The Sempergeist Institute

The Sempergeist Institute is a nonprofit research and practice center dedicated to healing and meaning-making through art, storytelling, and narrative exploration.

Founded by Dr. Dennis Stevens, veteran, visual artist, and author of Sacred Descent of the Warrior, the Sempergeist Institute partners with veterans, educators, Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs), and the Veterans Administration to pilot programs, evaluate outcomes, and develop evidence-based tools that foster resilience, belonging, and growth within the veteran community.

Its flagship initiative, Warrior’s Return, is an evidence-based, digital storytelling platform currently piloting with a leading Veteran Service Organization (VSO); it's purpose is to help veterans process, reconstruct their narrative, tell their stories and reconnect with a community of peers.

The Sempergeist Institute (operating as Conway Cultural Development Corporation, EIN: 47-5065116) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

Mission Statement

The Sempergeist Institute exists to support veterans, law enforcement, and first responders in recovering meaning, resilience, and connection through story, symbol, and reflection. We recognize that trauma requires more than endurance; it requires pause and repair.

Those who serve are trained to follow orders, act decisively, and put duty above self. This discipline saves lives, but it often leaves little room for questions of meaning, grief, or identity.

When these rules and expectations no longer govern daily life, whether in retirement, transition, or the aftermath of a crisis, many discover that what is missing is not more instruction but the chance to slow down, notice, and begin to heal.

At its heart, the Sempergeist Institute is not about teaching people what to think. It is about creating spaces where meaning can be encountered, shaped, and shared, so that service during one’s career can flow from wholeness rather than depletion, and life after service can be lived in response rather than reaction.

Why This Work Matters

Veterans, law enforcement, and first responders are trained to act without hesitation; follow orders, protect others, push through a crisis. This discipline saves lives, but it leaves little room for emotional processing, reflection, or repair.

Over time, unprocessed trauma can solidify into patterns and emerge as social isolation and numbing behaviors in those who carry this weight, cutting people off from the very families and the communities that they once served. The long effects of PTSD and complex PTSD are not only internal; they ripple outward—straining relationships, weakening connections, and fostering shame, regret, and disconnection.

Art and ritual offer another way. Art externalizes memory and emotion into images, symbols, and stories. Ritual can provide the context and the container where those images are acknowledged, shared, connected to meaning, and integrated in a group setting. Together, they offer opportunities for pause and repair; these tools are accessible both during service (to interrupt the silent accumulation of trauma) and after service (to rejoin life with greater presence).

This work matters because it addresses the whole arc of trauma: sustaining wholeness in the midst of service, and creating pathways for post-service life that are responsive rather than reactive.

Art and ritual help individuals move beyond isolation and numbing behaviors and habits, offering tools to reconnect with themselves, their families, their community, and civic life itself.

Grief, Moral Injury, and the Role of Ritual: A Formative Reflective Essay

This essay examines the limitations of medicalized frameworks like PTSD in addressing the deeper ruptures of grief and moral injury. While PTSD captures fear-based trauma, moral injury encompasses shame, guilt, and spiritual disorientation that fracture identity and meaning. Dennis Stevens explores how narrative therapy, ritual, and the sanctification of objects can help restore coherence and community. Drawing on thinkers such as Van Gennep, Eliade, Kohut, and Ricoeur, as well as religious traditions, the essay argues that healing emerges not through clinical treatment alone but through story, symbol, and shared ritual.

Gumroad

For Funders

Investing here means going beyond surface symptoms to address the deeper disconnection that undermines resilience. Art and ritual offer cost-effective, scalable, and evidence-based practices, but they are also profoundly human. They create spaces that traditional therapies often cannot, supporting those who serve and have served with new pathways for renewal. By interrupting entrenched patterns of isolation, this work helps veterans reconnect with themselves, other trustworthy and compassionate people, their families, and their communities.