In the US today is the national holiday where we are supposed to honor and acknowledge those who have served.  There will be parades and parties, tons of flags flown, speeches made, and lots of flash and show.  All of which is great, because they deserve to be honored and remembered and acknowledged.  Each service member still living should be lavished with love from their loved ones and feel wanted and needed among us.

But that’s not all they need.  I mean, if every person who said “Thank you for your service” traded that phrase for an action to help a veteran or current military person’s family, it’s unlikely that our soldiers would need for anything.  So I recommend that along with the sentiment you add a little action whether that’s learning more about what the life of a soldier is actually like, volunteering for a day to work with veterans, connecting with groups who support service families, or just hand a homeless veteran enough cash to get through the day. Every little bit helps.

And while we’re flag waving, it’s handy to keep in mind these realities:

The Invisible War is still being fought and hardly any headway has been made to make our service people safe.

Nothing much has changed about the VA wait times for soldiers that need support but no one is talking about it any more.  It’s not the sexy scandal this month and it has nothing to do with the presidential election that is over a year away.

The current stats on veteran suicides is that they occur 50% more than in the general populace.