Meet K.L. McFadden
Kerrilynne [Kerri Lynne] McFadden is an Australian citizen married to an American veteran. Born in the Australian city of Sydney, she was primarily raised and spent most of her adult life in the Australian capital of Canberra. She has two children and six grandchildren. She met her current husband online in December 2002, and they were married two years later in December 2004. Her adult life was spent working for the Australian government and doing social work. Kerri always had a desire to write but refused to present anything of a frivolous nature. Her interest in Veterans affairs began after she had been married to her current husband for approximately 8 years. While attending a psychologist evaluation with her husband, Kerri became aware of the emotional problems her husband had been dealing with for over 40 years. It was while she was attempting to reassure her husband that she realized the full extent of the damage that PTSD caused both to the person with PTSD, but to family members also. Realizing that this story needed to be told about “the forgotten soldiers” and the struggles that they were going through and what they were putting their families through. After contacting various veterans organizations and the veterans themselves, she began to acquire individual stories of the veterans. People suffering from PTSD have a difficult time accepting strangers. But as the veterans shared their stories, they also spread the word amongst themselves and more veterans, seeing that she only wanted to help, offered up their stories. It was only as she was assembling the assortment of pictures, poems, and stories that the idea came to her to donate a portion of the proceeds from book sales to a veterans organization that will be decided upon by the people who stories are in this book.
