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Shannon Shimer is a Dole Caregiver Fellow with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and the caregiver for her husband, Jesse, a medically retired U.S. Army veteran who served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Djibouti. She serves as director of social services at Homeworthy, where she works with and advocates for individuals experiencing homelessness in Maine.
For the past five years, I have advocated for vulnerable Mainers who too often go unseen. As director of social services at Homeworthy, I work with people experiencing homelessness. But the hardest, most personal work of my life happens at home, caring for my husband, Jesse, a combat-injured veteran.
Jesse is one of the more than 90,000 veterans who call Maine home. He served eight years in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper, deployed to Afghanistan, Ukraine and Djibouti, and was medically retired in 2018. He lives with chronic pain, traumatic brain injuries and PTSD that the Veterans Administration rates 100% service-connected. He has worked hard through years of treatment, but some wounds do not heal; they are carried.
Caring for Jesse is a daily responsibility. I hold a master’s degree in counseling and have spent years at his side, and still, the work is unlike anything I trained for. Ours is one of thousands of Maine households organized around a veteran’s needs, and too often that work goes unseen.
I am far from alone. An estimated 14.3 million Americans care for a wounded, ill or injured veteran at home. As a Dole Caregiver Fellow with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, which supports military and veteran caregivers, I see the desperate needs of veterans, caregivers, and survivors every day. Together we are waiting on congressional action on the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, which gathers more than 60 long-stalled bipartisan bills into one path forward.
Some of these bills would reach my family directly. The Major Richard Star Act would end the so-called wounded veteran offset that cuts into the benefits combat-injured retirees like Jesse earned. For us, that is not abstract; it is financial support we were promised and have counted on.
Because Jesse’s PTSD is constant and combat veterans face a heightened risk of suicide, the package’s mental health provisions are especially important to my family. While we have never relied on the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program, I have seen why the Fox grants matter: they fund the community organizations that reach struggling veterans and connect them to care before a crisis turns tragic. No veteran should die by suicide, and this is a significant step toward prevention.
Other provisions may never touch our household, but they will change lives across Maine. The Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act would strengthen support for the most catastrophically injured veterans and survivors. The Veteran Caregiver Reeducation, Reemployment, and Retirement Act, the “3Rs,” would help caregivers who set aside careers and savings rebuild what caregiving costs them. I fight for these families as fiercely as I fight for my own.
None of this is guaranteed. While Congress continues to delay their necessary votes on this bill, it is another day Maine’s veterans, caregivers and survivors wait for help Congress already agrees they have earned. So I am pleading with Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Angus King, Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree: pass the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act — not for my family alone, but for the thousands of Maine families standing beside us. Not because it is easy, but because it is owed.