On Being A Veteran

I served more than twenty years in the United States Army.

More than twenty years is a long time to know where you belong.

There was a uniform to put on. A mission to accomplish. People who depended on me. Even on the hardest days, there was a structure around my life that helped me understand my place in it.

Then I retired.

The Army had a date for the end of my service. Learning who I was beyond it took longer.

People see the retirement, the accomplishments, the rank. They see someone who served honorably and moved on. What they cannot always see is the person trying to figure out how to carry all of that into a life that no longer comes with orders.

How do you explain that you can be proud of your service and still grieve parts of it?

That you can be grateful to be home and still miss the people who understood you without needing the whole story?

That you can have decades of leadership experience and still find yourself asking, Where do I belong now?

Being a Veteran holds room for all of that.

I am proud of my service. I earned that pride. But I have also lived with depression, anxiety, migraines, and other things I am not ready to unpack right now. And that’s okay.

Being willing to tell my story does not mean I owe anyone every detail. Some things I am still processing. Some things I choose to keep private. My service is real, and so is what I carry, even when I do not have the words or the willingness to explain it all.

I have needed help. There have been times when the woman who knew how to lead others needed someone to help her find her own way forward.

Those truths belong in the same story.

We talk a lot about how strong Veterans are. Sometimes I wonder whether we leave enough room for them to be honest.

When someone is always described as strong, admitting they are struggling can feel like disappointing everyone who believes in them. So they show up. Handle business. Check on everybody else. Give the answer that ends the conversation.

“I’m good.”

And people believe them.

I want us to care enough to stay in the conversation a little longer.

I want us to understand that a Veteran can be successful and lonely. Surrounded by family and searching for connection. Laughing at the table while carrying something they do not yet know how to say.

You cannot measure someone’s peace by how well they perform.

As a woman Veteran, there is another ache: having to establish that the service being discussed was yours.

Women have served, led, deployed, sacrificed, and come home to find that the word “Veteran” still does not automatically bring our faces to mind.

There is something exhausting about being overlooked in a story you helped write.

We deserve to be recognized without having to recite our résumés. We deserve to tell the full truth about our service, including the pride, the friendships, the opportunities, the losses, and the experiences we are still making sense of.

And we deserve lives with room for more.

For a long time, so much of my identity was connected to what I could do for the mission and for other people. Retirement brought a question I could no longer keep pushing aside:

Who am I when nobody is assigning me a role?

I am still answering that through the life I am building.

Through community. Through conversation. Through creating spaces where women who served can hear their own experiences in someone else’s story and realize they have company.

That is part of why Shero Coffee Club matters so deeply to me. I know the value of being invited into a conversation where you do not have to prove that you belong. Where someone wants to know more than your branch and your years of service.

Where they ask who you are today.

“Thank you for your service” can be a meaningful beginning. I hope we become more willing to follow it with something personal.

How has life been since you got out?

What do you miss?

What are you excited about?

And then give the answer our time.

Because we are still here, building businesses, raising families, serving our neighbors, discovering new gifts, and sometimes beginning again when we thought we should already have everything figured out.

My service will always be part of me. I carry the pride of it, the cost of it, and the people who shaped it.

But I also have a life ahead of me that deserves my attention and my hope.

To the Veteran trying to find their place again: you do not have to arrive with a new title, a business plan, or a polished explanation of who you have become.

Come as you are.

If a Veteran came to mind while you were reading this, reach out today. Make the call. Send the message. Invite them for coffee. You do not need the perfect words. Start with, “I’ve been thinking about you. How are you, really?” Then make time to listen, and respect what they are ready to share.

And if you are that Veteran, you can reach out, too. You do not have to unpack your whole life to say, “I could use some company.”

You spent years answering when your country called.

You deserve someone who will answer when you do.