Memorial Day 2025

Dear PfP Community:

We all love a day off. Holidays give us a moment to interrupt our Monday through Friday routine and spend the day with people we love, or catching up on to-do lists. Every holiday has a story. During Valentine's Day we celebrate love. On the 4th of July we celebrate our nation’s independence. We gather with friends and family on Thanksgiving to express our gratitude for life and everything in it.

But, there’s one holiday that doesn’t have one story, it has millions of stories. Memorial Day. To some, it’s just a Monday we have off. To others, it’s the unofficial start of summer. But the holiday is a deeply personal one.

Memorial Day honors those who served their nation, and sacrificed time with their families, in some cases their health, and for those who made the ultimate sacrifice — their lives. 

Maya Lin, the Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and architect of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., described the powerful concept behind honoring those who serve in the military. “The scars of war can’t be undone”, she said. “We carry those scars inside our hearts and minds.” For that reason, she wanted to create a scar on the earth. We could go there to lay the internal wounds to rest, giving us room to heal.

But Memorial Day gives us a chance to honor the scars we’ve collected along the way. We are not just talking about those in our immediate family, or grandparents. We are talking about the family next door, the veteran who served and recently transitioned out of uniform and into civilian life and is struggling to put roots down. No matter where we are, as Americans, we all have battle scars, because our freedom was paid for through sacrifice.  

So what can we do? 

This Memorial Day, find your battle scars, find a neighbor, a friend or a loved one, and bring them to a special place in your heart and mind knowing there are scars you’ll never get to experience because someone took them for you. Then find a service member or a veteran and check in on them. Ask them how they are doing. Listen. And then ask them if they need help tending to any of their scars. 

✅ Pro tip: We all need help tending to our scars. That’s why we do this together.

Patriotically,

Points for Patriots