%201.svg){kind=icon}
%201.svg)
%20copy.png)
The orange and white taxi cab stopped 30 yards in front of our position. Smoke billowed from the hood, faint noises coming from inside. We secured the front, finding two males with weapons barely hanging on. My responsibility was the rear driver's side. I opened the door and found two young children. The day before, I'd lost 21 of my USMC brothers. I thought it couldn't get worse. But the catastrophic loss of innocent life felt irreconcilable. Everything I believed about right and wrong, about who I was as a Marine, shattered in that moment. Fifteen years later, I sat around a table at The Marcus Institute for Brain Health, having given up hope after years of failed treatment attempts. Then a fellow veteran called it a "soul wound," and everything changed.
The Moment Everything Changed
As this fellow veteran shared his story, it felt like someone had held up a mirror. His circumstances were different, but the lasting impact was the same. He no longer recognized the person in the mirror. His life had lost all meaning and direction. He was simply going through the motions. His relationships felt empty, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't connect with the people who loved him. Over time, he isolated more and more.
What began as guilt had turned to shame and eventually became his identity. To survive, he'd developed strategies like alcohol and workaholism to avoid facing the pain. Even moments of silence brought unrelenting thoughts, like mental quicksand. After years of failed treatment attempts, he'd accepted this was the quality of life he deserved.
Sound familiar?
Maybe you've sat in similar rooms, heard similar stories. Maybe you've wondered why traditional therapy helps some symptoms but never touches the deeper wound. Maybe you've known all along that what you're carrying is something more than what they keep calling PTSD or depression.
What You're Actually Carrying
That fellow veteran called it a "soul wound." The integrative therapist used different terminology: moral injury. She explained it simply: Moral injury occurs when your actions or experiences go against your deepest beliefs about right and wrong. Unlike PTSD, which is about danger and survival, moral injury is about meaning and identity.
For the first time in fifteen years, I had language for what I was experiencing internally. It validated the feeling that this was more than PTSD. Maybe there was a way to heal these invisible wounds after all. It was a light in the darkness.
Here's what I wish someone had told me years earlier: you're not suffering from a disorder. You're carrying wounds that cut to the core of who you are. When that taxi door opened and I saw those children, it cut deeper than my identity as a Marine. It violated my identity as a human being. Children are the most vulnerable and must be protected. I simultaneously questioned what type of enemy would intentionally place kids in harm's way just to exact a moral toll, and who am I now that I've participated in this?
PTSD treatment is often effective at reducing symptoms like anxiety, hypervigilance, and nightmares, and it equips people with coping strategies to better manage daily life. But when the wound is moral injury, these approaches only go so far. Moral injury does not arise from fear; it strikes at core values, identity, and meaning. If the violation of "what matters most" is left unnamed, if a person's sense of self remains entangled with shame, no amount of symptom management can resolve the deeper fracture. Therapy becomes more effective only after the moral wound is recognized, values are restored as a compass, and the shame-based identity is untangled. From this foundation, therapeutic tools can then support true healing, helping the individual rebuild a sense of self, connection, and purpose.
Why This Changes Everything
Understanding moral injury changes everything because it reveals the cascade effect that traditional approaches miss. Your values are the foundation of meaning. From meaning comes purpose. Purpose informs identity, and identity opens the door to authentic connection. When moral injury distorts your relationship to values, it does more than generate guilt. It unsettles the entire structure that supports who you are.
The meaning you've derived from those values becomes questionable. Your sense of purpose gets muddied. Your identity feels fractured. When authentic identity collapses, shame rushes in to fill the void. But shame makes a terrible foundation because it's about unworthiness and disconnection. This creates a spiral of isolation, cutting you off from relationships that might help restore your authentic self.
Healing from moral injury requires a values-first approach. Not just processing what happened, but rebuilding that entire structure. You're not broken. You're carrying invisible wounds that need a different approach to healing.
You're Not Alone
If you recognize yourself in this story, you're not alone. Countless veterans carry these invisible wounds, and many have found their way back to wholeness. Not by managing symptoms, but by addressing the root cause.
You have a choice in how your story continues. The wound that nearly destroyed you can become the very thing that leads you home to yourself.
Ready to understand if moral injury is what you're carrying? Click here to take our free moral injury assessment. It could change everything!
About the Author: Ryan Roberts is a United States Marine Corps veteran and founder of The Journey Home, an organization empowering veterans to heal moral injury and live a life of meaning, purpose, and connection. After nearly two decades of struggling with invisible wounds, he now guides other veterans on their journey toward wholeness. Learn more by visiting The Journey Home.
.png)
