AVOW Magazine Spring 2022 : simplebooklet.com

6Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comChristina Wilkinson - USAFPUBLISHER Sheila L. Holmes - USAFEDITOR-IN-CHIEFSPECIAL ADVISORSGenevieve Chase - USA / American Women VeteransLindsay Church - USN / Minority Veterans of AmericaCassie Gabelt - USN / Minority Veterans of AmericaTracie Rosado - USA / WoVeNVR Small - USN / Women Veterans Enterprise CenterMelissa Washington - USN / Women Veterans AllianceAT-LARGEDanielle Johnson - USMCPat White - USMCCONTRIBUTORSWritersCREATIVE TEAMSabreDesign.com / IG: @TheRealSabreDesign / FB: @SabreDesignART DIRECTION/DESIGN/LAYOUTchris@sabredesign.comAVOW Magazine Social MediaFacebook.com/AVOWMagazine | Instagram.com/avow_magazine | Twitter.com/AVOWMagazineO: 209-841-8866 (Sabre Design)E: contact@AVOWMagazine.comAVOWMagazine.comCopyright © 2022 by AVOW Magazine. All rights reserved. The name AVOW™ and the AVOW logo are trademarks of AVOW Magazine © 2019, 2020, 2021 exclusively for the American Veteran Organization of Women Magazine which is published quarterly for women veterans of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced,distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in some instances with third party copyright holders.For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.Sabre Design & Publishing18737 Back Street #605Groveland, CA 95321www.sabredesign.comProudly published and producedin the United States of AmericaA magazine for women veterans, by women veterans, and for the people who love them.Sheila L. HolmesDr. Ruth MooreChristina WilkinsonJacqueline GarrickAnnette WhittenbergerElizabeth MelahnMary BakerKerry KarwanAlea NadeemKathleen SilviaNichole D. JordanReatha PitmanStephanie CalderonPhotographyMariana MontraziChristina WilkinsonBrandyn WilkinsonSheila L. HolmesHolly LongSheryl MooreRodion KutsaevMilada VigerovaTangerine NewtLisa FotiosSavahhah AchenbachMichelle EberhartUnited States Military Academy at West Point

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9Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)Whistleblowing in America is not a new concept. It borrows from the European notion of qui tam, which translates into “(s)he who brings an action for the king and herself.” The First Amendment of the United States Constitution allows citizens to bring grievances to Congress because Revolution-ary War Sailors saw their commander mistreat British prisoners, and reported it but suffered retal-iation and imprisonment by the man they reported. The False Claims Act (FCA), otherwise known as the Lincoln Law, was enacted because the president signed it to allow rewards for anyone exposing corruption in sales to the Union Army during the Civil War. Overall, whistleblowers report nancial fraud, malpractice, wrongful deaths, contamination, tracking, harassment, abuse, discrimination, and other violations of rules and laws. The FCA provisions have expanded over the centuries, and the US Government reports that it recovered more than $5.6 billion in civil False Claims Act (FCA) judgments and settlements in scal year 2021 alone. Whistleblowers can be rewarded between 15% to 30% of the settlement for their disclosure. In 2021, the Department of Justice reported that whistleblowers led 598 qui tam suits. According to a United Nations report, the global cost of corruption is at least 5% of world gross do-mestic product, so the need for whistleblowers to stop this fraud, waste, and abuse is vital. But few whistleblowers win their cases. In an HR Acuity study, 22% won their lawsuits, 2% were reinstated, and 8% won damages. Federal employees fare a bit worse with win rates averaging about 10% of the time since government agencies get judicial deference. However, in spite of the nancial recovery, lives saved, and whistleblower pro-tection laws, these employees are up against powerful government and corporate forces and often face retaliation when exposing wrongdoing. One study by HR Acuity it found that 56% of employees have experienced or witnessed wrong-doing. But the data also showed that 39% of employees were not condent that they would be treated fairly if disclosing, and 46% were uncertain and fear re-taliation. In another study, that fear was validated as 74% of whistleblowers were red while others were suspended, demoted, or detailed. A survey by Whistleblowers of America found that whistleblowers deal with being humiliated, defamed, gaslit, mobbed, shunned, bullied, blamed, and harassed. They lose their careers, life-savings, and family stability while judicial proceedings become expensive and prolonged. Some become impoverished, homeless, di-vorced, and ill. Whistleblowers report dealing with the toxic tactics of retaliation and suffer from de-pression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and suicide. The life of the whistleblower is never the same after the experience.WHY IS WHISTLEBLOWING SO IMPORTANT AND WHAT HAPPENS?BY JACQUELINE GARRICK, LCSW-C, SHRM-CP, WPAwere uncertain andfear retaliation46%

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10Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comI did not start out to be a whistleblower and was shocked the rst time someone called me that. I spent 30 years of my career tak-ing care of disabled veterans suering mainly from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, and suicidal ideation, includ-ing a stint as an Army Social Work Ocer in the early 1990s. I had decided to join the Army after spending several years counseling Vietnam Veterans and their families so that I could “be one” too.I did not grow up in a military family. No one from my childhood had served in the U.S. Armed Forces, but my family were Jew-ish Eastern-European immigrants who were proud to be Americans. My grandparents had ed the horrors of the Cossacks and the Nazis. ose ethics and values rubbed o so a life of service and “speaking up” against wrongdoing were ingrained.It came naturally to be an advocate for the veterans whom I had come to respect and ad-mire. After my time in the army and being stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Cen-ter, I was oered a position at the American Legion in Washington, D.C., as their Depu-ty Director of Health Care. I learned to be a spokesperson with the media and testied for the rst time before Congress. I continued my advocacy work as a policy analyst for the Veterans Disability Benets Commission and then as professional sta for the House Veter-ans Aairs Committee working on legislation for the Disability Assistance and Memorial Aairs subcommittee. Over those years, I gained a growing expertise in Authorization and Appropriation laws, which moved gov-ernment money to the Administration and its Departments. When a senior National Security Advisor for President Obama called and asked me to come to the Pentagon, I was reluctant. I was more at home with Veterans Aairs (VA) issues than the Defense Depart-ment; but with a lot of encouragement from my colleagues, I took my rst assignment with the newly formed Wounded Warrior Oce within the Department of Defense (DoD). It was during that time when I learned a great deal more about contracting and how the government obligated and executed the funds it got from Congress. JACQUELINEGARRICKTheWhistleblower Chronicles

