RISE, A Modern Guide for the Purpose Driven Woman Spring 2014 | Page 35
This experience in 2005, at a very
young age, when I thought I was
making a move to advance my career in the military, was a significant
blow to my enthusiasm about being
a female in the military. It shattered
most of the ideals that remained in
my head that there was fair and just
treatment out there for men and
women alike in the military. I was
disappointed in that Sergeant Major,
my own leadership for not standing up for me, and in myself for not
standing my ground. Maybe things
had been different if I had no one else
to worry about but myself. Reality
was that I had an infant and a toddler at home, and my husband at the
time had just got out of the military
and was unemployed and cheating
on me. Reality was that I stood there
in front of those desks that day and
didn’t stand up for myself, violating
my own secret code of ethics, thinking I should keep my mouth shut and
head down and just be grateful I have
a steady paycheck and benefits for
my family. Reality is, being a woman
that believes in the equal opportunity
is just not always compatible with
being a good mother and wife. I’m
not saying that men don’t also make
those tough choices and painfully sacrifice. It’s just different for a woman,
and that is the bias of which I am
guilty. I can only tell the story firsthand from a woman’s perspective.
When people find out that I was active duty for over 10 years, I’m often
asked about opportunity for women
in the military, and of course recently
they ask about women in combat. I
had the unique opportunity to serve
on the ground in combat with my
fellow servicemen (and a few rare
women). Nestled in a very intimidating and mountainous hell, I attended
a prestigious military
school that is incredibly selective for
woman. Of the 80 active duty women
with which I entered this very tough
training, I was one of 5 left at the end.
It was heartbreaking to see the other
women fail or quit, but it taught me
that I was completely capable of
empathy and cold indifference simultaneously. That was one of the finest
groups of women I had ever known,
and we didn’t even know each other’s
last names. They all laughed uncontrollably at me while in the back of
a 2 1⁄2 ton truck, wearing about 80
pounds of gear, attempted to relieve
myself in a very inadequate ziploc
bag from an MRE. It was a bumpy
road, and we had not slept in about
2 days, so it was probably funnier
to us at the time than it would be
to most. Later that night we did an
exercise which required us to strap
on protective headgear and literally
fight each other with a blunt weapon.
My opponent was built like a collegiate lacrosse player, and she was one
of my favorite women there, which
of course made me start to have a
near nxiety attack at the thought of
a
having to hurt her. The rules included that if we were not “fighting”
each other with what the instructors
considered appropriate effort, a male
instructor (of impressive stature,
I