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Benjamin Davis

@bldavis3

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📖Writer
🇺🇸 ED at @voag_official
🪖Vet

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"When you’re at a dinner party and someone asks you a question, something which if you answer honestly, might be hard. It’s nice to be able to invoke that type of familiar language.

Like, I’m just going to say this, and I’m not going to feel anything.

That’s a fine mechanism at a cocktail party, but it’s not so great for literature.

You’re skating quickly across the cracks in the ice. When you’re writing, you want to stay in the cracks.”

My most recent interview with NYT bestselling author @daniwriter where we discuss family, writing "what you know now," and more.

Link in bio. by @bldavis3

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13 days ago

My most recent short story "Halfway to God" was published today on the @lethal.minds.journal Substack.

It's a veteran story, but also a love story, and a story about our desire to come up with a logical explanation for God.

I appreciate the many people who took time this summer to read and have conversations about the themes in this story.

Link in bio. by @bldavis3

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a month ago

I feel very fortunate to have spent the last couple weeks sharing emails and phone calls with Mark Twight.

I was 24 the first time I deployed. I spent six months in a three-story concrete block of a house, a few hundred feet from the Gulf of Aden. The “gym” we had was in an open-air courtyard—ten-foot walls, concertina wire. Rusty plates and kettlebells cooking in the sun and a pull-up bar that rocked back and forth with each repetition.

Someone there handed me a paperback copy of the book “Kiss or Kill” — told me they’d recently spent time training with the author, Mark Twight. A few hundred pages later, I bought a plane ticket to Seattle with the goal of climbing Mt. Rainier.

Twelve years later, in the fall of 2025, I came across an essay written by Blair Speed titled Sobriety. The title deserves its place but to me, it felt more like a love story—having more to do with patience and grace and the non-linear way we make progress in life.

I was two-thirds of the way through before I realized it was written about Mark Twight.

The author and alpinist who’s made first ascents in Alaska, the Alps, and the Himalayas. Who started Gym Jones and spent years training tier-one units, accomplished athletes, and movie stars. The same Mark Twight whose writing inspired me to climb Rainier.

When I reached out to Mark, he suggested we conduct the interview in writing. “Send me your questions,” he wrote in an email. “I’ll answer them and then we can talk.” I agreed, and only afterward felt the pressure that came with it—Mark is a serious writer, someone who, “agonizes over sentences and words,” as he writes in one response. I needed to write questions worthy of such effort.

I eventually sent my questions and he sent his answers and afterward we had a long phone call. He seemed curious and thoughtful. We talked military TRANSITION and brain injury, spiritual experiences, and he shared a few stories from his years working with the SEAL teams in the early 2000s—spending time on Denali with a few individuals who are no longer with us.

Interview link in bio.

#writing #climbing #adventure #substack by @bldavis3

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5 months ago

Veteran's Outdoor Advocacy Group had the opportunity to work with Sen. Cramer's office in developing the Veterans Outdoors Rehabilitation Act which was introduced last week.

As Sen. Cramer stated, "Let's be honest, for a lot of hashtag veterans healing doesn't happen in a doctor's office."

This legislation would establish the first federal grant program dedicated exclusively to outdoor recreation for veterans.

$10 million annually in state grants to fund state-run, non-profit, and private sector programs that deliver outdoor recreation therapy for vets.

This bill has a long road ahead. But for too long, private generosity and the hashtag #nonprofit sector have carried the weight of getting veterans outside and into recovery with not enough federal support.

This legislation is an opportunity to change that, expanding access to outdoor adjunct therapies for veterans across the country.

Link in bio.

@cruxwilderness @aztrailvets @joshjespersen @vaeradventure @1mwave_backup @leslie.gets.lost @mace_curran @i_crmly34 @steveotero @backcountryhunters @thesupvets @phwff @militarymobility @dirttherapyproject @bha_afi @camp_hero_ky @skeletoncrewsailing @soldiersonsingletrack_norcal @heroes_harvests @sup4team @hutsforvets @bldavis3 by @bldavis3

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6 months ago

My most recent short story “Party of Three” looks at the way we measure ourselves inside relationships. The way a look, or a comment, or running into someone from the past can start a kind of mental accounting where we allow fragments to become certainty.

