I know every kid who loves their mom says, “my mom is the best,” but I mean this with every drop of sincerity in my body: my mom is the best.
She had my brother at 20 and me at 22. By the time I entered the picture, we were stationed in Italy. My dad was deployed in Afghanistan a second time, and she was essentially all alone in a different country.
She’s driving to post one day and realizes she can’t sing along with the song that’s playing. She manages to get some lyrics out, but then has to take a deep breath. She sings some more, then another deep breath. Something is not right.
She visits the doctor and they run an EKG, and everything comes back fine. Though everything looked alright, the doctor agreed that something was going on. She is referred out to an Italian hospital, where they perform a contrast CT. She heads back to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving and waits to hear back from the hospital.
The phone rings.
“We need you to come to the hospital right now.”
She can’t easily go—she has a two-year-old and a two-month-old.
“If you don’t come in, then you need to stay with someone because you have a four-millimeter blood clot in your lung—you could die at any moment. You need to come in tomorrow so we can show you how to give yourself heparin injections.”
Her small group of friends that were present stayed up with her until 4:00 A.M. to be there for her. They were all going to make cookies for the deployed men so they could have some for Christmas. My mom stress-baked 500 cookies that night: chocolate chip, Snicker, Oreo, pecan tassie, pinwheels—she just kept baking.
“If I hyper-focus on this thing, I won’t think about the fact that I could just die.”
The doctors started her on the heparin injections and Coumadin. They found out that the blood clot was due to a genetic clotting disorder that her family didn’t know about: Factor V Leiden. She was told she would most likely have to stay on anticoagulants for the rest of her life and to have no more children—it was a miracle she had two healthy pregnancies to begin with.
Everyone leaves back to the states for the holidays, and now she is truly alone in Italy. No friends, family, and her husband’s request to be sent home was denied. What happens if she dies? Who will check on the kids? The stress is all-consuming.
She slept on the couch for two months in an upright position because she couldn’t breathe when lying flat. There she lays with one son on her chest and the other laying in between her legs with his head on her bruised stomach while holding her hand. The 144 total injections she gave herself made this position painful, but having her sons near was important—she wanted to keep them close.
“And that is how I survived the two months—I had [my sons].”
Fast forward to 2018. She had been a stay-at-home mom for 13 years until my dad decided to ask for divorce. She was now suddenly thrust into a new world: she must find a job all while working through intense trauma therapy for PTSD, taking care of two kids, and dealing with the grief of a life she thought she was surely going to live.
Her mind was preoccupied with the divorce and a fear of losing our house, leading her to make mistakes in her revisions of people’s writing. She lost her first job as a proofreader because of those mistakes. She found another job where she helped connect people experiencing homelessness to resources and learned she loved building social services programs. She then got a job helping house homeless veterans in tiny homes, did case managing, and became the director of services. She still struggled with PTSD and went through a suicide intervention program last August, and when she got back, she lost her job.
She started an LLC and was contracted to build the programming for Minority Veterans of America’s LGBTQ+ veteran transitional housing program in Seattle, which earned her an invitation to the White House for their Veterans Day breakfast. Now she works with Minority Vets full-time, where she helps veterans learn leadership and resilience, advocates for veterans, and builds up essential programs for the organization.
Her story is that of perseverance and outstanding strength.
I’m so eternally proud of my mother. I’ve seen where she’s been and where she is now, and it’s nothing short of breathtaking. She’s a veteran, attended congressional hearings, met the president, metalworks, paints, is a published writer, did stand-up comedy, and one of the most important things—helps people get back up on their feet when life knocks them down. She taught me to treat people with respect—that you never know their story or circumstance. She taught me to be kind, patient, and strong. Her story shows me that through anything, you can always get back up—that you have to.
“Don’t let something bury you,” she directs.
I love when I get to talk about my mom—if you can’t tell. Her purple hair, fun makeup, life achievements, and whatever adventure she is currently having in Washington. I love playing video games with her while listening to TV Girl. I love hearing about her day at work. I love being around her while she does whatever she does.
I thank her for everything she’s done for me. Thank you for the patience when I am difficult, thank you for telling me the truth, thank you for listening to me complain about my day, thank you for your overall effort. I can go to my mom and tell her mostly everything. I trust her, and she trusts me, and that is all the proof in the world that she did mothering right.
