How Tomatoes Saved My Marriage

A Navy SEAL's journey to healing after a traumatic deployment to Afghanistan

Dave Madden spent a decade in the SEAL Teams, deploying to Afghanistan with SEAL Team TWO and to South/South-East Asia with Special Reconnaissance Team ONE (SRT-1). He served as the Technical Operations Troop Commander at SRT-1 for five years on two-year orders before leaving the Navy. He now works as a software engineer while he and his wife tend a large garden and homeschool their three children. This essay originally appeared on Madden’s website, Aspiring Peasant, and has been republished with the author’s permission.

Where I have been

People are complicated, our ability to see reality is limited, our lives are interleaved, and time is long—so it's impossible to tease out all the moments that have led me from the bottom of that dark place to the light place, full of love, I find myself in today.

My wife didn't recognize me when I returned home from Afghanistan in 2012. Partly because I'd gained 40 pounds (lifting twice a day for 11 months straight took me from 190 to 230), but mostly …