I am Shefali: I met my husband whilst we were both serving in the British Army.

So  - I went to see A Brave Face on Valentine’s Day! It was a way of connecting with my husband who sadly died unexpectedly last year.

All those military years serving and then as a military wife and family.

I related to the story line....so well performed.....the mask covering so much....and yet body language telling its own story: powerful, emotional....PTSD.....and it’s affects.

Everyone suffers - in their own ways. It’s good we can now  begin to talk about it in the military context but it’s not easy. Years of keeping silent and getting on with the job, that’s how it was for us years back - a different  way of war then. And we all knew how to wear our masks well to cover up the unspeakable.

I felt undone as I watched the A Brave Face story unfold and heard the sounds of the guns and bombs: in a flash it all came back and unnerved raw unspoken moments in our history....connection made....

The mother in the story trying to support her son on his return, the exasperation of feeling helpless to fix it or what to say and not to say, to touch or not to touch...the man I married went away to serve: he came back changed for ever. It all played out in the story line - and for me, living with someone who had  PTSD untreated professionally, but treated by me his wife who understood....for the 90mins I knew I was not alone in that audience.

I also attended a mask making two day course last weekend for veterans with PTSD and those who work or care for them. What fun, what a challenge stretching our abilities to not only make the mask, but to perform in them a little bit to the encouragement , support and laughter of the group; to learn how to speak with our bodies, to close ones eyes and be led by those who see with their senses, and touch.....scary, trusting....vulnerable....weakness....strengths......

And as I thought about the production of A Brave Face, the body language, the story that needs telling of others - and of myself - as I looked around the room we had an unspoken connection between us, and a beginning maybe. This was a good place to be, the beginning of understanding for those who were stepping into our world even for a short moment....and we had dropped our  usual masks a little for this time to learn a language of a different way to communicate without the words we all struggle to say yet live on in our bodies and minds.

Thank you Vamos...

Shefali Chandra

A big thank you Matt Jenkins and Simon Geharty of Worcestershire County Council and Chris Mitchell, Worcester City Council's Armed Forces Champion, for their generous support of the Veterans Mask Making Residency