My six-year-old is home from surgery, and for the next few days, I’m the one managing his pain, his meals, his rest. The surgery still ran long, even after the team decided not to perform two of the procedures we’d prepared for.

My brain keeps reaching for something with real shape to it, a podcast episode, workshop content I’ve been needing to build. What I get instead is five or ten minutes at a time before he needs me again, just enough to start a thought and never enough to finish one.

I feel like a caged squirrel, certain there’s a deep project sitting right there and reduced instead to reactionary, mindless tasks. This has to be temporary, my brain tells me. I am not built to do this forever.

Three mornings in, my teenager woke up early and offered to watch his brother so I could go for a run.

I laced up shoes I hadn’t touched all week. My legs felt heavier than they should have for an easy pace, like the stillness of the week had settled into the muscle itself. A quarter mile in, my chest loosened in a way it hadn’t since the waiting room. My son still needed me. The book, the podcast, none of them had room to happen yet. But in the moments of my feet repeatedly hitting the pavement, something in my body recognized motion again, and for thirty minutes, I felt like myself again. It was glorious.

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Then they ask a follow up question that isn’t really about your job at all. Something like, “so who are you outside of that?” And you go quiet for a second longer than feels comfortable, because you genuinely don’t know how to answer without reaching for another title.

That pause is the tell. It means the answer to “who are you” got built entirely out of the answer to “what do you do,” and nobody noticed until someone else asked the second question out loud.

The Quake

My observation has been that men and women both build identity out of what we do. That part isn’t new. What differs is how it feels once the doing stops.

In the men I’ve watched go through it, this tends to show up in one place at a time. The job goes, and he goes quiet for a time because he doesn’t know who he is without the boots or the badge or the corner office. It’s visible. It has an obvious cause.

In the women I know, myself included, who’ve built a career out of rank, mission, or performance, the same pull runs underneath several roles at once, and it rarely announces itself as a single loss. It shows up as a low hum under everything: the performer, the leader, the one who’s always steady, the one who never asks for help.

Same root. Different texture, at least from where I sit.

What Andy Said

My guest on the show a few weeks back was Andy Stumpf, a former Navy SEAL, six years on SEAL Team Six, a guy who took a bullet on deployment and still went on to write a bestseller. I asked him to rank his own life in order. The teams went to the bottom of the page. Husband and father went to the top.

Near the end of that conversation I asked him what he’d tell a young man trying to figure out who he wants to be. His advice was to be patient. Then he said the line I haven’t stopped turning over since: “You are not what you used to do.”

That sentence works on a career. It works on a rank you no longer hold. It works on a version of yourself you’re grieving right now and haven’t said out loud to anyone.

The Terrain

Here’s where the wilderness comes in, because this isn’t a wound that closes. It’s terrain, and you learn to walk it instead of waiting to get through it.

A wildflower doesn’t grow because the ground was easy. It grows in disturbed soil, cracked pavement, land that just got cleared by fire. The bloom isn’t evidence that the terrain was gentle. It’s evidence that something took root anyway.

That’s not a metaphor I’m reaching for to make this feel better. It’s the actual shape of what happens when your title gets stripped away and you find out something in you is still standing.

You are not the mission you ran. You are not the last rank you held or the org chart you used to sit on. Those things mattered. They are not the whole terrain.

The Assignment

This week, somewhere quiet, write your life in order the way Andy did. Your chronological order, not your resume. What goes at the top if nothing you did for a paycheck, a rank, or a mission counts toward the score?

Sit with what comes up. You might find peace there. You also might find grief showing up, because you were too busy proving something to notice it was missing. Either answer is honest. Neither one needs fixing today.

Where This Leaves Us

I don’t have a clean resolution, and I’m not going to pretend I do. What I can tell you is that my page has room for more than one more line at the top. Yours does too.

I’d love to know where you landed. Hit reply and tell me what went to the top of your page.

Full conversation with Andy Stumpf is Episode 55 of Hardcore and At Ease, wherever you get your podcasts.

Pick up Andy's book, Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water, if this quote hit and you want the whole story behind it.

Keep Your Edge Without Going Over the Edge.

I served breakfast in the typical way, eggs for him, eggs for the kids. Then I sat down to eat mine and the phone rang, or a kid needed something, or the house needed something, and by the time I got back to my plate the eggs had gone cold and grey at the edges.

I ate them anyway.

This is not a story about breakfast. This is a story about what happens when the terrain stops giving a woman what she needs to bloom the way she was built to bloom.

I am a Sunflower. Consistency is my language. I show up, I hold the center, I make the eggs. That pattern works beautifully in terrain that reflects some of that reliability back. It falls apart in terrain that only takes.

When the support underneath me disappeared, I did not stop functioning. My Iris, my secondary bloom, hardened. I started making faster calls, cutting people off sooner, protecting the center by force instead of by warmth, because my own pattern had nothing left to give and the house still needed running.

I kept producing. The house still ran. The kids still ate. Whatever needed doing still got done, at a fraction of what I was capable of when I was rooted in my own pattern instead of borrowing someone else’s to get through the week.

You might even hate what you see when that other version shows up, the harder edges, the shorter patience, the woman who cuts a conversation off instead of sitting in it. The same discomfort runs in reverse. An Iris forced to borrow quiet and withdrawal under pressure would feel just as wrong to herself, just as unrecognizable in the mirror.

Neither direction is the villain here. The problem was never the pattern. It was the terrain that made her reach for one that was never hers to begin with.

That reaction does not mean something is wrong with you. It means you can still recognize your own roots even when you are struggling to feel them.

I’m going to show you how to spot the moment you’re running on a borrowed pattern instead of your own, the harder edges, the shorter patience, the calls you’re making faster and colder than you normally would. That will show you exactly what it’s costing you: the presence you used to offer without thinking twice, the conversations you used to let run their full course. So you can catch it early, before a few hard weeks of hardening turns into six months of not recognizing yourself at your own table.

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My husband and I were an hour into the surgery block, sitting in the waiting room, when the surgeon walked out early. We recognized her right away because she was the same doctor who’d sat with us before they put our six-year-old under. English was her second language and she did a great job fast-talking us through every risk and every benefit until we understood exactly what we were agreeing to.

Standing in front of us now, she told us they weren’t doing as much as planned. The team elected not to perform the two procedures we’d prepared for. They’d watched his breathing while he was under and found the obstructions weren’t what anyone expected. They decided to pull back instead of push through.

Relief and whiplash arrived in the same breath.

Have you ever braced for the hardest version of something, only to have to recalibrate in real time when it doesn’t come?

The surgery still ran three hours. He still needs a few days where someone is managing pain, meals, and rest, and that someone is me. Right now he’s on the couch, watching something on the screen, playing quietly with whatever’s within reach. I’m circling the house with a laundry basket, wondering what I’m supposed to do with myself.

My husband is at work right now, running his shift as a first responder, and I’m jealous of him in a way that surprised me until I understood where it was coming from. My life has never really settled into one place. It’s been built on mission tempo, one shift to the next, movement as the default setting for as long as I can remember. What’s hard right now isn’t just being the one who stays home. It’s sitting inside a transition point where I can’t see the next step clearly yet. He gets to walk out the door toward a mission he can name. I’m standing in my own hallway, and the mission is blurry.

