Project Sanctuary at Snow Mountain Ranch helps veterans and their families

Source: Ski-Hi News

It was during her husband's fourth deployment overseas when Michelle Bruce experienced overwhelming hardships.

Within one year, the couple's 2-year-old daughter had to undergo two surgeries, Michelle's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and the family's dog died. Then two weeks after her husband, Tech Sgt. David Bruce of the Air Force, arrived home, Michelle became so ill she was hospitalized for two weeks for an auto-immune disorder she still lives with today, four years later.

“I didn't know how to deal with all of that stuff when he came home,” Michelle said. She struggled with how to mend.

The Colorado Springs couple had been married for five years, and Michelle knew when she married him, the challenges of a military household would be many.

Their children would grow up hardly seeing their dad, and when he would come home again, the family would face new dynamics and the need for time to adjust. Her husband would encounter the challenge of a “new normal” on home ground.

And when he would leave again upon redeployment, resentment would sometimes build deep inside, Michelle said.

“But you have no where to put it, because it's not his fault, and you're not angry with him. You can't be mad at him because he's serving the country, and you knew what you were getting into.

“But he's not there for the most important moments in you life,” she continued, “whether it be graduations, birthdays, deaths in the family, devastating news or fantastic news.

“And the sacrifice for him is just as great as it is for us at home.”

Michelle and David and two of their three children were the first family chosen to attend a Project Sanctuary retreat at YMCA-Snow Mountain Ranch in Grand County — a nonprofit founded by civilian registered nurse Heather Ehle of Parker, who treated Gulf War veterans while working at a free clinic in Estes Park in the late 1990s.

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