Jason Kander served in the United States Army with a deployment to Afghanistan. Kander became the first millennial to serve state office when elected to the Missouri state legislature in 2008, later winning election as Missouri Secretary of State in 2012. Kander ran a close yet losing bid for United States Senator from Missouri in 2016. The possibility for legitimate Democratic Party leadership at the national level came about in the aftermath of that.
Published in July of 2022, Kander‘s book Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD tells stories of the author’s life roughly from multiple points in time. We get some sense of Mr. Kander‘s childhood relationship with his father and community, of getting to know his wife, and through the feedback he received to choosing military service and then serving in a military intelligence capacity. We learn of the author becoming a father; the decision-making to run for political office too came up.
Then there were some realities of running for office, and the reasons why. The signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) were present in this period. The signs were explained away and coped with as well as the man knew how. The secondary impact of giving the author’s wife and son experiences of PTSD were present, with these too being unrecognized. The details, personal and human for sure, were present in that information shared by Jason Kander and his wife, Diana Kander.
I’ll defer to your reading of Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD to gain a proper sense for the somewhat gradual means for how the author came to this decision, yet it was in Jason Kander‘s acceptance and then action to address his PTSD with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that Mr. Kander announced his stepping away from pursuing public service through political office. The ability to have this announced publicly, and then addressing much of the substance of why within this book with Diana Kander voice in part, offers a service to those in need in the United States.
Finding the Veterans Community Project as a means of serving after Senator Elizabeth Warren picked up some of Kander‘s voting rights work, Kander has been able to channel a need to continue serving. This comes after his doing the real work of getting emotionally healthier through understanding what PTSD has been for him and his family. The journey that Jason Kander, Diana Kander and their family has experienced in getting back to something emotionally tenable and satisfying is a clear triumph. The experience of the book helps me grant Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD by Jason Kander 4-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.
Matt – Monday, August 8, 2022
Matt Lynn Digital 
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