This is a vulnerable post for those who fight to break the generational chains!

A Veteran told me, they received the highest honor for their fight in war following September 11, 2001. They then said, I think you deserve to be honored as well…I cried.

This is one of the kindest moments I’ve had the privilege to carry. What a humbling moment. Not just for me but for all carrying the invisible scars of a childhood war we never enlisted for.

We honor our veterans for the battles they’ve fought and we should. The men and women who serve our country step into danger, into chaos, into trauma, knowing it may follow them home. Many carry Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder long after the war is over. They receive medals, recognition, and the rightful acknowledgment that they endured something most people cannot imagine. They are heroes. There is another kind of battlefield, one without uniforms, without deployment dates, without an end. Some of us were born into it.

There are children who grow up not learning how to ride bikes or feel safe, but how to survive, how to stay quiet, how to brace for impact. This kind of trauma doesn’t come from a single moment; it comes from years of instability, fear, neglect, and abuse, shaping the brain, the body, and the way we understand love and safety. It often becomes what we now understand as Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Unlike war, there is no clear beginning or end, no moment where someone declares you safe and hands you back your life plus benefits to help cope with the trauma of war.

The ugly truth. Some never come home. Some people come home from war with nightmares and oh how I empathize with their pain and suffering. I have lived the nightmares wide awake and in my sleep. I have held my brother after he died while screaming and begging him to come back, to wake up. I have lost my older brother to suicide in his twenties. I sat beside my birth mother in ICU after she attempted to end her life four times by the time I was 15. I have been raped, more than once, and groomed and sexually assaulted as a child. At thirteen I died in a car accident caused by a drunk driver and was brought back to life, only to wake up to a traumatic brain injury, a broken jaw, pelvis, and collarbone.

I have dug through dumpsters for food. I have lived in homes without running water or electricity, bathing in lakes and truck stops just to be clean enough to show up in the world. I was once sent on a date with a 26-year-old man when I was only 14. I have lived in multiple foster homes, never fully belonging anywhere until I chose to fight the unbelief that I could belong. I have been homeless after my own mother tried to kill me. Somehow, I worked three jobs as a teenager, barely sleeping, so I could buy my first trailer at 15 or 16 years old after being emancipated by a judge. I am dyslexic, and still, I fought for my education. I earned a high school diploma, a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree, not because it was easy, but because I refused to let my story end where it began. These are not metaphors. These are memories. There are no medals for this kind of survival.

When soldiers return home, we say thank you for your service and I always feel so grateful for their bravery. When people survive what should have broken us, we are often met with “that’s life” mentality, or a misunderstanding. We are sometimes labeled as too much, too emotional, too guarded, too hard to trust. We are not seen for the discipline it took to survive, for the strength it takes to keep showing up in a world that once felt determined to take everything from us.

From the outside, my life can look like success. I have degrees. I am an author. I built a nonprofit. I help others navigate their pain. But inside, there are still days where I feel like a nobody. Days where I question whether I was ever meant to be seen, or if I am simply surviving in a world that recognizes louder, cleaner stories. I have been told I don’t have friends because I struggle to trust, but what people don’t understand is that trust, for me, has never been safe. It has been costly. It has been dangerous. Learning to rebuild it feels like walking back into a fire I barely survived the first time.

Add to that the isolation that comes from fear, the kind that keeps you at a distance even when you long for connection. The wounds from adult relationships, especially with women who have caused harm instead of safety, reinforcing the belief that it is easier to be alone than to risk being hurt again. Suddenly, survival doesn’t just look like resilience, it starts to look like isolation. It becomes a recipe for exhaustion.

There are days I battle the desire to just sleep “forever”, not out of a lack of love for my life, but out of a longing for peace. The weight of student debt from the education I fought so hard to earn feels suffocating at times. I am a mother to children who need me, who deserve the best of me, and yet there are days I feel like I am not enough. Days where I feel guilty for ever believing I could overcome all of this and become the kind of mother I dreamed of being. Days where the fight inside of me feels heavier than the victories I’ve achieved.

But here is the truth I am still learning to hold onto: surviving what we survived and still choosing to build, to love, to show up, even imperfectly, is not failure. IT IS COURAGE.

I am not asking for a medal, Que the “no child left behind critics”. But sometimes I am hoping to be seen not for my failures but for my courage to keep going. To have someone recognize that this, too, is a battle. That this, too, is a form of bravery. Because people like me, people like us, we didn’t just survive. We are still fighting. That fight deserves to be acknowledged, even if it never comes with applause.

To anyone carrying invisible wounds, to anyone who feels unseen in their survival, to anyone who questions their worth even in the face of everything they’ve overcome, you are not alone. You are not a beggar for wanting to be seen. You are human and your fight counts.

Even if no one ever hands you a Medal of Honor…I believe you earned one. My prayer is you sever that metal chain you have been bound by, melt it, to create your own Medal of Honor out of it!

Keep Fighting to STAY.

❤️Steph