Showing Up: Why I'm Finally Telling the Whole Story

There are parts of my story I tell easily.

I enlisted in the Army at 18, in the aftermath of September 11. I served with XVIII Airborne Corps. I deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I became a mom.

I went back to school, more than once.

I earned a PhD studying community engagement. I built programs for veterans. I worked inside systems meant to serve them. I started organizations and businesses. I created spaces where people could gather, eat, celebrate, talk, and hopefully feel a little less alone.

Those are the easy parts.

They're the parts that fit neatly into a biography.

There are other parts I have spent years figuring out how to talk about.

I am a survivor of military sexual trauma.

I also know what it is like to build a life and a family with someone who would later be identified through an official process as a perpetrator of sexual abuse.

Those sentences are much harder to write.

For a long time, I've wrestled with what belongs to me to tell. What should remain private. What happens when telling your truth intersects with someone else's story. What my children may someday read. What people will think. Whether sharing something painful actually helps anyone or simply exposes wounds that have taken years to understand.

And, if I'm being completely transparent, I've wondered what happens when the woman who has spent years being capable, educated, accomplished, and useful finally says:

There were things that happened to me, too.

I've spent much of my professional life talking about community engagement.

At its core, community engagement is about something remarkably simple: people need to know that they matter.

They need to be heard.

They need to have some power in the decisions that affect their lives.

And they need places where telling the truth doesn't cost them their belonging.

I've believed those things professionally for years.

Living them personally has been much harder.

Trauma has a strange way of teaching you to compartmentalize. You learn which version of yourself belongs in which room.

Soldier here.

Mom there.

Researcher here.

Business owner there.

Advocate. Leader. Wife. Veteran. Survivor.

Keep moving. Keep achieving. Keep taking care of everyone else.

Don't make anyone uncomfortable.

And definitely don't let the hardest thing that's happened to you become the most interesting thing about you.

There is wisdom in that last part. I am not defined by trauma.

But I've begun to understand that refusing to be defined by something isn't the same as pretending it didn't shape you.

It shaped me.

So did the healing.

Veterans Day has always been complicated for me.

We are very good at celebrating the visible parts of military service.

The uniforms.

The deployments.

The flags.

The photographs.

The stories about sacrifice, courage, honor, and resilience.

Those things are real.

So are the stories that don't fit quite as comfortably into a Veterans Day ceremony.

Military sexual trauma is real.

Suicide is real.

Isolation after service is real.

Losing your sense of identity is real.

Trying to become a spouse, parent, employee, student, neighbor, or simply a person again after years of being a service member can be incredibly difficult.

And sometimes the people who look like they're doing just fine are carrying stories nobody knows.

I know because I've been one of them.

So this year, I don't want to wait until November 11 to talk about veterans.

I'm starting 72 days early.

Beginning September 1, I'm committing to run at least one mile every day until Veterans Day.

Seventy-two days.

At least seventy-two miles.

But this isn't really a running challenge.

The running is just how I'm choosing to show up.

For the next 72 days, I want to have conversations about what happens after service.

About military sexual trauma.

About suicide prevention.

About women veterans.

About belonging.

About marriage and motherhood after trauma.

About identity.

About purpose.

About the systems we've built to help people — and what happens when those systems fail them.

About community.

About healing.

And about the complicated truth that a person can experience terrible things and still build a beautiful, meaningful life.

I also want to hear from other people.

Veterans. Survivors. Spouses. Caregivers. Parents. Advocates. People who have lost someone. People who found their way back. People who are still finding it.

Because I don't want these 72 days to be 72 days of me talking.

I want them to become 72 days of us listening.

Along the way, I'll also be raising money to support organizations doing meaningful work within the veteran community.

And because apparently vulnerability alone wasn't enough of a challenge, I'm letting all of you determine how far I have to go.

Every day begins with one mile.

Your likes, comments, shares, and donations add distance to the next day's run.

So yes, you can quite literally make me regret having an engaged audience.

But underneath the miles and the social media challenge is something much more important.

I used to think I needed to have everything resolved before I could talk about it.

That healing meant eventually reaching a place where the story didn't hurt anymore.

I'm not sure I believe that now.

I think healing can look like being able to hold two truths at once.

Something hurt me.

And I am still here.

Someone failed me.

And other people showed up.

There are chapters I wish had never been written.

And there are chapters I wouldn't trade for anything.

My story contains trauma.

It also contains an extraordinary amount of love.

It contains war and motherhood and classrooms and courtrooms and businesses and research and friendships and faith and failure and laughter and starting over more times than I care to count.

It contains people who caused harm.

And it contains people who reminded me that there is still so much good in the world.

Maybe healing isn't turning all of that into a perfectly packaged story with a satisfying ending.

Maybe it's finally being willing to tell the truth about the whole thing.

That's what these next 72 days are about for me.

Not becoming the face of trauma.

Not speaking for every veteran.

Not pretending I have all the answers.

Just showing up.

One mile.

One story.

One conversation at a time.

And maybe somewhere along the way, someone will hear one of these stories and realize that theirs deserves to be heard, too.

Day One starts Today.

I'll see you out there.