ome wounds come home with you.
A Purple Heart means someone was wounded in action. For the ones who came back, the ceremony ends and the rest of it starts. Chronic pain. Surgeries that keep coming. Sleep that doesn't work. And a specific kind of loneliness, the kind where you're surrounded by people who are kind to you and have no idea what you're talking about.
There's help for some of that. Most of it happens in an office, across a desk, on a schedule. That works for some people. For a lot of the Purple Heart recipients we serve, it never quite took.
So we tried something else.
Warrior Bonfire Program takes small groups out for multi-day retreats. Not a conference. Not a workshop. We go all over the country, hunting, fishing, skiing, snowmobiling, whitewater rafting, and once in a while we put someone in a stock car and let them drive it.
Six Warriors. That's a retreat.
Six isn't a budget decision. It's the number where nobody hides in the back, where you know everyone's story by day two, and where the quiet one still gets heard. A hundred people in a ballroom can't do what six people around a fire can do.
The activity isn't the point.
It's the reason to show up. Someone who would never sign up for a support group will absolutely sign up for an elk hunt.
The part that does the real work happens after. Boots off, fire going, nobody in a hurry. Somebody says the thing they haven't said out loud in six years, and the person across the fire just nods, because he already knew. That's the whole mechanism. You can't schedule it and you can't force it. You can build the conditions where it tends to happen, and then get out of the way.
Pain shared is pain divided. Joy shared is joy multiplied. We provide the bonfire.
Who this is for.
Post 9/11 Purple Heart recipients and their spouses. That's it. No application essay, no waiting list built on who tells the best story.
What it costs, and what you can do about it.
A retreat runs about $16,000. Six Warriors. That's roughly $2,700 a seat.
If your employer matches dollar for dollar, $1,350 from you sends one Purple Heart recipient on a retreat. Your company covers the other half.
That's the ask. One seat.
Where the money goes.
Charity Navigator rates us 4 stars at 91 percent. GreatNonprofits lists us as Top-Rated. We're a 501(c)(3), and you can read the financials before you give a dollar.
Two minutes.
If your employer matches and you don't use it, you're leaving half your gift on the table. It takes about two minutes, and it's the highest-return thing you can do on this page.