If this caretaking season is where you're standing right now, I wrote about the terrain underneath it here: The Caretaking Wilderness.

You don’t need a spouse on shift or a child on the couch to know this pull. Maybe your version is a parent who needs you, or a job that requires you to hold the line while your own momentum stalls, or a season where the next mission hasn’t named itself yet.

Whatever shape it takes for you, the question underneath it is the same one I’m sitting with:

This isn’t a task management problem. It’s a purpose problem, and purpose problems don’t resolve the same way.

When do you focus?

When do you shift?

What do you even call the space in between when neither one is fully true yet?

In Formula 1 racing, “box, box, box” is the radio call that means it’s time to come in. Fresh tires. A reset. So you’re ready for the next stretch of the race.

Racing → Pit stop → Racing

Going into the box was never the problem. Staying there without deciding to is.

Racing → Pit stop → Garage

See the difference?

Similar to a pit stop, being “at ease” is supposed to be a state of having relaxed, sustained attention. One foot planted toward what matters, even when you can’t move toward it yet.

Hardcore → Being At Ease → Hardcore

That’s different from switching yourself off and calling it rest. Rest with no direction underneath it starts to feel like disappearing.

Hardcore → Being At Ease → Rest

See the difference?

So the shift isn’t forcing myself back onto the track before it’s my turn to leave. It’s naming the season for what it is. Laundry and food prep and sitting with a kid who needs his mom in the room, that’s not a break from the mission… it’s a pit stop.

For these few days, this pit stop is required for me to continue on my mission of being Hardcore (which at this phase of my life is the goal of getting my book published). I anticipate heading back onto the track come Tuesday. But for now, whether I like it or not, this pit stop is required.

Now, what happens if my son’s recovery goes longer than anticipated, or complications arise? Well, at that point, it might become the mission (the thing I have to be hardcore focused on) - but we’re not there yet, so my mindset shouldn’t be there either.

That’s called anxiety.

My teenager just woke up and offered to watch his brother for thirty minutes so I can get a run in. Thirty minutes isn’t the thirty mile hike my soul is crying for, but it’s enough to remind my body what motion feels like, and it will let me walk back into this duty day feeling more like myself.

I have to let these small steps in the pit stop count. Self care needs to be happening in all phases of life - yes, when you’re hardcore on mission, running your race… yes, when you’re in a pit stop, getting things ready again… yes, even when you’re at rest, recalibrating what’s to come.

If I were to give up intentional self care, I would be standing still through the whole season instead of moving through it. So I’m taking the run. I’m coming back. And I’m choosing to stay in the box on purpose, for as long as this recovery needs me here, because showing up consistently for the space my mind keeps rejecting is its own kind of discipline.

If you’re in your own version of this right now, you might not have the language for it either. That’s alright. Naming the season honestly is further than most people get.

This Tuesday marks one year of my video podcast, Hardcore and At Ease; fifty-five episodes, no gaps. Episode 56 is where I finally say some of what I’ve been circling for a year, including this. If you’ve ever done the smallest version of yourself in a room while your mind ran laps somewhere else, that episode is for you too.

[LISTEN TUESDAY]

So the next time you notice yourself being at ease, picture the pit stop too. Watch for the reason you pulled in. Then time how long you stay. The box only works if you know why you're in it and how long this season calls for it.

Then make the call; are you heading back into the race, or pulling into the garage?

Frame the Terrain. Name Your Flower. Nourish Your Flourish.

She was already nervous about delivering brand new material to a room full of strangers, and now the one piece of her brother’s funeral she couldn’t control was still up in the air. She let herself panic for a minute. Then her daughter talked her down. The Navy’s honor guard called back to confirm 15 minutes before Michele walked on stage, and she gave the talk carrying the whole week with her.

Here’s why you stayed with that story:

A cemetery call means nothing to you on its own. What kept you reading was the clock running (90 minutes, then 15), one real question left open until the last line (would the flag get confirmed in time), and a detail you could picture, the phone ringing before she’d even loaded her slides. Pull any one of those pieces out and the same story goes flat.

That’s craft, not luck and not oversharing.

Someone chose that detail on purpose and shaped it until it landed exactly the way it just did on you.

During a recent leadership meeting, Michele told that story to our team with that same craft.

She chose to keep the fear, the phone call, her daughter steadying her, those 15 minutes of not knowing whether it would come together in time, and she shaped each piece instead of rambling through it. She didn’t give us a vague, safe summary, the one where a woman veteran walks into a room, delivers something excellent, and everyone claps politely and moves on. She gave us the real week, chosen and shaped with care.

That’s a version of success worth naming. Michele also didn’t walk on that stage and recite trauma statistics off a slide. She delivered her material with that same discipline, choosing the real stakes on purpose and shaping them carefully instead of smoothing them into something safe and forgettable. As a result, three women who had never set foot in a women’s conference in their lives walked up to her afterward wanting more of what they had just heard.

Most of us do the opposite. We round ourselves down before anyone even asks us to.

I’m going to show you why the safe, composed version of your story is the one nobody remembers. Then I’ll show you what to do instead, so the next time you open your mouth, whoever is listening leans in instead of quietly checking out.

The Permission Reflex

You picked up this reflex long before you ever put on a uniform, and formation sharpened it into something automatic. You present the mission. You present the outcome. You leave the mess out of it, because that’s what gets a briefing done well.

That instinct is a real skill, and if you’re still in uniform or still reporting to a supervisor, it’s probably one of the reasons they value you. It works beautifully when your job is to deliver information.

However, it starts working against you when it becomes the only way you know how to let someone know you, off the clock, in the relationships where being known is the purpose of the relationship.

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I looked at it and didn’t feel the need to fix it right then. I felt something closer to peace, which surprised me, because that’s rarely how it goes. Peace in the middle of chaos is a skill I’ve had to learn on purpose. It doesn’t mean I agree with the mess or the exhaustion or the three days I was gone… it means I get to choose ease inside a situation without needing the situation to change first.

This week, plenty of women came home to some version of that. Back from the trip, the gathering, the three days of giving everything to a house full of people or a job that needed you fully present. Now the house is quiet, the mess is still there, and you’re standing in the middle of it.

Here’s what the culture around you says about that moment. One version tells you to keep posting the highlight reel: smiling photos, gratitude captions, the celebration stretching into the week after like it never ended. The other version tells you something is wrong with you, that you overdid it, that you should have paced yourself better, that you need firmer boundaries next time.

Neither one names what’s true.

Effort costs something. It always has. Every hour spent standing instead of sitting, saying yes instead of resting, showing up fully for three days instead of one, carried a price. That price comes due the morning after, whether you were away hosting a national holiday gathering or a three-day work trip in the middle of an ordinary week. Size doesn’t determine the cost. Effort does.

I run on routine. Most nights I’m in bed by 8:30 p.m. It wasn’t always this way, but with three kids in the house, it’s what I need to refuel. During those three days away, I wasn’t getting to bed until midnight (sometimes one in the morning), up again at six each day to get things ready. Three nights like that stack up fast, and I knew it would take it’s toll back in the planning stage, so I kept my first day back clear.