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11Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)When I think back, these previous learn-ing experiences were the framework for my whistleblowing. In 2011, the Pentagon leaders appointed me as the founding Director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Oce (DSPO) because of my qualications. It was under my leadership that DSPO went from a program with an $800,000 borrowed budget and de-tailed sta to an oce with nine assigned sta and a budget with about $30 million to ex-ecute. I was proud of the work my sta and the contractors were performing to address military suicide. ey were following recom-mendations of a Task Force report and were implementing projects that were utilizing arti-cial intelligence for data analysis – the Well-ness Assessment Risk Nexus calculator, peer support programs through Vets4Warriors, gun lock distribution in collaboration with VA, and suicide prevention resource mapping and evaluation. I met regularly with the Service Action Ocers and with their Flag Ocers. I initiated a Defense Suicide Prevention Strategy modeled after the National Strategy for Sui-cide Prevention issued by the Surgeon General a few years before. I coordinated with my sister agency leads and international groups focused on suicide, including the World Health Or-ganization. After connecting with the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the International Security Assistance Forces Commander and an Army psychiatrist in Kandahar, I visited Afghanistan in 2013 to train Combat Operational Stress Control teams in suicide prevention peer sup-port techniques to address the suicides hap-pening down range. In 2014, after targeting National Guard troops with peer support, we saw the rst eking downward of suicides. I hoped that by 2015 with continued eort and focus that DSPO would realize a trend. But that would never happen. A few months after returning from Af-ghanistan, I met a newly-appointed, senior ex-ecutive for family policy. I thought she would be an ally but would soon learn otherwise. During our rst meeting, she introduced her-self as the former vice president of a marketing company that had contracts at VA. As I recall it, she described them as the digital strategies experts and strongly suggested that I move contract money to them. I objected to the movement of monies between the two separate entities (DoD vs. VA) for two main reasons: First, we would have to undergo a repro-gram action to request permission from senior leaders and Congress to move money from one agency to another. I could not envision going to the Secretary of Defense to tell him the VA could do a better job than we could in prevent-ing suicide among our troops when they were struggling to prevent suicide among veterans. Second, the contract being suggested was a company where she had been Vice President, and her husband's small business at the time was doing its development through them. e Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) prohib-its Conicts of Interest and the Appearance of Impartiality and I felt that we had to be cautious because of her relationship with the WHAT IS WHISTLEBLOWING?Whistleblowers are everywhere and can be any employee (including military personnel) who sees wrongdoing and speaks out to stop it — it is often a lonely and confusing legal process. In the news media, we hear stories of victims who have waited decades before coming forward or have had to work for years to gather enough evidence to be credible. Yet, they protect individuals and the public from all kinds of harm - ranging from medical errors to toxic contamination to nancial fraud to discrimination and sexual abuse. Whistleblowers are the rst relators of wrongdoing!“....that much like a military veteran, whistleblowers with PTSD are engaged in a war that never ends. It takes hold of your soul, and whistleblowers need to focus on the people who feed you, and stay away from the people who starve you.”— JACKIE GARRICK