“Party of Three” follows a man who unexpectedly sees someone from his past across a restaurant. As he watches her with the person she’s with now, the calculations begin again, built on stories and assumptions that feel more certain than they probably are.

If you enjoy the story, or you don’t, I always appreciate feedback. Link in bio. by @bldavis3

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7 months ago

A short story I wrote titled Anhedonia was published today with @lethal.minds.journal

I tried to write a true story, one shaped by real experience and real conversations rather than a single event.

It follows a character moving through work and relationships with competence as engagement is flattened by apathy.

The title arrived after reading an early draft.

If you enjoy the story, or you don't, I always enjoy receiving feedback. Link in bio.

#veteranmentalhealth #writing by @bldavis3

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8 months ago

It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried. 🇺🇸 by @bldavis3

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9 months ago

“I'd tell every class, 'The teams are incredible. You’re going to immerse yourself in this job. However, don’t make the mistake of letting it become your only sense of self-worth, your identity. One day it ends.'

Very few people are James Mattis — spend an entire adult life in the military. In the end, the Navy is going to show you the door, and when that day comes, who are you going to be without the SEAL teams? Where’s your family? Where is your relationship with your kids? Invest in them throughout.

What kind of person can you be in the second half of your life?”

My most recent interview with retired Captain Brad Geary @bradleyandamy is on @substack with a link in bio. We discuss a few of the changes he witnessed over two decades as a leader in the SEAL teams, leadership in the face of risk, and the problem with the way our military often responds to tragedy. by @bldavis3

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a year ago

“It’s about the idea that we all enter the world under different circumstances—some with advantages, others with the odds stacked high against them.

But at some point, we become responsible for our actions, we take agency, we become adults. That cycle we inherit — we either continue break it or we continue it.

That choice depends on many factors. And it’s messy - it’s hardly ever clean.

I hope the story helps illustrate the way people make that decision.”

My most recent Substack interview with @sarahdamoff, author of the bestselling novel The Bright Years. Her writing has appeared in Oprah Daily, Porter House Review, Ruminate Magazine, and Open Global Rights, among other publications. She holds a degree in Family Studies, and a Child Protection Certification from Harvard University.

Link in Bio. by @bldavis3

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a year ago

"It seems we live in a culture that focuses on self in a way that it never has before. Over the last decade, we’ve become increasingly interested in our own wellness in a unique way.

There are benefits to that.

There’s also the potential to reinforce a lot of negative ideas. Our deficits, flaws, a general brokenness.

We all know what trauma looks like now. More people are studying trauma, it’s normal to talk about trauma publicly, and there’s a tendency for people to identify with trauma.

Trauma bonding and using trauma as an identity to navigate the world.

Understanding trauma is beautiful. And I’m really happy we’ve stepped into a place of better understanding. But leaning on it as an identity becomes less helpful.

I think this is a limitation of conventional talk therapy. Too much reinforcement around why we’re messed up."

Read my latest conversation with @coryrichards where we discuss, life's transitions, Starting Over, Mental Health Culture, Psychedelics, and a Longing for Risk Amidst Everyday Life.

Link in Bio. by @bldavis3

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a year ago

Short, personal essay I wrote about the limits of introspection and our habit of seeking more self-improvement.

What happens when we instead look externally and reconsider the context in which we see ourselves in the larger world?

Link in bio.

@outrohealth #veteranmentalhealth #writing #viktorfrankl by @bldavis3

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a year ago

Silence and shame are taking too many of our veterans. @bldavis3 and @voag_official are changing that by proving community, consistency, and healing outdoor experiences 🍃

Learn more on the latest episode of Consequence of Habit. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you like to listen.

#mentalhealthawareness #veteransupport #consequenceofhabit #voag by @bldavis3

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a year ago