You see, recovery isn’t the opposite of the work. It’s part of it, even though nobody puts that on the itinerary.

The mess sat there while the quiet took over the house, and somewhere in that quiet my body started collecting on the debt three hard days had created. I refuse to view it as weakness catching up to me; It’s the second half of the same three days, the half nobody sees because it happens after everyone else has already moved on.

A woman standing alone in a messy kitchen, tired, isn’t a woman who couldn’t hack it. She’s a woman paying an honest debt.

Just as the mess looks different for every woman, what recovery looks like differs for every woman, also.

For one it’s silence. For another it’s someone who’ll just listen while she talks it through. Perhaps it’s a long walk, or the same bedtime for a week straight with no “staying up just this once to catch up on something else”. In my case, it’s a 2 mile jog.

These actions aren’t indulgence. They’re maintenance- because you’re built a certain way, and giving yourself what you need is how you stay in bloom.

Peace in the middle of the mess didn’t come naturally to me. I learned it. I still don’t have to agree with how those three days wore me down to be at ease standing in the aftermath of them. This isn’t resignation. This is knowing my own terrain well enough to read it accurately, and choose peace inside it instead of waiting for the mess to clear first.

This quiet landed the week of the Fourth of July, 250 years since this country declared its independence.

For a woman veteran, that timing carries weight most people will scroll right past. Generations of women served and came home to houses that still needed running, jobs that still needed showing up for, kids that still needed raising, with no room built in anywhere to just be tired. Rest wasn’t always available to them. Choosing it wasn’t always safe.

No one has to grant you permission. You’re the one deciding, right now, what this morning is going to be. That’s 250 years of women who served, building toward a day when the woman standing in the mess gets to choose to put the mission down for an afternoon and rest.

If you came home this week, or hosted, or gave your whole self to something important, recognize that right now, you’re in the part that comes after the giving. It deserves as much respect as the part everyone else saw.

Knowing what recovery looks like for you specifically changes how you move through the whole year, not just the week after a trip or a holiday.

The mess will still be there either way. So today, whatever your surroundings look like: will you choose to be at ease in the middle of it, before it’s cleaned up? Or will you wait for permission that was never anyone else’s to give?

Like what you read? Let’s do life together! Keep the conversation going in our online community, the Others Over Self® Society. Connect now at join.othersoverself.com

And maybe you haven’t looked that closely at yourself in years.

This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a direction problem.

You point the skill outward again and again: at the mission, the team, the threat. You almost never point it at yourself. You didn’t forget that you’re needs are in there somewhere, but we prefer to focus on the competence we’ve earned. Looking that closely at ourselves feels like the one assignment we were never trained for.

I sat across from a woman who spent her career doing exactly this professionally. Daina Durham (pronounced “die-na”) went into the Military Police Corps and came out a CID special agent. Her job was investigation: procurement fraud, death, murder, anything at the felony level touching the military. She was the only female agent in an office of about twenty guys, and she learned to read a room the way most of us read a weather forecast: Who’s lying. What’s underneath the story. What doesn’t add up.

She built a career on investigating other people. And when I asked her what took her the longest to face, she didn’t point to a case. She pointed to herself.

Here’s what happened when she finally turned that same skill on her own life, and why the honest look you’re avoiding might be the only thing standing between you and the life you truly want.

I’m going to show you how to take a deep look at what you’ve been avoiding in yourself, before a crisis forces it into view, so you can stop bracing against your own life and start living it.

Naming the Wilderness

Call this one the Unopened File, a phrase borrowed from Daina’s own career. It names the wilderness of knowing exactly how to read everyone else while leaving your own patterns, wounds, and needs unexamined.

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Last night I watched WarGames. 1983 film, Cold War backdrop, a military supercomputer designed to simulate nuclear war ends up nearly launching the real thing because it couldn’t tell the difference between the game and the stakes. It runs every possible scenario. Concludes that no one wins. And then offers: How about a nice game of chess?

The line the film ends on: Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

This morning I opened Claude and got to work (ironic?).

The people who made that film were afraid of what a machine that learns while being taught would do to us. I’m one of the people rooting for it, eyes open, and here’s why.

Think about what it used to cost to find good information. Hours in research. Days, sometimes. Entire teams combing through sources, verifying what you thought you knew, hunting for the right framework to build the right argument. The information existed. Getting to it was the tax.

Now, you can access that same quality of information in minutes. Minutes! Credible, layered, nuanced. You can question it, push back on it, redirect it the moment your thinking shifts. What used to consume your morning now takes only ten minutes.

What you got back is time.

Time is the only thing that doesn’t come back. Money you can rebuild. Energy you can restore. Time moves one direction and it doesn’t pause while you figure out what to do with it.

So the question worth asking is: what are you doing with the hours you’re getting back?

We don’t know. The machine returned something precious and most of us aren’t sure what to do when we’re holding it.

As a podcast host, I have the honor of interviewing highly accomplished people. And most of the people I know who look (from the outside) like they’ve figured it out, have a version of the same gap.

You can see it when you’re in conversation with them long enough. They built things. They led things. They sacrificed for decades and have the results to show for it. Their lives, if you wrote them down (and many do in the form of a book), read like success.

And somewhere underneath all of it, a third level still unfinished.

It’s not that they never asked the spiritual question (most people have touched it at some point), but touching it isn’t the same as sitting with it… and sitting with it isn’t the same as doing the work. Some people are scared of what they’ll find if they look too closely.

Spiritual work is, in fact, terrifying. So some go just deep enough to feel like they’ve handled it and move on. And some, like me, spend decades circling it before it’s finally revealed.

Spirituality isn’t a box you check. It requires you to take apart what you believe, examine it, and rebuild it. Then do it again. With everyone watching and judging.

Maybe this is you? Mind sharp, body capable, record full, and the third level still asking to be taken seriously.

You need all three levels: mind, body, spirit. And momentum is not the same thing as a foundation. When the business of life and entertainment stops, whatever is underneath it has been waiting there the whole time.

What Order are Your Levels?

The order people find the levels in varies. Some people arrive at the body last, after the mind has done everything it can do. Some people find the spirit question early and carry it into everything that follows. Some people save it for the final level, getting to the end of a full life and finding themselves asking the question they didn’t have room for earlier.

That’s not a failure. But it is information.

Mine didn’t follow a sequence I planned. The body level came first, and then I moved into the mind level, and something I didn’t see coming redirected me. I fell into a loophole in the game, and it moved me to the spirit level before I had finished the second. I wasn’t allowed to return to the mind level until the spiritual one was complete.

You see, it held my mind captive, and I wasn’t able to concentrate on, or even consider, anything else. There was no recreation: I was on a mission and every book, article, movie - any and every form of knowledge or entertainment I consumed revolved around the idea of spirituality in some way.

And then at one point (I’m not sure exactly when) I recognized that I had gained a sense of understanding and peace amongst chaos that I had never had before. It was like the world finally made sense.

I didn’t design my order of the levels. It was handed to me, and I’m grateful for it in ways I couldn’t have articulated while I was in it.