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12Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comcontractor. In my opinion, what she was sug-gesting met the standard for a FAR violation, so I objected. In turn, she followed up with emails. ese emails would include other senior leaders -some in my chain of command, but not hers. So, I started to copy her boss on my responses. en one day, someone on his sta brought me in to see him and we told him the back-story about the contracts. He understood the conicts of interest and lack of impartiality that I felt were involved and he made calls. All seemed good until he suddenly retired a few months later and the intimidation tac-tics picked up again. I felt bullied. Colleagues conrmed that she was degrading me at other meetings that I did not attend. Once, when no one knew, I got to listen on a phone call and heard her for myself. Although I did not know it at the time, I was learning about retaliation tactics. By the following year, after she led an Executive Selec-tion Panel, I was removed from the DSPO Di-rector position, and her mentee (as described in emails) was selected. Slowly but surely, the projects I’d incepted were discontinued. Con-tracts were canceled and lines of authority moved. By the time the Pentagon released its 2017 budget, DSPO was only funded at $5 million with no accounting for what had hap-pened to the previous allocations. Since then, other Defense whistleblowers have contacted me about sham programs and fake eorts. e military suicide numbers speak for themselves. ey have increased. For me, it took 5 years, but I nally settled my retaliation case by going before a Merit System Protection Board Admin-istrative Judge. I read him emails from my perpetrators and he agreed that the hostile work environment and the animus I suered caused harm. is journey led to the cre-ation of Whistleblowers of America (WoA) in 2017. I realized along the way that retal-iation was a targeted and systematic way to destroy the employee who exposed wrong-doing. Its tactics could be classied and cat-egorized so victims could better understand what was happening to them. I saw similar-ities between whistleblowers and the com-bat veterans I had spent decades helping. eir moral injury, sense of betrayal, dis-rupted identities, and shattered world views were similar and caused PTSD, depression, and other stress-related conditions. Whis-tleblowers talked about being “in a ght for my life,” “in a battle,” “excommunicated” or “professionally gang-raped.” But they need-ed a taxonomy and the peers who under-stood their trauma to feel validated. I creat-ed the Whistleblower Retaliation Checklist (WRC) as a clinical inventory to assess re-taliation and its psychosocial impacts. WoA is an evidence-based, peer support program that is trauma informed so we can facilitate problem-solving and resilience. WoA started a Whistleblower Protection Advocate certi-cation program, and the Workplace Promise Institute as an education and awareness cen-ter for whistleblowing. Every time I connect with another whistleblower, I feel the reci-procity in the support. My whistle-sisters, especially those who have served under arms are particularly near to my heart since our commitment to the greater good was already tested. Jacqueline Garrick, LCSW-C, BCETS, SHRM-CP, WPAExecutive Director, FAR Group (SDVOSB)Founder, Whistleblowers of America Ms. Garrick founded Whistleblowers of America as a nonprofit in 2017, which provides voluntary peer support to those suffering the impacts of Workplace Traumatic Stress. She developed the Whistleblower Retaliation Checklist© to identify negative psychosocial impacts on victimized employees and provide forensic testimony. She is on the Advisory Boards for ConsenSys Health and Parrhesia, a British charity devoted to whistleblower research and on the Board of Directors for Brighton Marine, a homeless program in Boston. Over the last few years, Professor Garrick, has taught for the University of Southern California, School of Social Work and has supervised interns from the University of West Florida. She is also founder of the Workplace Promise Institute opened in Pensacola, FL in 2021.Previously, she served as a U.S. Army Officer and in executive positions at the American Legion and the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Defense (DoD) and with the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. Her areas of expertise include policy and program development for disabled veterans/wounded warriors, mental health and suicide prevention, transition assistance, and military survivors. She is a recognized public servant with awards from several distinguished organizations. She is the founder of the FAR Group, which provides consultation to public and private organizations that need development, advocacy, and educational support. Ms. Garrick is a published author, media source, and an international public speaker having also worked on projects in the former Soviet Union, for the US military in Germany and Afghanistan, and the World Health Organization in Switzerland. She is a social work master’s graduate from Temple University with additional training at Johns Hopkins and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is a licensed social worker (LCSW-C) in MD and is credentialed through the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM-CP), a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress (BCETS) and Whistleblower Protection Advocate (WPA). Whistleblowers of America is a nonprot organization assisting whistleblowers who have suffered retaliation after having identied harm to individuals or the public.

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14Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comto the attention of the 2nd Bomb Wing, Barksdale AFB Loui-siana’s leadership that there was a predator harassing, stalking, and assaulting young women in the 2nd Logistics Readiness Squadron (LRS). e commander was aware and did noth-ing about it; however, at every commander’s call he would put up a slide reecting ZERO tolerance for sexual harassment. e 2nd Bomb Wing con-ducted a Command Directed Investiga-tion and 15 women came forward. e accused senior enlist-ed man only received a slap on the wrist. I, on the other hand, was blackballed by the commander for bringing this to the attention of Wing leadership. e buzz words ‘If You See Something, Say Something,’ is BS! Leadership doesn’t want to hear about sexual assault, sexual harassment, bully-ing, fraud, waste, and abuse; because if they did, they would actually have to do some-thing about it. ey ignore it, thinking it will go away, and then you wind up with harassment, assault, suicide, and mur-der. Sad examples of what happens when people are ignored or scared to report are what happened to Spc. Vanessa Guillen, A1C Sissy Cox, and PFC Asia Graham. Serious allegations of criminal ac-tivity have been reported against the Air Force Wounded Warrior (AFW2) program for years, and the matter was constantly swept under the rug by then -Director AFW2, who was recently re-moved from his position. Allegations of sexual harassment that were substanti-ated but the woman AFW2 contractor who did the harassing of one wounded warrior, and wrongfully accepted gifts in excess of hundreds of dollars from anoth-er wounded warrior, was not red but promoted.How are people supposed to report what they see when the Air Force Chief of Sta and the Chief Master Ser-geant of the Air Force turn a blind eye? ey will give you the standard response, “We’re looking into it,” but nothing ever happens. I’m sick of the abuse, ha-rassment, and criminal activity that has plagued AFW2. I worked at AFW2 for nine years and in this time was witness to the improprieties going on. I believe cer-tain people at AFW2 are evil, self-serving narcissists and need to be held account-able for their actions. How is leadership at AFW2 keeping their jobs? Based on my observations, I believe that they have been allowed to get away with fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as illegal, im-moral, and unethical behavior, and creat-ing a toxic environment for years. ere are several people who have come forward and led Inspector General Complaints; what did this get those people who spoke up? It got them red, that’s what it got them. People have learned if you want to keep your job, keep your mouth shut. I have yet to see anyone at AFW2 get red for their illegal, immoral, or unethical conduct, but there is a list of people who complained or led IG reports who were red or forced to quit.I’m not one to keep my mouth shut. I’m the person that will be the voice for those employees. I will be the voice for that co-worker who was bullied, who was threatened to have her children raped and killed in front of her, but the bully was protected because of favoritism. I will be that voice for the two active duty wounded warriors who were red from

