Veterans Day

I hope everyone had a great Veterans Day. Although it's a day to reflect on the service of all veterans, sometimes even a day that is intended as more of a celebration can be hard when some of our comrades are no longer here. I hope you were able to enjoy this day with your families maybe sharing some of your great past experiences with your loved ones. My children are still young (1 & 4), but my husband and I always try and share some positive stories and just let them know what we both did in the service and the importance of our service men and women. (They enjoy going through our old gear and looking at our coins) Also why we thank all of our veterans for their service when we see one in public not just today but every day.

I once used to think people didn't care about veterans, they just kept going about their day to day life not thinking about our deployed troops or veterans at all. Then I heard someone once say, " It's not
that they don't care, it's just that they don't know how to show it.", that made sense to me. How do you thank a veteran for all they have done? By saying thank you? I have seen veterans hate being recognized or thanked for their service, they don't want a "Thank You", that's what they signed up for and what they loved. I've seen others take it with pride and continue on their way. I love it if anyone thanks me for my service, mainly because I am a female and everyone always assumes I am just wearing my husbands old Army PT shirt. So when someone goes out of their way to say thank you, I take their thanks to heart because it doesn't happen often. I used to also just go with the flow and not correct people when they use to thank my husband for his service, I would just stand there awkwardly not saying anything at all because it's not fair of me to expect people to assume I was in the Army just because.

Then one day I was buying essential oils at a local health shop, I noticed they had a sign promoting military discount. I pulled out my ID and the older women behind the cash register was in complete disbelief I was in the military. She instantly starting asking me all these questions regarding my MOS. Then she said, " how were you a military police without a gun?"  I had a gun!? I had a pistol when working patrol and I was a 50 cal. Gunner down range. The look on her face quickly changed she then said: "They let women have guns in the military?" This is the moment I knew all along I had been failing myself as a female veteran as well as my society that tends to be still set back in gender roles. Some people are that unaware of the world around them, and I was doing no good keeping my mouth shut. I know to make sure to say something and start up a conversation about my service as well. It use to not be a big deal to me but to see that people are so unaware of female veterans today just really shocked me and made me want to see change.


I hope this Veterans Day you found the love and respect of others that may have thanked you, and I pray you sincerely felt it.

Here are some facts about Veterans Day and how it came to be:

Veterans Day was once called Armistice Day to commemorate the ending of World War l. It was started on November 11, 1919. It was then further pushed to be a holiday for honoring all veterans and then changed to Veterans Day. In 1938 it became a National Holiday.