From Special Operations to Storytelling

There is something profoundly inconvenient about spending fourteen years building a life you love, dreamed of even, only to realize you might want something different.

Over the past decade, I served in the United States Army, working as a special operations officer. It was demanding, unpredictable, occasionally ridiculous, and, for a long time, exactly where I wanted to be. I loved my career and not in the nostalgic, rose-colored-glasses kind of way. I genuinely loved what I did.

There are experiences in the military that change you. Some are extraordinary, others are devastating, and some are so painfully ordinary that you don’t realize how permanent they are until the wound is still there years later. For me, that moment was one of them.

Logically, I understood why. Children don’t measure love in a job well done. They understand presence and familiarity. But I wasn’t familiar. I’d left when he was seven months old. By the time I returned, he was fifteen months old. I’d been gone longer than I’d been home with him.

That heart wrenching moment in the airport didn’t erase my love for my career. It didn’t suddenly make my work less meaningful. However, it forced me to confront something I had been reluctant to admit. I can love serving my country and still want to be home.

I think there’s an assumption that when someone leaves the military, they’re ready to move on. And maybe that is true. But for me, walking away was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made because I wasn’t escaping a life I hated. I was leaving one I had worked incredibly hard to earn.

I had spent years becoming the person who could do that job. I’d built relationships, developed skills, earned my place, and found purpose in work that mattered deeply to me. Yet, I was still choosing to leave because another dream became just as important. I wanted to be present for my children. I wanted motherhood without constantly calculating how much of it I’d have to experience from somewhere else. There is a particular kind of grief that comes with willingly closing a chapter you still love.

Another part of leaving the military that I don’t think gets discussed enough. Being a female veteran is weird. We occupy an unusual space, never quite fitting the expectations of the communities we’re supposed to belong to.

In veteran spaces, we’re often the exception rather than the expectation. When people hear there’s a medically retired veteran in the room, they instinctively look to my husband. Now to be fair, he served too, but I’m the retired one.

It’s an odd experience to spend years proving yourself professionally, only to step into civilian life and discover that people don’t necessarily recognize you as someone who could have lived that experience in the first place.

And then there’s the other side. The mom spaces.

I’m an older mom with a military background, a collection of tattoos, a questionable sense of humor, and a life history that doesn’t always lend itself to casual playground conversation.

Sometimes I feel like everyone else is speaking a language I understand academically but have never quite mastered conversationally. Maybe it’s the years spent in an environment where sarcasm was a second language and emotional vulnerability was something you scheduled for later. Or maybe I’m just weird. And if I am honest, the evidence supports several theories. But there is something isolating about feeling as though you belong to multiple worlds without fitting into any of them.

I’m proud of my service. I’m proud to be a mother. I wouldn’t trade either experience. I just don’t know where the person who is both is fit in.

As it turns out, the one thing I’ve never had trouble finding my place in is a good story. After spending years working in human intelligence, I decided what my life really needed was more complicated people with questionable motives…only now they’re fictional. Well, mostly.

I’ve always loved stories. The way people tell them, deliberating choosing what to say and what to leave out. The difference between what happened and what someone believes happened can be vast. I spent enough time working in intelligence to develop a particular appreciation for perspective. Two people can witness the same event and walk away with entirely different accounts. Everyone has motivations and biases. And sometimes the most convincing version of a story isn’t the most truthful one.

There’s a reason I call myself The Unreliable Author. Writing gives me a place to explore all of that without pretending the world is neatly divided into heroes and villains. It lets me create characters who make terrible decisions for understandable reasons. People who love fiercely, betray spectacularly, and convince themselves they’re doing the right thing while actively making everything worse. In other words, I write about people.

My debut novel, The Raven’s Debtor, is a Norse-inspired dark romantasy built around enemies who have very good reasons to hate each other, an unwanted fated-mate bond, and a world where the truth depends largely on who’s telling the story.

It’s not the kind of story I imagined myself writing when I joined the Army. Then again, I don’t think younger me could have imagined most of the life I’ve lived and perhaps that’s the point.

I spent the last decade pursuing one dream. Now I’m building another, somewhere between raising four children, writing morally questionable characters, and figuring out what comes next.

I don’t have it all figured out. But I’ve got some stories to tell.

Welcome to The Unreliable Author.

Transitioning to civilian life isn’t always easy. If you’re struggling with your mental health or finding your footing after service, support is available. Contact the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988, then pressing 1, or texting 838255. You don’t have to navigate it alone.