That’s my path. Yours may look nothing like it, or it may look exactly like it.

My dad is in his final years.

Last week my company hosted a wellness retreat. At the end, everyone in the room answered one question aloud: What question will you carry with you past today?

His answer: “What drives all of you to serve others with your lives?”

I’ve been replaying that question. A room full of accomplished people, all the directions a question could go, and that’s the one that surfaced for him. Asked openly, to people he’d known for less than a week.

His order might be body, mind, spirit. And he’s in the third level now. Asking the question the first two levels couldn’t answer.

I get to walk this alongside him on his spiritual journey.

I’ll make one more observation here. I interviewed a SEAL who said that he was jealous of people who have strong spiritual beliefs, and that he wished he had them himself. I’ve heard my dad say this exact same thing.

Pushing off the spiritual level doesn’t make it disappear.

The machine in WarGames ran every possible scenario and concluded that no one wins. So it offered the one thing left: a nice game of chess. Something human. Something that requires a person on the other side of the board.

The photo attached to this post is my dad and my son playing chess.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence; I think it’s the answer the machine already knew. What the simulation couldn’t account for was the kid who walked away from the military terminal with the people who mattered to him. That decision didn’t fit in the model.

You’re getting time back, and the machine is good at the things that used to consume your hours. Let it do that work.

When you get the hours back, who is sitting across from you… and what does their spirit say to yours?

Mission Wildflower 🌻 publishes free every Sunday. If someone sent you this, you can subscribe at the link below.

The bonds were real. They were. But they were mission bonds. Built around shared terrain, shared stakes, shared rules of engagement. When the mission ended, something in the architecture of those relationships ended with it.

She did not lose her people. She lost the context that held them.

This is not a story about ingratitude or failure. It is terrain. Out of uniform, the network you built around mission does not automatically transfer to the life you are building now. The people who knew exactly what you were carrying in service often cannot see what you are carrying now. And the people who can see you now often don’t have the context to know what they are looking at.

What women veterans are rarely taught, in any of the programs or transitions or reintegration courses, is how to audit their relationships the same way they’d audit any other resource. Who is equipped for this terrain? Who has what I need for where I’m going? Who am I holding onto because the relationship was real, even when it no longer reaches?

You were trained to build cohesion around a mission. Nobody trained you to build it around yourself.

You know who you are. It’s time you had the space to live it.

I know what it feels like to be buried under someone else’s version of you. To give and give inside relationships where you are always the anchor and never the one being held. To look around at a full life and feel something close to alone. That feeling is not a character flaw. It is information. It is telling you something about the terrain of your relationships and which types are missing.

I’m going to show you how to map the eight types of relationships that carry you, in any terrain, so you can stop wondering why you feel lonely even when you’re surrounded by people, and start building a roster that will move with you. By the end of this post, you will have a framework to see the gaps in your network clearly, name the people who belong on your active roster, and identify the one relationship type you are most likely missing.

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Laverne runs a grief therapy practice, and this is what the work does this to you when you’re trained to serve. Every need in front of you becomes your responsibility, and Laverne was feeling it emotionally. We all know the weight that comes when we’ve said yes to everything and there’s no space left to breathe.

I asked her what moment allowed her to shift.

She paused. Then: “I was not understanding that even in business, you can say no to certain things.”

That’s when something unlocked in her. Just saying it out loud. Permission. She didn’t realize she was allowed to draw a line.

The Pattern I Keep Seeing

Laverne had built something real. A therapy practice. Grief yoga. A mobile wellness van that brings her practice to people who can’t come to her. She’d done all of it starting during a pandemic with no safety net.

She had clients calling specifically for her. Hundreds of people knew what she solved, and she had revenue coming in consistently.

And yet… she couldn’t see any of it as capital. It was survival work to her. Just doing what needed to be done.

This is what I notice everywhere: Women building incredible things, thinking that they aren’t.

Women who are resourcing their own work from almost nothing, but don’t give themselves credit for it. Women who are known in their fields, yet battle with themselves to accept that knowing as being valuable to the world.

As women veterans, we often take all the right steps. We just need someone to ask the right question to help us see what we’re already carrying.

Four Types of Capital

Today’s post is to introduce you to something called the Four Capitals. I read about it in Eddie Yoon and Christopher Lochhead’s book Creator Capitalist, and something clicked for me about what women veterans are holding.

In fact, I felt so strongly about this connection that I sought out permission from the authors themselves to be able to teach their writings in my own voice, specific to the unique needs and mindset of women with military experience (permission was granted with a giant HECK YES! They love us).

Here’s what Eddie and Christopher name:

Intellectual Capital. The thinking you’ve developed. What you see that others miss.

Laverne understood something most grief therapists don’t. She didn’t just see grief as loss of a person. She saw it as loss of every role that person held for you. The job they helped you keep. The identity they were part of. The income they represented. Build a practice on that kind of thinking, and you have something nobody else is offering.

Financial Capital. The runway you have to make exponential impact. The breathing room between what goes out and what comes in. Freedom to choose.

Laverne didn’t have venture funding. She didn’t have a trust fund. She launched this practice during a global pandemic. And she still found a way. That’s resourcefulness. That’s capital.

Reputation Capital. Being known for what you solve. Not your title. What you’ve actually fixed, and why it mattered.

People don’t search for “grief therapist” and land on someone else. They search for Laverne. Because everyone who’s been to her knows: she understands. That knowing travels. That’s reputation capital.

Relationship Capital. The people who see the bigger picture with you. Who help you understand that saying no isn’t selfish. It’s strategic.

Laverne has family. She has faith. She has colleagues. When she finally asked the right question, they were there to validate it. They told her that protecting her capacity meant she could show up better for the people who truly needed her.

Here’s What Changes

Not every woman is building a business like Laverne.

But every woman veteran has some version of these four capitals. And here’s what matters: the strength of any one capital is rarely equal to the other three.

Laverne had fierce intellectual capital. Strong reputation capital. Those were built. But she was thin on recognizing her relationship capital. She didn’t have people around her giving her permission to say no. And she wasn’t tending her financial capital strategically. She was just letting it happen.

Your Wildflower type, the way you move through terrain, shapes how you build each one of these. A Sunflower builds intellectual capital through conversation, thinking out loud, processing externally. A Lily builds it in solitude, in reflection, in the work nobody sees. A Daisy’s relationship capital looks completely different than a Violet’s. A Primrose builds financial capital one way. A Goldenrod another. None of that is wrong. That’s precision.

Confidence shifts when you can see your portfolio clearly. You know what you’ve got. You know where you’re thin. You know what you need to tend. That’s the real confidence. The kind that comes from knowing exactly what you’re tending and where you need to grow.

Laverne stopped operating from scarcity the moment she could see her whole picture. She wasn’t scrambling anymore. She was strategic. She could say no because she knew exactly what she was protecting.

The Garden Question

Outside our children’s school is a wildflower garden bed. Someone tends it. You see people working in it regularly. The flowers are alive. They’re being cared for.

But when you back up and view it from the road, it just looks like a mess.

The issue isn’t the flowers themselves. It isn’t the care. It’s the arrangement.

