The Difficult Return was an Australian Research Council Discovery-funded project that aimed to explore arts-based approaches to supporting mental health resilience of returning military personnel and their families. The research team consisted of arts, public health, and military researchers and enacted three different applied arts projects between 2011 and 2014 in Brisbane, Australia.1 The projects were focused on three areas: (1) awareness – online digital films; (2) motivation – the development of The Return, a research-based theatre piece featuring ex-servicemen and actors; and (3) action – The Veterans Transition Program, a psycho-educational program that used elements of role-play and enactment, in partnership with the University of British Columbia, Canada (Balfour, Westwood, & Buchanan, 2014). In this chapter we focus on The Return play, and how the writer-researcher used a variety of data sources (interviews, psychological research, policy documents, literature) to weave together an insightful text that aimed to capture the intimacy of living with posttraumatic stress (PTS) and its impact on relationships.