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15Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022AFW2 for calling out corrupt behavior that was allowed to happen. I will be the voice for those wounded warriors who were deemed not worthy enough and were denied going to Invictus Games or being considered for the AFW2 team -all because they weren’t disabled, or disgured enough to meet the internal stan-dard set by the leadership. ere is an inner circle to get a GS po-sition, especially if you vacationed with her. Pictures on Facebook show some of those individuals who were contractors are now GS. A pro-gram designed to help wounded warriors turned into a program that was all about how it makes AFW2 leaders look, or how many medals could be won. People have been suicidal, depressed, and broken because of the way they were treated by the very pro-gram that was de-signed to give them help and hope. Col Flatten made the program about himself, taking his family to all the care events, which was substantiated in an IG complaint, but nothing was ever done about it. He allowed people, who were not care-givers, to get paid to attend as caregivers at taxpayer’s expense. Task and Purpose’s in-vestigation has nally given some validation Melahn joined the Air Force serving from 5 March 1980 to 1 April 2010. She retired after 30 years as a Chief Master Sergeant. She has been married to Jeff Melahn for 32 year this April, has two daughters, and three grandchildren.Shortly after retiring, Melahn went to work with Air Force Wounded Warriors; a job she says, “I absolutely LOVED”. ...examples of what happens when people are ignored or scared to report, are what happened to Spc. Vanessa Guillen, A1C Sissy Cox, and PFC Asia Graham.to these stories (https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-wounded-warrior-pro-gram-toxic-leadership/). If I see something, I’m going to say some-thing whether Air Force leadership wants to hear it or not; I will not be silenced! People need to be held accountable for their actions. I pray to God that they do not cause someone to take their own life because of how awful this program has treated them. Please let the voices of these individuals who have been hurt, victimized, harassed, assaulted, threat-ened, drugged, and treated so bad that they have contemplated suicide be heard.

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17Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 202217In a million years, I never pictured myself speaking about sexual harassment, gen-der discrimination, retaliation and how I learned to cope. Who would have thought in 1985, when I chose to skip 10th grade sec-ond hour to meet with the Air Force Recruit-er, I would embark on a journey fullling my dream to be in Law Enforcement, nd my husband, travel the world, have three kids, eventually open a coee shop (learn that I am NOT a businesswoman), wind up BACK in Law Enforcement and THEN nd myself fac-ing my most daunting aspect of adulthood?I should have recognized the warning sign when the Deputy Chief of Police at the Saginaw Department of Veterans Aairs declared they were looking for a female because the previ-ous one had taken a dierent job in the garage. When I replied I preferred to be hired based upon my skills and not my gender, his response of, “Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.” I should have known. I REALLY should have known.I separated from the Air Force in June 2002 after 13 years active duty, one year as an IMA Reservist and 10 months Involuntary Mobilization to Active Duty. I was issued a hardship discharge when my youngest child was born and diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. My husband retired after 21 years active duty and we moved to my hometown Standish, MI. My time in the Air Force was nothing short of charmed. I worked extremely hard, volunteered often, and received accolades and recognition. I was awarded Air Combat Com-mand’s Law Enforcement Airmen of the Year in 1993. My list of accomplishments spanned from awless command and control of air-craft crashes to Law Enforcement Evaluator to NCOIC, Special Projects for the Director of Tactics reporting to the Secretary of the Air Force, Acquisitions Oce. Although my time in the Air Force uniform was intense, I never thought my hardest days would come from my time in the Department of Veterans Aairs Po-lice uniform.My son’s medical condition was stable, I was working at the local casino when I attend-ed the wedding of a coworker and reconnected with another former Security Policeman. He told me about the VA Police Department and encouraged me to apply. Little did I know that decision would change my life entirely.My rst year on the force was uneventful and reminiscent of my active-duty years. I got along great with my fellow ocers, I made it clear that I enjoyed having fun at work and they could “treat me like one of the guys”. Exactly one year later, I recommended a fellow air-man from my time in Cheyenne, Wyoming; his presence in the department proved to be a turbo boost to the already-present misogyny and sexism. A few months after his arrival, his racist equivalent joined the force. It didn’t take long to realize how far o the rails the jokes had digressed, and I tried desperately to get them to stop. Unfortunately, my pleas fell upon deaf ears. After an investigation and disciplinary action was imposed, the perpetrators were re-turned to duty with full rank (over me, in su-pervisory roles) then the retaliation began.I considered explaining the bitter details of my plight but instead I will explain how I mud-dled through it all and became a better person on the other side. As I’ve read through many whistleblower stories, I’ve surmised they really are all the same, only the names are changed. Something that stood out to me was how min-imal my retaliation was in comparison to so many others which compounded my despair. I hadn’t experienced anything like this in my charmed professional life and I found myself plummeted into my lowest of lows. When I read about other ocers who were left with-out back-up or physically assaulted in locker rooms, I realized later that my petty annoyanc-es were simply that, petty. However, regardless of the gravity (or mildness) of the retaliation against me; in my eyes, the magnitude was as-tronomical, which left me feeling abandoned, criticized, vulnerable, and ultimately weak. By applying one of my survival techniques, “It could always be worse,” I reminded myself that although I was struggling, others have strug-gled more. It was at that moment I realized I was privy to the tiniest glimpse into the life of a margin-alized portion of society. Although there was denite gender bias, I began to perceive EVERY afront as retaliatory or because of being female. is insight aorded me the opportunity to rec-ognize how fragile perception can be. Coupling this fragile perspective with gaslighting wrong doers, I felt like I had completely lost my mind. After two years of talk therapy, certication as a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Peer Support Specialist, meditation/Chakra alignment and a renewed relationship with Jesus, I owered into an improved version of myself. Initially, I found myself championing for every marginalized person and would put myself forward as their shield. It didn’t take me long to realize there were more people eager to put MY neck on the line, rather than compro-mise their own. I have gured out how to be supportive of my fellow whistleblowers while securing my emotional stability by stepping back and applying an energy shield -an interesting skill that I acquired from watching a Tik-Tok video on Reiki. I have learned to create and honor my boundaries by speaking up as soon as situations begin to make me feel un-comfortable. I am eternally grateful to the peer support groups I have joined; Whis-tleblowers of America and the Lamplighter Project are an integral part of my health and wellness. I am thankful I can work amongst the people who previously sought my termi-nation with such voracity.And as I wrap up my thoughts on this situ-ation, my next endeavor involves an interview with a congressional oversight subcommittee where I nd myself wavering between seeking justice and seeking a fair workplace in which nobody is afraid to speak up. Hopefully, my input will help make things better for all police ocers everywhere. Baker is from a small town (Standish) in Michigan. She joined the U.S. Air Force during her senior year of high school and spent 15 years on active duty. She received a hardship discharge when her youngest child was born and diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. While she didn’t think she would ever wear a badge or carry a gun again, the opportunity to serve veterans presented itself, so she eagerly answered the call to be a Veterans Affairs Police Officer. Baker has three adult children and has been married to her first and only boyfriend for 33 years.In addition to being a certified peer support specialist, she also enjoys reading and making sock monkeys in her free time.

