PATRICIA CLASON
In 1989, I responded to a request from Christian Kramer, a Vietnam Veteran and graduate of my weekend emotional intelligence program, Taking It Lightly, to co-create a program for Vietnam Veterans. I said yes, and over the next ten years, we taught Bamboo Bridge weekends across the country together.
In 2004, Gene McMahon invited me back into work with veterans through Vets Journey Home, which had grown out of the Bridge to include veterans from every era. I helped build the organization, guided it through securing its 501(c)(3) status, and trained instructors until September 2012.
In 2013, I created a new program for veterans: Healing Warrior Hearts. I incorporated creative arts and other experiences I'd developed over the years into the work and later built a Healing Warrior Hearts retreat specifically for couples.
I grew up as a Sergeant Major's daughter. I lost a close friend to suicide in Vietnam, and a boyfriend to PTSD when he came home from Vietnam. I protested the war. Those experiences, among others, are part of where my compassion and understanding for this work comes from.
I'm also a survivor of sexual abuse, and I continue to work through my own PTSD symptoms even as I help others in their recovery. Healing isn't something I've finished — it's something I keep doing, alongside the veterans and families I work with.
My exploration of personal growth and human development started in 1970 and hasn't stopped since, through traditional paths and some not-so-traditional ones. A weekend in Colorado in 1983 introduced me to Understanding Yourself and Others, which grew into Taking It Lightly in 1986.
Over the years, I've co-authored and taught Step Into the Light, Walking in the Light, and Dancing in DeLight, Renewal for Sexual Assault Survivors, and Grief Relief — all weekend intensives for emotional intelligence and healing. Since 2015, I’ve co-instructed the Trauma Counseling Certificate Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Continuing Education with Rae Anne Ho Fung, and created and taught the Trauma Recovery Facilitation Training alongside Curtis Mitchell, a four-day program for facilitators in emotional healing and somatic release work.
More than 45 years of doing my own personal growth work, and studying psychology and life, have given me deep compassion, understanding, and empathy for what veterans and their families bring to Taking It Lightly and Healing Warrior Hearts. I started this work because I believed hearts could heal. Watching that happen, retreat after retreat, is the reason I continue leading retreats, developing programs and training others so the work will continue as my legacy.