The best gardens understand that different blooms have different seasons. They’re planted accordingly. Heights matter. Placements matter. A gardener who understands her garden knows that a tall flower in front blocks the short ones behind. She knows that crowding creates competition instead of beauty. She knows that space and strategy matter as much as the seeds.

That’s the work. Not just tending, but creating the design.

So when you back up and consider your four capitals (intellectual, financial, reputation, relationship), do you see a well-designed garden? Or a mess?

What’s Coming

Over the next few weeks, we’re going deep on each capital. You’ll learn how to see it, how your Wildflower shapes how you cultivate it, and how to tend it when the terrain gets hostile.

I’m teaching this to a government client this week. Different context. Different terrain. But here’s what I’m learning: the framework holds. The application is what gets refined. And the deepest refinement, the one built specifically for women veteran terrain, is what you’re getting here.

Because the terrain matters. A woman veteran’s capital portfolio isn’t built the same way anyone else’s is. The way you were formed created different assets. Different blind spots. Different opportunities.

Laverne’s transformation wasn’t about becoming someone new. It was about seeing what she’d already built, and then choosing to tend what wasn’t blooming yet.

You already know how to build capital. You just might not see it as capital yet.

What would shift if you could see your whole portfolio clearly? Which capitals are strong, which are thin, and which do you want to grow?

Next week: Relationship Capital. How your Wildflower shapes what you see.

The Wildflower assessment is available HERE (paid Substack subscribers access it free).

Laverne’s full interview is Episode 8 of Hardcore and At Ease - powered by Others Over Self®

So I did. And eventually, I couldn’t even recognize myself.

In this chapter, you're going to learn that borrowing isn't betraying yourself, so that you can stop pretending to be someone you're not, and start accessing bloom sustainability.

Friday at 5pm, I left the TV station in South Carolina and drove. Seven hours through the dark. I timed the gas stops so I didn’t miss the only station open after midnight in the remote stretch. I arrived at a hotel near Fort Benning around midnight and slept until 4am.

An hour later, I reported to my Army unit for physical training. I ran the four mile course, performing as the top female athlete. The day moved through constant meetings, and my section managed the work the unit needed. I did it well, because that’s what I do.

I ate lunch in my office to save time. A male coworker, same rank, aloof in a way I didn’t respect and someone I would never want to be like, stopped by my desk. He’d watched me all morning. “You look like you don’t want to be here,” he said.

He was right. I didn’t want to be here.

But I worked the rest of Saturday anyway. And Sunday too. Same rhythm. Same performance. After final formation on Sunday afternoon, I jumped back in the car to drive seven hours back to South Carolina.

Two hours in, a tire blew in Georgia. The middle of nowhere, and nothing was open, so I got a hotel room and waited for Monday morning.

By noon, my tire was replaced and I drove straight to the TV station, hoping to make it by deadline. My team needed me there, because the 5pm news aired whether I made it or not, and we were already down a camera operator.

I was running on no sleep, no margin, no options. The drive and the work. The next drive and the work after that. Cycle after cycle after cycle.

A Sunflower. An Iris. We moved. We executed. We rarely slowed down, and we definitely didn’t stop.

What I didn’t know then, eating lunch at my desk, was that there was a question I could have asked.

The questions I did live with were different. Should I leave? Could I sustain this? Those were the questions I recycled constantly (the answers always being no, and no). But there was a better question underneath them:

This seemingly unsustainable yet inescapable situation - what would make this better?

I first time I saw this question, I was researching ways to get my 5 year old to eat his chicken. It was a clean protein source that his doctor required, and he refused to eat it.

Read more

It’s hot out.

And if you're anything like me, when temperatures climb, your appetite sometimes drops. Heavy meals don't sound appealing, and standing over a hot stove definitely isn't on the list of things I want to do.

The problem is that even if we're not as hungry, our bodies still need fuel. We still need protein to support muscle, recovery, energy, and all the things we're trying to accomplish throughout the week.

Sometimes that protein comes from grilled chicken or shrimp. Sometimes it comes from a protein shake because chewing through another piece of meat when it's 90 degrees outside just isn't happening.

That's why I love recipes like this Watermelon Feta Summer Salad. It's cold, refreshing, packed with flavor, and comes together in just a few minutes. It feels like summer, and if you're bringing something to a Flag Day cookout or gathering this week, it looks like you put way more effort in than you actually did. Pair it with a quality protein source, and you've got a complete meal that works when the heat makes everything else feel like too much.

Why This Recipe Works

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that nutrition doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective.

Many of us spend a lot of time looking for the perfect meal plan, the perfect recipe, or the perfect strategy. But often, consistency comes from finding simple meals that fit your life and that you genuinely enjoy eating.

Summer can make that a little more challenging. The heat often changes our appetite, and meals that sound great in January don’t always sound appealing in July.

This salad is one of my favorite solutions. The sweetness of the watermelon, the saltiness of the feta, the brightness of the lemon, and the freshness of the mint make it feel light and refreshing while still helping you build a balanced meal.

It’s quick enough for a weekday lunch, easy enough to bring to a cookout, and simple enough that you can throw it together without a recipe once you’ve made it a few times.

To Make It a Higher-Protein Meal

Pair this salad with one of the following:

• 4–6 oz grilled chicken breast

• Grilled shrimp

• Rotisserie chicken

• Grilled salmon

• A protein shake on the side if you’re not feeling like eating meat on a hot day

Lately, I’ve been loving the Phormula-1 Clear in Rainbow Sherbet. It’s light, refreshing, and doesn’t feel heavy the way some protein shakes can during the summer months.

Optional Add-Ins

Want to switch it up? Try adding:

• Cucumber for extra crunch

• Blueberries for more sweetness and a pop of color

• Arugula for a peppery bite

• Pistachios for texture contrast

• Red onion for sharpness

One Final Thought

The best meals aren’t always the most complicated ones.

Sometimes they’re the simple recipes you can pull together in five minutes that help you stay consistent with your goals without feeling like you’re “on a diet.”

This salad has become one of my summer staples because it’s refreshing, easy, and adaptable. Pair it with your favorite protein source, enjoy it outside if you can, and keep things simple.

If you're looking for more free meal ideas, recipes, and nutrition tips, head over to the Fit In The Mitt Facebook page. I’m a fellow women veteran, and I'd love to have you there as we do live together. 💙

You see the posts coming. Women in uniform. June 12 (Women Veterans Recognition Day) arriving early. And you feel two things happening at once.

Some of you are bristling. It’s another women’s thing, another reason to fragment the veteran community. You didn’t come home wanting to be separated into a category. You came home wanting to be a veteran, full stop. So the day feels divisive, like someone is drawing a line you didn’t ask for. Like the military didn’t already do enough separating.

Others are lighting up. Finally. Someone is looking. Finally your service gets to be seen. You’re already thinking about what you’ll post, what story you’ll tell, how this might be the day someone acknowledges what you gave. After years of explaining what you really did while people assumed something else.

Both of those reactions may be in your body right now, and both make sense. And… I need you to know that both are also missing something real.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to hold June 12 without choosing between those two camps, so that you can find reverence in the middle instead of reactivity on either side. Because that’s the difference between holding it shallow and holding it deep.

