Post by Patrick Flood

Twenty-four years ago this month and before I was a Green Beret, I was a young Signal Officer serving with Task Force 32 in Afghanistan when we lost Pete Tycz. In 2007, I was back in Afghanistan as a Green Beret. There are moments from that time that have never left me. Not because they were trauma inducing, but because they revealed something fundamental about what it means to be human. Over the years, I have come to believe that fear and love are the two root states of the human heart. We fear losing what we love. We grieve when what we love is gone. And the deepest scars we carry are often etched not by fear, but by love. In this essay, Love After Service: The Things We Carry, I reflect on a firefight in the Helmand Province, a dying Taliban fighter, the writings of St. Augustine, and why I believe many veterans are not simply grieving the loss of a mission when they leave military service. They are grieving the loss of a place where their love, sacrifice, responsibility, and stewardship once had somewhere to land. Over time, I have come to see that many entrepreneurs and business owners experience something remarkably similar when they step away from the organizations they spent years building. This piece is dedicated to the crewmembers of Chariot 55 who died while serving on June 12th, 2002, and the members of Task Force 32, and all those who carried the burden of service during those early years of the war. "The scars reveal what changed us. Grief reveals what we have loved. And love remains the weight we carry forward." Let’s get to work! ~P 🐍 #Veterans #Leadership #Entrepreneurship #Ownership #Stewardship #MilitaryTransition #SmallBusiness #TheWilderness #NotesFromTheOperatorUnderground Patriot Mobile Black Rifle Coffee Company Scott Miller Olga L Morales Seth Stein Scott Snider Joshua Koza Michael Ricciardi, MBA, MS Andrew Barnes Brittany Moore, PMP Danielle A Davis Michael Shea PA Andy Cagnetta Kelly McGraw JC Glick First Internet Bank David Ruhlig Patrick Colloton Patrick J. Murphy Andrew Vose Brian Barrow Jared W Johnson 📍Andre Achtermeier Reggie Ordonez Misty Stutsman Fox Jason Van Camp Benjamin Bunn Richard Sexton Kevin Barber Edward Crawford 🇺🇸 Nicola Wales-Wong Brooke Damerell Steve Laska Kenny Madison Andrea Steinbrenner Chad Faulkner Cesar Soriano Vanna Shir Tanya Memme Chuck Maxwell, DO Shout out to the works of Tim O’Brien.