The Two Wrong Ways to Hold June 12
Women Veterans Recognition Day: Reverence over reaction
It’s early June and your feed is splitting.
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.
