The Tablecloth Was Wrinkled. It Was Still Excellent.
You finally find a room full of women veterans and you don’t know what to do with yourself.
Part of you wants to say everything. You’ve been waiting for a room like this — people who might actually get it without a three-paragraph explanation. But there are strangers here. New faces. Women who don’t know your history and you don’t know theirs. So you hold back. You watch. You give the safe version of yourself and leave wondering why you still feel unseen.
Or you do the other thing. You say too much, too fast, to people who weren’t ready to hold it. And then you spend the drive home replaying it, wondering what they think of you now.
Neither one is connection. And nobody tells you there’s a third option.
I attended group today because our Facilitator got called up on deployment orders and was sure she’d make it. Of course I was going to be there to cover down.
Two days ago I was bone tired — seven hours of driving for business, deadlines that don’t move, the kind of exhausted that settles in and stays. I had every logistical reason not to go.
Then yesterday I thought about the women who would be in that room. And something shifted. From I have to be there to I want to be there.
That shift is what working in your calling feels like. Not every day. But enough days that you remember why you started.
There were three first-timers in the room today. I noticed them the way you notice anyone who’s still figuring out if they’re safe — scanning, quiet, waiting to see what the temperature is before they commit to being present.
I’ve learned something about rooms like this: what you bring into the room on day one sets the temperature for everyone in it. So before the event started, I found one of my women, shared a little of what was sitting on my chest, and walked in lighter. Not because anything was fixed. Because I didn’t have to carry it alone into a space that wasn’t ready to hold it yet.
That’s the third option. You find your one or two before you walk in. You hold the room so the most vulnerable person in it — maybe the woman who just arrived for the first time — doesn’t have to.
Peer support is not therapy. It is not coaching. Nobody in that room is here to help you set goals, reframe your thinking, or optimize your year. That work has its place. This is not that place.
This is for processing. For holding space. For being able to show up as you are without someone immediately trying to fix what they see.
Today we did a 2026 Vision Board Bingo. Twelve spaces. Each woman filled them in with something she wishes to experience this year — not accomplish, not achieve, not complete. Experience. Keep it in your car, your purse, your junk drawer. Mark off the spaces as the year goes on.
Then we went around the room and each woman shared one space. The follow-up question was simple: How can we support you in that?
Not: let me help you make a plan. Not: here’s what worked for me. Not: have you tried —
Just: how can we move through life together with you, in the way that you want us to?
One woman — Erin — is writing a book. That’s what she shared. And what she asked for was simple: just keep asking her how the book is going.
Not accountability. Not a deadline. Not a check-in system.
Just someone who heard her, remembered, and cared enough to ask again.
Sometimes that is the whole thing. Sometimes it is enough just to know that someone else is carrying your name with them.
The women in that room today are not broken. They are carrying real things.
There’s a woman who just decided this month to file for divorce. There’s a woman battling war lung — she can barely breathe, and she showed up anyway. There’s a woman who came because she has no inner circle and she’s looking for one. There’s a woman whose parents and in-laws have all passed, and she’s figuring out what it means to become the matriarch of her family with no map.
None of them came to perform wellness. None of them came to pretend the garden is all roses. But none of them came to unload everything on strangers either.
They came to be seen as they are, without having to fake life while they live it.
If you’ve ever walked out of a room like that feeling like you still missed it — like you were there but not really there — it’s not because you don’t belong. It’s because nobody showed you how to be in the room.
You can engineer a business, but you cannot force a garden to grow. Community is the same. You can build the structure, set the chairs, print the handouts — even if they come off a home printer. But the belonging happens between the women, not because of the logistics.
The tablecloth was wrinkled today. We ran out of food. The drinks had no ice.
It was excellent. Because nobody was trying to make it perfect. Everyone just showed up and worked together, and that’s what excellent looks like.
Because every woman in that room is a wildflower. Beautiful in her own way. With her own terrain, her own season, her own way of blooming. She doesn’t need to perform her pain to earn her seat. She doesn’t need to have it all together to belong.
Neither do you.
You don’t need anyone trying to make the tablecloth perfect to know you belong at the table.
Same wildflower. Different terrain. Still blooming.
If you're looking for a room like this one, our Be At Ease, Women Veteran™ peer groups are complimentary and open to you. Find yours at womanveteranstrong.org.
All personal details shared with permission.