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18Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comI am a United States Coast Guard, LCDR/O4 mandatorily retired after having voiced objection to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation at the hands of senior ocers because of a lack of policy, understanding, and support for women trying to have a family utilizing medical means. e Coast Guard has Diversity and Inclusion and Human Capital Strategy plans which outline the idea of women having both a career and a fam-ily, but that is as far as the idea goes. In trying to pursue having a family, it cost me my career. To have a child of my own, I need-ed to utilize in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. IVF treatments are costly (fteen-to-twenty-ve thousand dol-lars), can take months to complete, re-quire close ultrasound monitoring, daily blood work, and availability to administer time criti-cal drugs that sometimes require refrigeration. ere are a handful of Department of Defense (DOD) facilities that provide IVF services at a reduced cost, but they are not available to everyone. ere is no mechanism in place to be stationed in proximity to utilize their ser-vices, there is a long waiting list, and limits to services based on age or medical condition in question exist. I was 38 years old when I met my hus-band, and we started trying to have a family. e DOD facilities would not take me as a patient because of my age and I was forced to seek treatment elsewhere. My journey to cre-ate a family of my choosing was met with dis-dain, judgment, and resistance by more than one command. After struggling for nearly two years, I wrote a White Paper addressing the multiple shortfalls in both our medical and ad-ministrative systems that discriminate against women seeking medical help to have a family. Although the Coast Guard positively endorsed my paper and went on to change the policy, their support in my case was largely philosoph-ical. I continued to deploy and stand duty that negatively impacted my fertility treatments. My Ocer Evaluation Report (OERs) marks and recommendations dropped in precise cor-relation with my increased determination to receive medical treatment to become pregnant. I led an Equal Opportunity (EO) com-plaint, and it was during mediation that a senior male O6 justied lowering my marks because of my IVF treatments, “it wasn’t [my] professionalism that was in question, it was [my] emotional control and poise and getting along with others” and went on to compare my medical treatment to the equivalent of getting a DUI. After that reveal, the EO com-plaint was suddenly dropped with justi-cation that it exceeded the time limit.Based on the Coast Guard’s policy for a Medical Weight Abeyance, there are three reasons already recognized for approval, and they are steroid, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and thyroid issues. I met not one, but two of the three criteria to grant a waiver. My initial request based on steroid use, which was positively endorsed by a Coast Guard medical ocer, was denied because IVF treat-KERRYKARWANIt took nearly 5 years and the intervention of Congress to get the investigation nalized.The Whistleblower Chronicles

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19Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022To Preserve The Freedom &Prosperity We & Our Families Fought & Sacrificed To Defend.JOIN OUR ARMYVisit CV4A.org to learn more!SMments were considered “elective.” Other types of elective procedures considered cosmetic are nose jobs or breast enhancements. My appeal captured my medical condition of PCOS which was noted by one of my IVF doctors and again veried by an OBGYN, and yet the appeal with an applicable medical condition was also denied. I was recommended for promotion to O5; I lled an O5 billet for 2 years; and I successfully screened for Command of an O5 position, but I was never selected to O5. When I was mandatorily retired in 2017, the Coast Guard neglected to recognize my hon-orable retirement with a ceremony. It took initiating an investigation into the matter for my certicates, shadow trunk, and DD-214 to be sent to me. I led a complaint with the Department of Homeland Securi-ty (DHS),and DHS Whistleblowers start-ed an investigation. It took nearly 5 years and the intervention of Congress to get the investigation nal-ized. Once complete, the investigation was sadly of poor quali-ty and largely unre-sponsive to the alle-gations made. Not to be deterred from jus-tice, I have gone on to hire a lawyer to le a Board of Correction for Military Records (BCMR), another ten-to-15 thousand dollar costly procedure. I have also been working with the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) to put a bill in place to address the shortfalls our service women face when trying to maintain a career and build a family. e military battles retention issues. While younger and serving, IVF services were not available to me; however, having retired, the VA has a program to provide IVF services to women with service-connected injuries/ ailments. At 42-years-old, my PCOS was deemed service related, and I was aorded six IVF cycles and three transfers through a new program put in place in January 2017. After eight years and enduring a total of 12 IVF cycles at seven dierent clinics in ve dierent states, a month before my 46 birth-day, we welcomed our daughter Waverly into the world. Although our family journey has a happy ending, most of the hurdles we faced getting there were extremely unnecessary. Women serving should not be forced to choose be-tween serving their country and having a fam-ily, but the fact I can obtain birth control pro-vided to prevent a pregnancy and little to no assistance nancially or medically to maintain a pregnancy speaks volumes to which is supported. I can still serve my coun-try when I am 50 years old; however, I can no longer have a child of my own at that age. Women’s reproductive abilities are nite, and actions speak louder than words. If our service to our country is in-deed valued, show us you understand what it means to be a woman with the pol-icies and medical care that support our unique gift to not only be sailors, soldiers, marines, airmen, or guardians, but also mothers. Kerry Karwan is a retired Coast Guard LCDR after filling the needs of the service for 20 yrs. Her qualifications include Logistics, Response, Administrative, and Engineering. She was also Coast Guard Elite Athlete of the Year 2004 and nominated for the Captain Dorothy Stratton Leadership Award in 2015. After 12 IVF treatments over 8 years at 7 different clinics in 5 different states they finally welcomed their daughter to the family. Kerry Karwan is still advocating for change in the way DOD and DHS treat women who need fertility assistance while serving their country. She currently resides in the Bay Area.

