Navy veteran Jennifer Badger enlisted in 2001, deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2002, and returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder.
After years of battling addiction and homelessness, she found refuge at the recently opened Guardian Hills Veterans Healing Center north of Columbia.
She calls it “a different kind of healing” where veterans can spend a week in a peaceful environment to recover from the physical and psychological damage of combat.
“Being out in nature with the horses and meeting people who genuinely care about me was an experience like no other,” said Badger. “I can’t say enough about Guardian Hills.”
Opened in May, the retreat, located on a 300-acre site near Kirksville, is aimed at people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury – a complex condition that arises from confronting events that contradict deep moral beliefs and can lead to feelings of guilt, shame, disgust and anger.
The veterans live in a three- to four-bedroom cabin on the property and spend their time in self-reflection and therapy, surrounded by horses, hiking trails and fishing spots.
The center also includes a multi-purpose area, a self-development activity building and a renovated 100-year-old barn, the centerpiece of the property, which serves as a social and dining center.
Since May, staff have been running pilot programs to prepare for the full program launch next year. Two pilot sessions are still planned this year, taking place Sept. 15-21 and Oct. 20-26. Each session will involve six to eight veterans, along with staff and volunteers.
The origins
The nonprofit organization that runs Guardian Hills was founded after 9/11 by Columbia surgeon Daniel Slawski and his wife, Jo.
Slawski, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps, was practicing as an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine physician at the University of Nebraska when he began treating young patients traumatized by war in the Middle East.
“Many of them joined the military to get an education. When 9/11 happened, their world was turned upside down,” Slawski said. “Suddenly they were called to active duty, not just once, not just twice, but sometimes three or four times, to live overseas.”
“I saw children coming back dramatically changed, and some of my patients didn’t come back or were in body bags, and that affected me,” he said.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly three in 10 veterans of the Global War on Terrorism suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Slawski’s friend and founding board member Christopher Lozano had similar experiences working with young Marines.
“We sat down and asked, ‘What can we do to really make a difference?'” Slawski said. “What can we do to make an impact that goes beyond just saying ‘thank you for your service?'”
The Slawskis donated land to build the center and construction began in 2022. Since 2020, the Veterans United Foundation has given Guardian Hills over $1.5 million to continue its mission.
These and other donations have enabled Guardian Hills to offer the retreat to veterans free of charge.
The treatment
The program is based on the concept of posttraumatic growth (PTG), which was introduced in the 1990s by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun.
In researching the effects of trauma, they wanted to achieve positive psychological transformation in people who had suffered this type of stress. They theorized that people could learn to process trauma in ways that would increase their resilience to adverse challenges.
Tedeschi and Calhoun found that those who experienced the strongest posttraumatic development showed positive responses in five areas: appreciation of life, personal strength, relationships, spiritual change, and new possibilities.
“They started developing ways to integrate this into treatment and non-traditional treatment – that’s where a lot of these retreat programs come from,” Slawski said.
Both national and regional experts were consulted to develop Guardian Hills’ curriculum, which includes “immersive educational and therapeutic experiences” to promote post-traumatic growth.
During their stay, veterans discover their inner strengths while working through a traumatic past. The retreat’s nature-based approach helps them focus on healing without external stressors.
The program provides opportunities to build relationships, including with mentors who have also experienced trauma and depression, which fosters a sense of community, all important aspects of recovery.
“These shorter-term programs are very intensive and start to peel back the layers. They help people understand what they are feeling and why they are feeling it, and give them coping and survival mechanisms,” Slawski said.
All activities provide valuable lessons for veterans, said Jo Slawski. The skills are developed gradually to increase self-awareness and provide the tools to regulate emotions and behavior.
“For example, in archery, if you keep your eye on the arrowhead, you’ll miss the target,” she explained. “You have to keep your eye on the target to get to your target.”
“After that, it’s, ‘Can you trust someone else to guide you? Let us blindfold you.’ So it’s about can you trust someone else, because trust is one of the things that gets destroyed,” she said.
After each week-long session, the program determines what level of care and support the veterans will need in the long term.
“Nobody is cured in a week,” said Daniel Slawski.
The future
Guardian Hills is currently working with MU’s statistics department to develop pre- and post-assessment surveys. The center also works with students from MU and Truman State University who are interested in gaining experience in both field and research projects.
Allison Starke, a doctoral student in occupational therapy at MU, has been working on a research project to compile a database of government social and welfare resources for the Guardian Hill website.
At Guardian Hills, Starke said, she watched veterans find ways to share their experiences.
“When you get people to move their hands, their minds open up in ways they don’t even realize. But then they can also talk about things more easily because they’re not just sitting there watching someone talk,” Starke says.
“It was really interesting to see the things I had learned over the last few years actually come to life.”
In the future, the center hopes to offer sessions that include family members and first responders, as well as programs tailored to those who have experienced sexual trauma in the military.
Badger said that during her stay at Guardian Hills, she learned things about herself that she had not discovered elsewhere.
“Archery probably had the biggest impact on me,” she said. “Because that was the first time I realized that I didn’t have to impress anyone, that everyone was there to help and, you know, heal,” she said.
“I realized it’s okay to just live in the here and now. It’s okay to just be myself.”
Badger is currently helping others who have had similar experiences, and she plans to mentor the veterans at Guardian Hills.
“When you wake up in the morning and have something to look forward to, it’s great,” she said. “I’m lucky to be alive, and it’s people like Dan and Jo and programs like Guardian Hills that bring that out in me.”
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It may be republished in print or online.
