Not Forgotten Outreach: A Place for Veterans to Heal

When a group of people travel to a new place, they take and receive from that place. Therefore, it’s important that they give a little back, in exchange for the memories and experiences and all they have gained from the place. And that’s exactly what we did for half a day on our New Mexico immersion.

The place at which I chose to give back was called Not Forgotten Outreach. Kym Sanchez, an Army veteran and the widow of killed in action Sgt. Paul Sanchez, realized there was a problem which needed fixing, and a gap which needed to be filled. That problem was that soldiers were coming back from their time in the military with damages beyond repair - physically and mentally - and they were surrounded by people who had no idea what they’d been through and how to really take care of them. There was no place they could go to just relax and cope and let go and really start to heal.

Well, Kym saw that gap, and she filled it. She started Not Forgotten in 2015 in the Taos area, and it has just continued to grow and flourish. When we were there, there was a large adobe house filled with all kinds of art - hanging on the walls, painted on the walls, standing up in the beautiful rooms - equipped with many rooms where the veterans and their families can stay, and a commercial kitchen where breakfast can be cooked. But that’s only the start of it. See, the whole idea behind Not Forgotten is that it’s a therapeutic place for veterans. What, you may ask, is therapeutic about it? Well, along with their beautiful house, Not Forgotten has a sizable farm where they grow vegetables, along with having pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, miniature horses, llamas, peacocks, and one big, fluffy, dog. The kind of therapy which Not Forgotten gives is ecotherapy - healing through nature. What’s a better way to cope and mend than getting dirty in the mud and giving hugs to goats? When we volunteered there, we had the opportunity to play with the animals, and though we have never gone through anything like the veterans have, it was somehow therapeutic and stress-freeing.

Another aspect of Not Forgotten Outreach is that it is completely family-oriented. The soldiers aren’t the only ones affected when they go off to war. Their whole family goes through a lot - missing, worrying, not knowing if this will be the last look at their family member’s face. And when the soldiers come home, who takes care of them and helps them and loves them and catches up on lost time with them? Their family. So Not Forgotten is a place for the entire family, and consequently, one may find amazing playground structures and kid-friendly equipment and activities.

Clearly, this is an amazing organization which helps those we must help, who have sacrificed so much for us. But what did we do to help them, you may ask? We did our small part, which hopefully helped in a big way: we did their farm chores, which can enable them to focus more on the important stuff. We cleaned up trash, raked leaves, hung up irrigation lines for the winter, and added to their “burn pile” (their giant pile of flammable material for a bonfire). We did seemingly meaningless tasks, but in reality, we (hopefully) helped in a big way, and found actually quite a lot of meaning. We did the chores quickly as a sizable group, which otherwise a few of their people would have had to work on for hours, missing out on running activities and really helping the veterans heal. So really, by freeing up the Not Forgotten employees, we were really helping those veterans so in need of our help and our care, to cope and mend and heal - we were helping carry out the Not Forgotten mission.