Someone told me once that I was brave.
I had a four-month-old at home. I had just accepted a job promotion that required an out-of-state move, which meant temporarily putting my military career on hold to make it happen. My former husband was deployed overseas. My aunt looked at all of that and said, Shelly, you’re so brave. I never could have done what you’re doing. I’d be too scared.
I remember sitting with that for a second. Scared of what?
There was no bravery in it, not the way she meant. There was just forward. Whatever was ahead couldn’t be worse than staying where I was. So I moved.
That’s what we do.
Most people imagine life as a roller coaster; highs and lows, hold on tight, eventually it evens out. And maybe that works for someone. But for us, that’s like calling a puddle the ocean. It doesn’t come close to the depth of what we’re actually living.
Life is a battlefield. A perpetual, ongoing contest between what builds you and what tries to break you. Both sides are always lobbing grenades. Sometimes the path survives the blast and you dust yourself off and keep moving. More often, it’s obliterated. Your bearings are gone. The path isn’t damaged, it doesn’t exist anymore.
And when someone on the outside looks at all of that, what do they say?
“You’ve got a lot going on.”
Like it’s a scheduling problem. Like we chose this. Like there’s a version of us that could have simply opted out.
Here's what they don't understand and what most frameworks built for civilian women never account for: we are women veterans. The moral code runs deeper than obligation.
The choice to step back (to say not my problem) would mean someone else absorbs the impact. And that’s against our moral code. We don’t step up because we’re fearless. We step up because stepping back means someone else gets hurt. That’s the price of selfless ambition. And most of us pay it without thinking twice.
So no. We don’t visit the battlefield. We live there.
And the question nobody has ever answered, for us, about us, with language that actually fits, is what do you do when the path is gone?
You know who you are. It's time you had the space to live it.
