We Are Not Invisible

A Tale of three million women

Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs

I am a U.S. Army veteran.

Every year I feel angst and conflict about Veterans Day. Pride, seated beside angst. This year I thought it would be different because I’m in Italy, far from the U.S. But I was wrong.

I cannot run from the conflicting feelings inside of me. Miles cannot separate me from the reality of being a woman who is a veteran of the U.S. military.

Years of therapy have not made the annual angst change. 

The fight continues to exhaust me.

It used to be different. Before I acknowledged my veteran status. When I was just a girl who was in the Army. When I never uttered the words “I am a veteran” or showed my photo. Before I became the woman who sat and listened to thousands of women tell me the stories of harassment, rape, and discrimination while struggling with finding pride in their service.

Before 2013 when no one saw me as a veteran… and I let that be the reality.

During those years I focused on talking young women out of joining. Of forbidding both my daughter and son from joining. Of despairing over the recruiters who came after our teenagers. Of begging those kids not to join because bad things happen in the military, and even if you don’t deploy to a war zone you absolutely will not be the same person when you leave as the one who went in.

Ask me how I know.

All that changed the first time I said not “I was in the Army” but “I am a veteran.” When in 2013, while doing an internship at the VA Central Office in Washington D.C. that woman on the bus going to the Washington DC VA struck up a conversation that changed how I saw myself. 

Her, as she assessed me in my suit: So, what brings you to the VA? Do you have a meeting?

Me: No

Her: Do you have an appointment?

Me: Yes

Her: So, you are a veteran?

Me: No

Her: Miss, I’m confused. You aren’t going there for a meeting, but you have an appointment, yet you say you aren’t a veteran.

Me: I’m not a veteran.

Her: I’m not trying to be difficult or nosy, but if you have an appointment at the VA, what’s it for.

Me: I served in the Army. I have a service-connected disability.

Her: Young lady, you served in the military?

Me: Yes Ma’am.

Her: Girl, you are a veteran!

Author, U.S. Army Photo

I will remember that conversation until the day I die, because in that moment I heard what she said and it dawned on me that, no matter what I had been told, the messaging I received from her was that, I was, in fact, a veteran.

On that day I began seeing myself differently. For the first time in 33 years, I applied that word to myself. But still, I felt like an imposter because that message over all those decades had dug in.

This, my friends, is the lot of so many women who are veterans of the U.S. military. We see images only of men, hear songs and watch movies that are about men who serve in the military. We hear “he, him, his, men” when people talk about veterans. So, we internalize the message: women are not veterans.

• Women who have been deployed.

• Women who have retired.

• Women who served honorably in the U.S. military,

• Women whose families don’t tell the undertaker that their wife/mother/daughter/sister is a veteran.

• Women who are ignored by DJs who play entire sets dedicated to “veterans,” which is to say the default male, because their songs don’t include us.

  
  

Hell, even the VA has never — NEVER — featured a woman alone on a Veterans Day poster. Even in 2021 when, for the first time in history, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had an all-female changing of the guard, VA couldn’t bring themselves to honor women on that poster. Instead, it was an image of a lone male. On such a momentous occasion, the VA failed the three million women who have served since the American Revolution. Men I spoke with about it did not understand the problem and made excuses.

Not a single person who ever served in the military did so for recognition. But god dammit, I cannot explain how it feels to be invisible Every. Single. Day. Every. Single. Year.

While our brothers are celebrated and thanked and we, even while we are wearing caps and shirts and pins, are asked if our husband/brother/dad is the veteran. We who are chastised and challenged for parking in a Veteran Parking Only spot, even when we have veteran license plates.

We, who stand silently while people shake the hands of the men next to us and walk past us as if we don’t exist.

So, yeah, between that and the shitty experience I had in “This Man’s Army” (as the leaders in the late 70s loved to remind us) it’s hard as hell for me to express pride of service on veterans day without a simultaneous feeling of angst and “seriously, we have to go through this AGAIN?”

I tell you all of this not for sympathy, but as a request. Please, when you think of veterans, think of the women.

Think of the women who have ALWAYS volunteered, who raised our hand and said “send me, I’ll go” even in the worst of times. Who concealed themselves as men during the American Revolution and Civil War because they wanted the same thing the men wanted: to serve our country.

• The women who were unceremoniously discarded after the war ended before the Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 made us full-time permanent members of the military and gave us status as legitimate veterans.

• The women prior to that date whose families had to figure out how to pay to get their dead bodies home because the U.S. Government would not pay the bill.

• The women who went to Vietnam far ahead of men, and the eight whose names are on the wall.

• The women who served in combat situations in Granada, and the first Gulf War, and all the Post 9/11 women who held the line beside their brothers — all these women who did this work for decades before the combat exclusionary policy was lifted in 2013, but who were denied benefits, combat pay, and promotions because the narrative was that women were not in combat.

• These women who experienced terrible things that continues to include being in danger from the “brothers” they served next to.

Think of the women who serve that are today being disrespected and discriminated against openly by the Secretary of Defense. How would you feel if it were you, your daughter, your mother, your sister? Imagine the outcry if men were being so easily disposed of, just because they are men.

We are fewer than 1% of the population, but we matter no less.

Show us you see us and our sacrifices. Show us our service matters just as much as the men we have marched with since the founding of this country.

We have died, suffered injuries, received medals for our efforts. Family members have buried us. They stand at our grave and weep just as you stand at the grave of the man you love. We took our oath just as serious as our brothers. We, too, are veterans.

All I ask is that you remember us.

Thank you for reading. If you served in the military, thank you for your service. If you are a woman who served in the military, I see you. Thank you for your service.

If you would like to read more about me, my military experience, and my experience working with women veterans, you can find my book, “Broken in the Stronger Places: From Resilience to Resourcefulness” on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or you can request a signed copy from here on my website.

According to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the rate of suicide among women veterans is outpacing the rate of suicide among their non-veteran counterparts. If you or a veteran loved one is in crisis or just need someone to talk to, please make the call. Dial 988, then press 1, or text 838255.

#You matter.