Military Service Members and Veterans
First and foremost, thank you for all that you do and sacrifice.
I understand military life firsthand. My dad was enlisted in the Army when I was born at Madigan Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington. My grandfather served in WWII, earning two Purple Hearts. My older sister was a logistics officer and younger sister an Army neurologist.
This is me, on the left here, at Officer Basic in Ft. Sam, Houston in 2009. I took a direct commission into the Army at age 29 and served three years as a physician assistant (PA). I deployed for nine months as the battalion PA to Tikrit, Iraq.
My health took a turn for the worse upon my deployment after a weird reaction to the Anthrax shot and a novel gastrointestinal virus that I contracted right before I redeployed. Military service is unlike any other, and we end up sacrificing a lot, sometimes our own well-being, to honor our commitment.
I am now a military spouse to an active duty officer who teaches the future of our military at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and I am dedicated to supporting those serving and who have served through mindfulness, functional medicine, and guided imagery.
Connect Through Storytelling with
Beyond the Battlefield
I wrote Beyond the Battlefield as a way of sharing heroic military stories and highlighting the need for introspective practices such as mindfulness and meditation to support healing and resilience in our service members and veterans.
Learn more below!
BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD:
STORIES OF TENACITY AND MINDFUL GUIDANCE ALONG THE WARRIOR’S PATH
Beyond the Battlefield is a compilation of 15 true stories based upon candid interviews with service members from all branches of the military. These stories bring to light the challenges of both combat and non-combat experiences while serving. In addition to these stories, I introduce mindfulness and meditation as potential tools to help navigate the many difficulties that are addressed throughout the interviews with the hope of making these tools more accessible and acceptable within the mainstream military culture. This book is complete with heartfelt and sincere storytelling coupled with more objective and scientific data backing the usefulness of meditation and mindfulness within the context of military life.
MEET SOME OF THE INTERVIEWEES FROM “BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD”…
My hope is that by sharing these stories:
1. Other service members can feel connected and not so alone in their own experiences and challenges
2. Those unaffiliated with the military can have a deeper and clearer understanding of those who are serving in the armed forces
3. I help more people realize the need for additional tools and coping strategies to help service members with the high-stress experiences of military life, and two of those critical tools, as I propose in the book, are meditation and mindfulness
