After serving 20-years in the U.S. Navy from 2001–2021, it was difficult to slow down. The grind culture was real. And then when I tried to, it felt like something was wrong with me, as if I was being told I am not working hard enough or not successful enough to belong in rooms others were in. I let the world shrink me into a box, into grind culture. Post-military is what no one ever talks about, the adjustment, the isolation, the detachment. Until someone reminded me that I deserve to be anywhere and everywhere I choose to be.

I started asking myself: what is success, and who gets to measure it? I thought it was only me, until I started having deeper conversations with other veterans, and I noticed the same pattern in them too.

The gap that no one no one was naming is why I built Veterans Becoming Collective. A space for those who identify as a military veteran to reconnect with other veterans discovering together who we were before the uniform, who we became during, and who we're still becoming — centered in us, by us while exploring historical context and ancestral wisdom.

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you." —Maya Angelou

Today, my husband, also a 20-year retired Navy veteran, and I are raising four young children, homeschooling together. I'm also a student at Tennessee State University majoring in sociology. That work isn't separate from this — it's the grounding underneath what I already knew in my body before I had the language for it.