed ptsd, it can be up to seven years after a traumatic event and there was one circumstance where my husband's hotel was attached and i was on the phone with the flight attendant telling them what to do because they were barricaded in their room, he was coordinating a rescue. it sounds like that movie. like i said, this is, i feel like it is not even my life sometimes. but for them to feel safe to come out we went through a traumatic event. and so that triggered my interest in the beginning and as

more moms are concerned, classmates and people -- i like to research as an educator. and science and education, it is constantly rewiring, the council to parents' concern is to certain organizations especially suicide. for grief counseling, and now i have the opportunity to go to the institute of greenhouse in the university of texas where they're doing a lot of research and my big push is we need as much funding as we can to get more this is our last frontier and the more we can understand about understanding the brain,

not only can we help those suffering from ptsd but mental health, learning problems it is an enormous enormous opportunity almost like going to the moon but so much of what we at doing is reacting to to behaviors' and we need to focus on that holistic approach. what can we do to help find the area that has been damaged and fix it. i hope we see great strides in that. >> host: speaking of injuries and wounded warriors, there's a whole subset of parents, caregivers, and spouses and sometimes friends but a lot of times up mom has sent her 18-year-old child, has come back injured comment and they are

going to be caregiver's for a long time. have you spoken with those parents? what programs are there that are available for them? >> guest: the book isn't just my voice there 25 other voices, a mom carrying for her son who has t b i she quit her job, she moved to washington d.c. not so in bethesda what next? we have about a million caregivers and a third of those are parents and many of them are coming from areas where they haven't had the benefit of what military background to understand what services are available to them and their lives are changed because they are taking care of these terribly wounded children so our

families are a caregiver program or caregiver conferences. and caregivers, and care givers are much more risk for suicide as well. we have a terrible epidemic of veteran suicide but caregivers, if you have somebody in your community that is the caregiver you need to be showing up at their door saying what can i do to help you? this is a lifelong world that they are going to have so that is another thing close to my heart. i wrote week sent perfect children to work and some of us come home with sons and daughters we don't even recognize and we need to be helping them, supporting them and i pray for them every day.

>> host: you write about. stark families, an association of people, we talk about goldstar moms and goldstar mothers are those who have lost a son or daughter, very inspirational story in here about a mom who is a gold star mothers and naval academy mom. would you like to touch on that? >> guest: i got to know her when she was up lead mom and discovered that lots of the moms have angst. the first big challenge your child is going through with out you and as i began to communicate with her she has an older son who she lost in iraq and the e under son was 5 at the

time and the process of her coming to grips with the idea that she had this second son who wanted to serve, she tells the story, it is very meaningful and now she is completely supportive of him but it was really difficult journey for her. ..