BONUS: I’m also giving you a few ways to say it on June 12, so you can post the threshold instead of your reaction to it (copy / paste these snippets into your feed!).

THE ISSUE

Here’s the thing first: Women Veterans Recognition Day should be recognized. You should feel seen. The women who came before you deserve to be celebrated. I’m not going to tell you to stay small or quiet about that.

June 12 commemorates 1948, the date President Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. Before that, women could serve, but only until the war ended. You were essential when needed and sent home when you weren’t. The moment peace came, your permission ended. Which is one way to say: the military wanted you when they had a job, and wanted you gone when they didn’t.

Read more

One of the things nobody warned me about when I became a mom was just how much time I would spend thinking about food.

Not fancy meals. Not holiday dinners.

Snacks.

The never-ending parade of snacks.

Especially in the summer.

The kids sleep a little later, stay outside a little longer, and somehow seem to be hungry all day long. I swear there are days when I finish cleaning up breakfast, and someone is already asking what’s available for a snack.

Keep reading to learn my favorite strategy for healthy summer snack time.

As a nutrition coach, I know how important it is to fuel growing bodies. As a mom, I also know that real life doesn’t always look like perfectly portioned containers and colorful Pinterest lunch boards.

And as a veteran, I’ve learned that structure is often what makes the difference between good intentions and consistent action.

The military gave us structure for everything. We knew when we were going to train. We knew when we were going to eat. We knew what was expected of us physically.

Then we transitioned out.

Suddenly, nobody was responsible for our fitness but us.

Nobody was making sure we drank enough water.

Nobody was telling us to prioritize our health.

For many women veterans, that’s one of the hardest adjustments. Not because we don’t know what to do, but because life gets loud. Careers, families, volunteer commitments, appointments, sports schedules, household responsibilities—they all compete for our attention.

Before long, our own health starts sliding further down the list.

And the interesting thing is that our kids notice.

They notice whether Mom eats breakfast.

They notice whether Mom grabs a protein-packed snack or skips lunch altogether.

They notice whether movement is something we make time for or something we constantly put off until tomorrow.

Long before they’re listening to our advice, they’re watching our example. That’s one of the reasons I care so much about simple nutrition. Every snack doesn’t have to be perfect; small, consistent habits often become the foundation for bigger ones.

When it comes to snacks, I try to keep one simple principle in mind: every snack is an opportunity to add nutrition, not create stress. That means I don’t worry about making everything Instagram-worthy. I focus on combinations that help keep kids satisfied and energized.

One of my favorite strategies is pairing at least two of three key nutrients: protein, fiber, and healthy fats.

Protein helps keep kids full and focused. Fiber supports digestion and steady energy. Healthy fats help support brain development and provide lasting fuel. When you combine two or more of those nutrients, snacks tend to keep kids satisfied much longer than foods that are mostly sugar or processed carbohydrates alone.

That’s why some of our family favorites are simple things like apple slices with peanut butter, cheese and whole grain crackers, Greek yogurt with berries, veggies and hummus, or fruit paired with a source of protein. Nothing complicated. Nothing expensive. Just real food that works.

What I’ve learned over the years is that healthy eating becomes much easier when we stop relying on motivation and start creating systems.

Veterans are actually pretty good at systems:

We understand preparation.

We understand planning ahead.

We understand that success usually happens before the mission begins.

…and the same principle applies in our kitchens.

Twenty minutes on a Sunday afternoon can completely change the flow of the week. Washing fruit, chopping vegetables, hard-boiling eggs, portioning snacks, and freezing bananas for smoothies might not seem like much in the moment, but those small actions create options when life gets busy.

When healthy choices are visible and convenient, they’re more likely to happen.

And that’s true for us as adults, too.

One thing I encourage women veterans to remember is that feeding your family well and taking care of your own health are not competing priorities - they support one another.

When your kids see you drinking water throughout the day, they’re more likely to do the same. When they see you eating balanced meals instead of surviving on leftovers from their plates, they learn that taking care of your body matters. When they see you making time for movement, they begin to understand that fitness isn’t punishment—it’s part of living well.

Those lessons are far more powerful than any nutrition lecture we could ever give.

At the end of the day, this isn’t really about fruit skewers, yogurt parfaits, or whether your vegetables are cut into fun shapes. It’s about creating a home where health feels normal.

It’s about teaching our children that food is fuel, not something to fear.

It’s about showing them that strong women take care of themselves not to chase perfection, but to help all understand that our health matters too.

And maybe that’s one of the most important examples we can set.

Free Resource: Healthy Summer Snacks for Kids

To help make summer a little easier, I’ve put together a free Healthy Summer Snacks for Kids Guide filled with simple snack ideas, hydration tips, portion guidance, and easy prep strategies that you can start using right away. Whether you have toddlers, school-age kids, tweens, or teens, there’s something inside for every stage.

Want More Support?

If you’re looking for realistic fitness and nutrition guidance designed for women veterans, moms, and busy women trying to take care of themselves while taking care of everyone else, come join us in the Fit In The Mitt Facebook Group.

Every week, I share free tips on fitness, nutrition, healthy habits, meal ideas, and practical ways to make healthy living fit into real life.

I’d love to have you there.

Then: “You’re gonna make me cry now.”

She’s a Hollyhock with a Lily running close behind. When Shelly walked her through what that combination means (the burst of full engagement followed by a genuine need to disappear and recover), Kim said yes immediately. “I go in full force, and then I’m like, oh gosh, I feel tired. Why do I feel tired? I should be able to keep going.”

The guide for Lily says that when the Lily goes dark during recovery, it can feel like self-abandonment. Kim recognized it before the sentence finished.

Other assessments let her identify herself. This one reminded her of who she is. She said it exactly that way, and the data from the first 215 completed assessments shows why the difference matters (read about the Wildflower Personality Assessment for Women Veterans™).

One in three women in this dataset was called aggressive for being direct.

One in three was called cold for needing space.

The terrain had a word for her. It just wasn’t the right one.

Two things came out of this data that belong together. The blend finding is what your result is made of. The misread data shows you what the terrain has been calling you instead. Together they give you language precise enough to stop carrying other people’s mislabeling as your own self-definition.

The Blend Is the Map

A blend is scored when the top two flowers land within 15 percentage points of each other. Two patterns that close aren’t a tiebreaker. They’re two parts of the same operating system running simultaneously.

Sixty-nine percent of the women who completed this assessment are blends.

Read more

700 women had just gathered in 17 locations across the country. Melissa Washington had hosted year five of Women Veterans Engage. People had flown or driven to be in the same room with other women veterans for a shared hour. And when it ended, I reached over and clicked the camera off and sat alone in a room that had already moved on.

That was the first thing I’ll do differently.

When something matters as much as that keynote mattered, when you’ve spent months preparing not just content but an entire mindset shift for women who’ve spent years not giving themselves permission to be fully who they are, you need another body in the room. Someone who knows what’s at stake. Someone who fills the space so the room doesn’t close in on you when the camera goes dark.