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20Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comI received a call from Heidi Goettel of the Crowley Fleck PLLP Law Firm, requesting some amplication on behalf of the minor daughter of a woman veteran (deceased) who is appealing DFAS denial of payment of a survivor annuity she should have received for nearly 17 years with a value of over $340,000, however, she was unaware of her entitlement, and when her father learned of the benet she should have received, DFAS denied payment based on a statute of limitations. At every step of the way, I have been saddened, abbergast-ed; and as a veteran myself, too-understanding of the red tape that has allowed this travesty to happen. Major Joan Dixon was serving as a rst-year anesthesiology resident U.S. Air Force Guard; as reported by Scott Mansch in the Great Falls Tribune on Jan 4, 2018, Dixon grew up in Omaha and Orlando. Her family was from a tiny town in the Sand Hills coun-try of northwest Nebraska. She would meet then-Captain Darrin Dixon in San Antonio, Texas where both were stationed -he as an sta nurse anesthetist. ey married Feb. 5, 2000, and while Captain Dixon had nished his time serving his country, Major Dixon had IN THIS DAY AND AGE, UPON READING A TITLE SUCH AS MAJOR JOAN N. DIXON (RETIRED) (DECEASED), MY THOUGHTS ARE SIMPLY, ‘I HOPE HER FAMILY IS CARED FOR.’ UnaccountableHow the DFAS kept $340,000 from a familyBY SHEILA L. HOLMES

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21Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022not; they moved to California three years later where the Dixons learned they were pregnant, and then a short 25 weeks later, they found out she was dying. Major Dixon was 34 at the time. Alexandra Nicole Dixon was born in 2003 at 34 weeks and three pounds. Ten days later, the Dixons were able to take Alex home. Six months later, Major Dixon was gone.Upon Major Dixon’s medical retirement, she’d taken steps to ensure her family was cared for via a Survivor Benet Plan (SBP) annui-ty. While she could have elected one of three dierent options: spouse only, child only, or spouse and child, she chose to elect the spouse and child option and listed both her spouse and child as beneciaries. Upon her death, according to her contract: “Only one an-nuity is payable. It is paid rst to the spouse, who is the primary beneciary. If the spouse loses eligi-bility due to remarriage prior to age 55 or death, the annuity is paid in equal shares to any eligi-ble child(ren). When the last eligible child loses el-igibility. Survivor Benet Plan payments stop. e annuity can be reinstated for the spouse if the re-marriage ends.”ink of the antiquat-ed rules that may have originated this benet structure: when it was ex-pected for women to be stay-at-home caretak-ers and their spouse passed, they would need help with their children. Once she remarried, the new spouse would be expected to take on care of those children -hence the payments would cease. While I personally don’t under-stand this, having grown up in a world where parents continue to care for their own children regardless of remarriages, let us set the sexist antiquated rules aside. If the surviving spouse divorces, only then does the Spouse and Child annuity begin to be repaid to the parent -rath-er than the child. Following Major Dixon’s death, her hus-band timely reported her death and survivor information. He was provided an annuity claim packet including the DD Form 2627 Verica-tion of Annuitant (the “original claim”) to ap-ply for the Spouse and Child Annuity which he submitted on June 27, 2004. Section 3b provides necessary identifying information for children for payment of a Spouse and Child an-nuity. e original claim lists Alexandra’s identi-fying information as a minor dependent on Section 3b. Mr. Dixon started receiving the annuity and when he re-married, he informed DFAS of his remarriage. Mr. Dixon’s attorney, Heidi Goettel of the Crow-ley Fleck PLLP Law Firm, points out, “e DFAS claim le should have been coded as Spouse and Child type annuity and included Alexandra’s identifying in-formation and her birthdate as the youngest minor eligi-ble child contingent payee, so that payment and veri-cation and payment forms would be generated and sent to Mr. Dixon as guard-ian for Alexandra for her payments under the annui-ty while he was remarried;” however, notication was made neither to him nor their minor child.It may be important to note that during the time when Mr. Dixon notied DFAS, they were in the process of moving DFAS oces across the country and changing computer systems. According to Congressional reports related to that move, tons of people were having processing errors. Congress has told these agencies repeatedly they need to get better at looking out for people. Imagine his surprise upon noti-cation to DFAS after the end of his second marriage when he was informed the annuity (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)...the Air Force stipulates the annuity wasn’t claimed byMr. Dixon for his daughter correctly upon his remarriage; DFAS also claims noaccountability for notaddressing the payout toAlexandria...should’ve continued to go to Alexandra during the entire time of his remarriage. He was never aware that it should’ve passed to her; even if he was, how can one person’s ignorance abolish the rights of a minor child to their payout?

