Kate MacEachern arrived in Sparwood with her knee braces down around her ankles, walking shoes on and a trepidatious look in her eye as she observed the mountain scenery.
“I haven’t seen mountains in so long,” she said.
She wouldn’t, having walked 1,000 km across the vast flatness of the prairies over the last month and a half.
Over the last three years, former armoured crewman MacEachern has walked across the country with a full military ruck (backpack) strapped to her back, raising funds and awareness for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with her cause the Long Way Home.
Since 2012, MacEachern has walked nearly 3,500 km from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia and then from Cape Breton to Ottawa.
Her final trek across the country — 2,700 km; her longest to date – will bring her total walking distance to 5,164 km from Nipawin, Sask. to Chilliwack, B.C..
On Monday, June 15 MacEachern was greeted by members of Sparwood Fire Rescue with a pulled pork on a bun dinner and treated to a full pancake breakfast by the Fernie Fire Department the following morning.
PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder that can arise following a traumatic event and is classified as a mental illness.
MacEachern herself was officially diagnosed with PTSD in 2010, following a severe injury she sustained while serving in 2007.
The incident caused trauma to her spinal cord and brain after a fall.
Though her prognosis was bleak, MacEachern was taking her next steps within days of the accident.
With each step she takes now, MacEachern walks towards a less stigmatized approach to PTSD, the opprobrium of which led to her withered mental state and delayed diagnosis.
“It took me quite awhile to adjust and adapt to my new normal that is PTSD,” said MacEachern. “I bought into a lot of the stigmas with PTSD. That it’s only combat soldiers or people who are deployed who are affected by it. As a result of that stigma, I became seriously ill because I wouldn’t admit it or deal with it or heal on my own.”
She added, “I realized in 2011 that I not only had to change my own path but I had to try to change other people’s paths. People like me that have been diagnosed not just with PTSD, but a whole gamut of invisible injuries like anxiety and depression.”
The results of a Canadian Forces Mental Health Survey in 2013 found that 5.3 per cent of soldiers experienced PTSD in the 12 months leading up to the survey — an increase of 2.8 per cent from a Statistics Canada survey conducted a decade earlier.
The survey also covered six conditions its participants (soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen) may have experienced including depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, alcohol abuse/dependence as well as PTSD.
The report concluded that 16.5 per cent of its participants had experienced at least one.
Through the Long Way Home, MacEachern partnered with groups like service dog organizations Alpha K9 and Paws Fur Thought as well as the N.A.S.H. project (an animal rescue organization that also provides equine therapy services).
At the outset of the Long Way Home, MacEachern found a way to visually represent what it’s like to live with PTSD.
Having spent almost eight years in the military, MacEachern placed her fully-loaded military ruck on her back.
“The one part that I had a hard time figuring out was how to show people what an invisible injury looks like. We’re all carrying this invisible burden that no one can see, so it’s extremely hard to understand … I thought, what a better way to incorporate an invisible injury or burden but to take my ruck as a sign of the burden that everyone is carrying,” she said.
MacEachern’s final physical destination lies in Chilliwack, B.C. where she will be scheduled to finish her national walk on July 24.
The mental journey, the exhaustion and the ultimate destination for MacEachern’s Long Way Home is meant to bring awareness to silent illnesses like PTSD.
The journey, MacEachern says, hasn’t always been easy.
“Some days are easier. Some days are extremely hard. As cathartic as it is to be able to walk for 10 hours a day and have the quiet on the road and the quiet of the scenery it also gives you a chance to think of your life in your head. Having PTSD gives you time to start processing through and working through all the garbage that collects in there … Some days, for a split second it goes through my head that I don’t want to do this today because you’re so sore,” she said.
MacEachern said that hearing from the people who have been personally touched by her journey helps.
“You get a phone call or an e-mail or someone stops you on the side of the road and tells you their story that they somehow found strength through what you’re doing and that gives you the strength to keep going,” she said.
For more information on the Long Way Home, visit www.thelongwayhome.ca.