Preparation can happen in isolation. Has to, sometimes. The clarity required to build something real doesn’t survive too many voices too early. But there’s a difference between preparing in solitude and finishing alone. My wedding day taught me the same thing. I did my own hair. Dressed myself. Chose quiet because I needed it. But the ten minutes before you walk through a door that doesn’t open twice, well, that’s not the time to be by yourself. That’s the time to need a witness.

Yesterday I didn’t have one. And I felt it.

Here’s the other thing that happened.

The audio didn’t play on any of the videos.

Seven soundbites. A montage. A live demo of Digital Shelly. Women who had trusted me with their stories and had been waiting to see themselves in that room with those other women, on that screen, their voices carrying the proof that this framework is real and that it works. None of it made it through. The tech check the day before had been clean. I’d done everything right. And still, what the women in those 17 locations saw was me, talking. My face. My words. The keynote I had specifically designed to not be a Shelly talking head was exactly that.

Ten minutes. That’s about what I let myself sit in it.

And in those 10 minutes, the last thing I wanted was a witness.

The phone was face down. Messages were coming in (I could feel the vibration of them), friends telling me I’d done well, that it landed, that they were proud. I didn’t want to read them. I wanted to sit inside the feeling of having failed, and I wanted to stay there. There was also something pulling in the other direction, an instinct to pick up the phone and flood my friends with everything that had gone wrong. To unload it before I’d even processed it.

But what we put out into the world becomes our truth. And somewhere underneath the feeling, in a place that doesn’t speak in sentences, I knew the message had gotten where it needed to go. Preaching failure to the world wasn’t honest. It was just loud. It would have put the spotlight on me instead of on the women those videos were made for.

The feeling was real. The feeling was not the whole truth.

So I sat with it for 10 minutes. And then I got to work.

Then I uploaded both videos to YouTube and posted the links in the event app. Emailed the host directly. Emailed every woman who had a cameo in those videos and had been expecting to see herself. Texted the host and offered to edit. She said yes. Downloaded her recording, cut in every video that hadn’t played, and delivered a finished version back to her before the day was done.

The follow-up email going out today includes it. A cleaner version. An even better one.

The reason I’m telling you this isn’t to walk you through a good recovery. The reason is the 10 minutes.

You’re going to stand in a moment where something you built with everything you had doesn’t go the way you built it to go. The drop will happen. What happens in the 10 minutes after it is the thing that’s yours to control. If you spend those 10 minutes deciding what the drop means about you, you’ll still be in that conversation an hour later. If you spend them asking what you can still do, you might just end up delivering something better than what you planned.

Mission accomplished. The form just changed.

The women who came to that event to be welcomed into a new way of seeing themselves, one that asks for complete self-acceptance instead of one more standard to meet, they got that keynote today. In a format they can watch again. In something they can share.

My friend, preparation is yours alone. The finish line is not. Put someone in the room next time.

That evening I drove to a graduation party.

A woman veteran I’ve known for years had a son walking through a door that doesn’t open twice. He graduated from the same high school I attended. She didn’t know anything about the keynote. The backyard was full of family, food and noises of a day that belongs entirely to someone else. And that’s exactly where my focus stayed.

Five years ago, I couldn’t use the word “friend” to describe her. Not out loud. The word felt too exposed, too much to ask for, too risky to claim. Women veterans will know exactly what I mean by that. Somewhere between the military and the civilian world, that word gets complicated. You learn to hold people at a careful distance and call it professionalism. You learn to need people without saying so. You learn that asking for connection is somehow the most vulnerable thing you can do, more vulnerable than anything the uniform ever asked of you.

She moved into my neighborhood. Our sons grew up together. And last night, I stood in her backyard and watched her family celebrate her eldest.

The keynote I spent months building was about this. About welcoming women veterans into a self-perception that has room for all of it — the strength and the longing, the service and the self, the mission and the friendship that is allowed to just be a friendship. That’s what I was trying to give the 700 women in those 17 locations. And the technology failed… and the videos didn’t play… and I sat alone in a quiet studio and felt the weight of that.

And then I drove to a backyard and stood next to my friend.

The message is important. Living it out is the most important thing.

Yesterday I did both, and one of them went exactly as planned.

I'm Shelly Rood, and Mission Wildflower lives here. If this landed with you, please tell me in the comments. If you're a woman veteran ready to stop processing alone, the complimentary Be At Ease, Woman Veteran™ peer community is where that work happens with women who get it: womanveteranstrong.org

Eat One Balanced Meal a Day

There’s a weird thing that happens after years of military structure, shift work, deployments, careers, and running on caffeine and convenience: you can become really good at functioning while completely disconnected from basic needs.

Not in a dramatic way. In a normal Tuesday kind of way.

Coffee becomes breakfast. A protein bar gets eaten in the car between errands. Lunch gets skipped because there’s too much going on, then dinner turns into whatever is easiest when everyone’s already exhausted. You’re technically eating. You’re surviving the day. But your body is running on scraps and guesswork.

And honestly, a lot of women veterans are still operating with that same “just push through it” wiring long after service ends. No one’s telling us when to eat anymore. No one’s building our schedule for us. Which sounds freeing… until… one day, you realize structure was carrying more of the load than you thought.

So this month’s challenge is intentionally simple:

Eat at least one balanced meal a day.

That’s it.

Subscribe now

• A protein source

• A carbohydrate source

• A healthy fat source

• A fiber source

Not a perfect meal. Not a Pinterest meal. Not meal prep containers lined up in your fridge like a fitness influencer.

Just one meal that actually supports your body instead of barely getting you through the next few hours.

A balanced meal helps with energy, fullness, cravings, recovery, focus, and, honestly just feeling more stable throughout the day. Especially for women who are used to operating at high output for long periods of time.

Here’s an example breakfast:

• Eggs + egg whites for extra protein

• Sweet potatoes

• Avocado

• Berries

Or lunch:

• Grilled chicken breast

• Quinoa

• Green beans

• Side of nuts

Simple. Normal food. No extremes.

Why This One Matters

A lot of wellness advice online swings between two extremes: hyper-restrictive or completely chaotic. In this post, you’ll learn the ABC’s of how to fuel your body to perform your best (regardless of which state of life you’re in).

Most women don’t need another “cut everything out” plan. But we also know surviving on iced coffee and random snacks all day doesn’t exactly create good terrain either.

The truth is, many women veterans learned how to ignore hunger, exhaustion, and recovery for years. Sometimes that was necessary. Sometimes it became a habit. And eventually the body adapts to under-fueling in ways that don’t always feel obvious at first.

Read more

Happy Memorial Day.

I have a silver KIA bracelet I wear most days. It catches the light sometimes when I’m doing something ordinary, like sliding a packet of hot dog buns across a checkout counter. And when the cashier says happy, I think of the man whose name is on my wrist, his wife, his child who never knew him. Happy feels like the wrong word for what I’m holding in that moment.

Because Happy Memorial Day is not the right greeting for this day (keep reading for alternative phrases to use).