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22Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comWhile the U.S. Air Force stipulates the annuity wasn’t claimed by Mr. Dixon for his daughter correctly upon his remarriage; DFAS also claims no accountability for not address-ing the payout to Alexandria when her name was clearly on the original claim form. Adding insult to injury these 12 years later, DFAS fur-ther claims it’s too late due to statute of limita-tions -or the Barring Act which species claims against the United States must be presented to the appropriate ocial or agency within six years after the claim accrues.Under most state law and other govern-ment agency policies, statutes of limitations are paused for minors or don’t start until the error is discovered. How does a government agen-cy expect a six year old to appropriately le a claim, else the benet is completely absolved. How would the government hold a civilian to the Barring Act’s statute of limitations, or is it solely because Mr. Dixon himself served in the military that they are holding him to this stan-dard while simultaneously absolving their own agency of nancial mishandling of a deceased veteran woman’s child’s annuity.Unsurprisingly for anyone who served in the military, the review board is ridiculously behind. e existing appeals board typically processes requests for small overpayments and security clearance appeals; it’s a rst-come, rst-serve ar-rangement with no avenue to expedite a case like this. Ms. Goettel sharted that their appeal sub-mitted in Aug of 2021 wasn’t even acknowledged as received until six months later with an email merely indicating acknowledgement of receipt. Each delay is a further insult to the family, a loss of invested nancial gain, and a stain on the claim that we take care of our own as well as our military families. Major Dixon’s wishes were not cared for as a veteran; neither Dixon as a veteran himself, nor Mr. Dixon as her spouse were cared for in this process; and, the child of a deceased veteran who honorably served was not cared for. It’s likely there are other children in this sit-uation who were not paid benets they should have been paid, and don’t even know. May this letter serve as its own form of whistle blowing to this practice of denying dependent children their nancial rights. If other families are only now learning of these errors after more than six years, their claims will be denied on this technical “gotcha” under the Barring Act. ere are three ways, suggested by Mr. Dixon’s attorney that could avoid this level of injustice: • Revise the Barring Act statute of limita-tions to have an exception for minors (called tolling)• Create an expedited appeal process for claims of this nature when the claimant is a minor dependent and the benets at issue are of substantial value.• Require DFAS to accrue unclaimed benets of minor beneciaries and require DFAS to provide notice of unclaimed benets and as-sistance for the minor in the claims processFrom my perspective, and I trust many of our readers would agree: how is waiting years accept-able for a benet that the child of a woman vet-eran medically discharged due to terminal cancer -not to mention her spouse veteran- should’ve received to begin with? How are we serving the servicewomen who served us by denying their families nancial compensation they’re entitled to? Moreover, how is a child under six years old responsible for applying for a benet their deceased parent elected -why should any other How does a governmentagency expect a six year old to appropriately le a claim, else the benet is completely absolved.

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23Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022adult be responsible for ‘requesting’ that justied monetary entitlement when the child’s name is clearly listed as beneciary? How many oth-er deceased women veterans’ children are being manipulated by a system not designed to protect them in any way; in fact, intended to place blame anywhere else but the broken system with which it originated? ese questions are rhetorical. We all know what the right thing to do here is, and while his attorney is hopeful, “Everyone is being positive when it goes through the cor-rection board the decision will be overturned, it’s been three years of waiting for nancial recompense that should’ve been paid over the last 18 years,” -invested properly, those funds could have been used for the minor’s support -as intended- or accrued interest for education now, or both. DFAS has oered to initiate a waiver -essentially an exception to the Barring Act, but that would be limited to $25,000 -and we’re talking about a lost pay-out of over $346,683.What’s Now-Major Darrin Dixon’s Goal? Major Dixon shared with us, “My daugh-ter Alex is about to graduate from high school as a highly accomplished 4.0 student and will enter the honors college at Grand Canyon University to study pre med. She is following in both her late mother’s and my footsteps and planning on going into anesthesiology. I re-entered the National Guard in March of 2022, three months after Alex turned 18, and I felt that she was independent enough and wise enough to approve or disapprove of me closing the loop on my previous dream of military retirement.” According to his attor-ney: “Anything he can do to keep this from happening to others. As far as we can tell after extensive research, there is still no guidance or formal process for notifying a surviving minor child who was not the original an-nuitant and only becomes eligible after the surviving spouse becomes ineligible, remar-ries, or dies, so this very well could still be happening to others still. ere may be many minor children unaware of their change in eligibility for survivor annuity benets, who were never sent notication or claim paper-work when their parent(s) became ineligible, just like Alexandra. e current policy and payment manuals still refer to this spouse and child SBP annuity payment as if it transfers automatically to the child when the spouse becomes ineligible.” Major Dixon has also written about his experiences in Broken Road Warriors, obtainable via Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Road-Widow-ers-Darrin-Dixon/dp/1974032302). What’s Mr. Dixon’s attorney’s goal? e hope is that DFAS will establish policy that the surviving spouse’s report of remarriage or death is sucient to initiate processing payment to the minor children automatically (or have pay-ments accrue for them pending verication paper-work), that will generate payment paperwork to be sent to the minor. An express exception to the Barring Act for minor children annuitants, who at no fault of their own, even though established in the DFAS system with the surviving spouse claim, were not notied of their parent’s ineligibility or provided paperwork to start payments would also be ideal. Darrin’s attorney shared, “I can’t think of a more deserving group to ensure is protected and treated fairly than the surviving minor children of deceased service members. is is a major crack in the system that needs to be brought to the atten-tion of those with power to do something to rec-tify it (which is really Congress and the President at this point). I have inquired with Senator Tester’s oce about a legislative x.”I encourage any of our readers who can fur-ther assist this family to please reach out to us via contact@avowmagazine.com or to Heidi Goettel of the Crowley Fleck PLLP Law Firm, Helena, Montana, directly. We must bolster the change we need to make in order to care for all our veterans and their families.

