Kevlar

I was eleven the first time I saw my father cry, the morning he deployed for the Gulf war in 1991.  As a medevac pilot and infantry chaplain, he served in three wars, and brought all of them home. The rest of my family never enlisted, but we all carried the cost.

Kevlar: Memoirs of a Military Brat, deals with the lasting impact of war on a military family. When you’ve spent your whole life training to leave, how do you find a place to call home? How do you form healthy relationships? When you’ve spent years preparing to receive news of death and loss, how do you embrace the fragility of love?

My story moves from base to base, showing a family’s search for stability and a permanent home amidst a changing world. Military life shaped my upbringing, from enduring the dread of war while stationed at one of the world’s largest Army bases, to exploring native Hawaiian culture in high school, to losing my faith at a Christian college in Louisiana.

Wearing Kevlar was the only way to survive as a military child, but in order to fully live, I had to find a way to remove it and be vulnerable. The same armor that protected me through childhood drowned me in every romantic relationship I had as an adult.

My memoir, Kevlar: Memoirs of a Military Brat, shows the trek to rediscover an open heart, which only happened after I had a near-death experience of a family member, and realized the Kevlar which kept me safe my whole life was actively preventing me from finding what I wanted most:

Home.

Update: I won the 2023 Porch Prize this year, hosted by Vanderbilt University’s MFA program!!!!!!!!! Check it out here.