Memorial Day is a holiday weekend, but it is not the Fourth of July. It is a day of remembrance for the men and women who died in service to this country. Treating it as a seasonal pleasantry, something to say between a sale on chips and a cooler full of beer, strips the day of the reverence it was built to carry. Most civilians don’t recognize or honor that distinction. And most of us have learned to absorb it quietly and keep moving.

But here’s what I’ve also learned: the weight you carry today is yours, and it doesn’t look the same for every person who served. Whatever lands in your chest in the two seconds after that greeting, it belongs to you. It doesn’t have to look like grief to count as honoring. It doesn’t have to look like sorrow to mean you remember.

Maybe it’s grief. Maybe it’s pride so deep it has no words. Maybe it’s quiet gratitude that you’re still here, still standing, still able to feel the sun on your face when you walk to your car. Maybe today is fine and three days from now something ordinary will stop you cold. The smell of a certain place. A song on the radio. A name you haven’t said out loud in a while.

Whatever you're feeling right now, my friend, that's the right answer.

Major Laverne Santangelo, Ret. | Grief Recovery Specialist

One of the truest things I’ve learned about grief comes from Laverne. A 23-year Army National Guard veteran who built her entire clinical practice inside this terrain. Grief does not announce itself on a schedule; It moves through us named or unnamed. The only difference is what we can do with it once we can see it.

It borrows other names: Pride. Anger. Numbness. The need to stay busy from sunup to dark. The impulse to be around people, or to be completely alone. None of those responses are wrong; they are grief finding the only route available to it.

Memorial Day gives grief permission to surface, and that doesn’t mean it surfaces the same way for every person reading this.

[Listen to Laverne’s full conversation, EP8 on Hardcore and At Ease]

Sarah Merwin | Navy Veteran, Founder of Holbrook Farms

Sarah is a woman veteran who lost her husband during his time in service. She built Holbrook Farms, a retreat community in Minnesota for military widows and women who have lost siblings and children in service, because she could see what was missing. A room full of people who already know. She sat at the first retreat dinner herself, planning to hold the container for everyone else. She realized that night she needed what she’d built just as much as anyone across the table from her.

No correct way to carry this day exists, and Sarah understood that before she had words for it.

You can be at the cookout laughing and mean every bit of it - that is not a betrayal of anyone you’ve lost. You can go quiet in the middle of a conversation, somewhere behind your own eyes, and the people around you won’t know where you went, and you don’t have to explain it. You can skip the ceremony entirely and sit somewhere private and say a name to nobody in particular. You can feel happy and sad inside the same hour and have no clean word for either feeling.

Grief, when it shows up, doesn’t require performance. And neither does joy.

[Listen to Sarah’s full conversation, EP42 on Hardcore and At Ease]

Chaplain Brian Webb | Army Chaplain, 20+ Years

Chaplain Brian Webb has stood in more doorways of loss than most people will encounter in a lifetime. What he has said, in different ways, is this: sometimes we don’t know what we’re carrying until we’re already in the middle of carrying it.

This day can hold loss that has no official name. The version of yourself you left behind at separation. The community that dissolved when the unit did. The future you built plans around that closed differently than you expected. Those losses don’t come with folded flags; they don’t get a ceremony. They move through you on days like this too, and they are real terrain.

You don’t have to name it perfectly to honor it.

[Listen to Chaplain Brian’s full conversation, EP25 on Hardcore and At Ease]

If today is stirring something and you want to go deeper, this week’s paid posts hold more of this conversation.

The Grief Wilderness post, [The terrain with no finish line], names the markers that define grief as wilderness and brings in Laverne, Chaplain Brian, and Sarah to hold the full weight of it.

And if today is specifically about missing someone, the person who was your witness, the Memorial Day post from earlier this year is still there for you: [The Thing Nobody Tells You About Memorial Day When You’ve Lost Someone].

ARTICLE PREVIEWS + LINKS

Alternatives to “Happy Memorial Day”

So what do we say instead of Happy Memorial Day? There is no single right answer here either. But here are a few that carry the weight of the day without asking anyone to perform joy they may not feel.

We remember them.

May their memory be honored today.

Thank you for remembering.

Honor and remembrance to you today.

Say the one that feels true to you. All of them honor the day.

However you’re moving through today, with a name on your wrist, a face in your memory, a full heart, or something you can’t put words to yet, you don’t have to explain it.

We already know some of what it feels like.

Be At Ease.

What many of us aren't doing is looking at the actual pattern of how we love. Who we show up for. What we ask in return. Who showed up for us in specific seasons. What kind of loyalty we give and what kind we recognize when we see it. We tell ourselves that stages of life just change friendships the way seasons change weather—something that happens to us rather than something we’re choosing. We tell ourselves we don’t need what we used to need.

But there’s a difference between friendship changing and friendship revealing. When you map your friendships across your decades, you see something you can’t see when you’re inside the moment. You see who you are when it comes to the people who are shaping your life.

And how does social media play into all of this?

Here’s what we know now: deep, healthy friendship has measurable impact. It lowers depression. It improves longevity. It builds the resilience to protect your joy. It is medicine.

And it requires a new language to talk about it. A framework that honors how friendship survives across terrain shifts. How it translates. How it stays.

This month, I’m teaching that framework. The one we use in Be At Ease, Woman Veteran™ gatherings to help you map your friendships across decades. In this exercise, you’re going to map your friendships across decades and recognize the pattern of how you love. Not theoretically, but in your life. We’re revealing who showed up when, what you gave, and what you recognized in return. By the time you’re done, you won’t be wondering if you’re capable of deep friendship. You’ll be looking at the evidence. And you’ll understand that healthy friendship with women isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you choose, decade after decade.

I’m going to show you how to map your friendship life across decades so you can see the pattern of how you love—who showed up in which seasons, what kind of loyalty you give and recognize, and what that reveals about who you are when it comes to the people who matter.

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Summer somehow turns every weekend into a social event. BBQs, lake days, bonfires, grad parties, backyard hangouts — and usually a cooler full of drinks to go with it.

And if you’re like me, sometimes you just want something cold and refreshing that isn’t plain water… but also isn’t loaded with alcohol, sugar, and a million extra calories you didn’t even really enjoy.

That’s where this Watermelon Mint Refresher comes in.

It feels fun. It looks like summer. It takes maybe five minutes to throw together, and it’s one of those things that makes staying on track feel a little easier without feeling restrictive about it.

I think a lot of people assume “healthy” means skipping the fun stuff altogether, but honestly, sometimes it’s just about having options. Maybe you want a cocktail. Cool. Maybe you want one drink and then something lighter after. Also cool. Maybe you just want something refreshing while everyone else has a drink in their hand. That counts too.

This one is light, hydrating, and easy to keep in the fridge for hot afternoons or summer nights when you want something a little extra.

Easy Swap

Want it sweeter? Add a splash of zero sugar lemonade or a packet of stevia.

I’m learning more and more that consistency usually comes from finding things that fit into your life instead of trying to “perfect” your way through it.

And sometimes that starts with a cold drink in your hand that makes you feel good without overthinking it.

And if you need more tips, tools, and realistic health swaps to help you reach your goals without feeling overwhelmed, schedule a free 1-1 call with Nicole and Fit In The Mitt to see if nutrition coaching might be a good next step for you. 💛