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25Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022CHILDHOODIn Ohio, Nadeem had a fairly normal childhood. She recalls going to church with her grandmother and mother and then to the mosque with her father. So, she thought it was completely normal to go to both church and a mosque as a child and didn’t know any dierence. Nadeem wasn’t aware her dad was an immigrant; he was simply dad to her. Na-deem said, “For the most part, I had a good childhood, but unfortunately witnessed my fa-ther physically abuse my mother and this very much confused me and made me fear him, yet I still loved him because he was my father.” She shared that her mother never deserved what her father did to her. Since her father grew up in Iraq, hitting women was not uncommon and Nadeem’s grandfather did the same to his wife (her grandmother). IRAQNadeem was just eight-years-old when her life changed forever. She traveled with her par-ents to Iraq because her father told her mother that his mother was sick and they all needed to visit her before it was too late. Her mother agreed and the family headed to Iraq to vis-it her sick grandmother. e excitement of missing school for two weeks to go to Iraq in 1991 was an amazing adventure for a young girl. Nadeem remembers the family from her father’s side as warm and extremely welcom-ing. “My sister and I were the ‘American’ girls. Neither I nor my sister spoke Arabic, so we listened. Overall, it was a great trip -or so I thought...”, she shared. e last night before they were supposed to y back to the U.S., her father woke up her and her sister, telling both of them that he wanted to take them out. Nadeem mentioned the excitement of waking up in the middle of the night to go out with their dad, but they ended up at their aunt’s house -their dad’s sister. eir aunt had children too, so they played with them. Since it was the middle of the night, she recalled her baby sister, who was 4 years younger than her, starting to cry. Nadeem started looking for their dad, but he was nowhere to be found. Na-deem said, “My cousins and aunt were great to us, but we wanted our mom and dad.” She also said that as a child, she never liked her own sister, “She was always my competition for attention, but that day I tried to console her. I knew she was scared and I was scared, too. We only had each other. Plus, we didn’t understand what anyone was saying to us because we only spoke English and they only spoke Arabic.” Alea Nadeem’s childhood was…different, to say the least. She was born in Toledo, Ohio, to a Muslim father and a Catholic mother.Her father came to the U.S. from Iraq on a student visa attending university,and her mother was a native of Ohio. Nadeem’s parentsmet through mutual friends, and she was their rst child.(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)BORN IN THEU.S.A.Caught between two worldsBY CHRISTINA WILKINSON

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26Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comKIDNAPPED As one of the longest nights of Nadeem’s life, she woke up the next morning without a father or mother -just her sister and cousins. Days went by, and their father nally came back. She said she remembers going up to the second oor to one of the bedrooms, and their dad sat them down to talk to them. At that time, they were both too confused and young to understand the weight of the conversation that was about to happen. eir father re-vealed to them their mother had left the fam-ily in Iraq and returned to the U.S. He told them she didn’t want them anymore. When asked why, he told them he didn’t know, but it would be the three of them now. Having been yelled at by her mother previ-ously for not brushing her teeth, she thought if she brushed her teeth that maybe her mom would consider coming back. Many things came to Nadeen’s mind about what she might have done that made their mother leave. “My sister and I both cried with my father that day. He left again, and we once again stayed at my Aunt’s house by ourselves. e house was full of my six cousins, but we still felt alone,” Nadeem said. After two months passed, one morning Nadeem heard scream-ing and yelling. It was her mother cursing, yelling, and crying all at the same time. Her mother shouted, “Alea! Ayesha!” and they ran downstairs to nd their mother. She said, “We hugged her tight and we were overwhelmed with a sense of safety and security immediately. I remember I could smell her; it was a familiar scent that com-forted me as nothing else could.” All three of them left the aunt’s house and returned to the same place from which the father had taken them from. When they got back, it appeared that all the family members were there, including their father. ey stayed there for a month, reunited with their mother, but her VISA was about to expire and their father told their mother that DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO WHEN YOU WERE A KID? Nadeem: This is very embarrassing, but when I was a kid I wanted to be a cheerleader. I thought you could have a full time job as a cheerleader. I thought it would be fun to cheer and dance. Spoiler — I opted for a different profession. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO BE STATIONED WHILE IN THE USAF? Nadeem: My favorite place was Los Angeles, AFB. It was beautiful, and the world was at your ngertips. I met so many amazing people, and it had spectacular weather and beaches all year round. I would go back in a heartbeat if the chance came up. I also pursued my masters at University of Southern California in social work while I was stationed there, so I felt very rooted and part of the Los Angeles community.WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE A WOMAN FROM IRAQ SERVING IN THE U.S. MILITARY? Nadeem: Being Iraqi-American and serving in the military was ne. Most people welcomed me in and acknowledged we needed more people who understood the Middle East. When I rst joined, I just wanted to ‘t in’. I didn’t want to be an Iraqi woman, I just wanted to prove myself. I laugh at that now because I can still be Iraqi, a woman, and an Airwoman. I’ve embraced that now, and I try to share my perspective of growing up in a war-torn country as a child, and as a female. We need different perspectives and I hope to always help provide that. I am an American and I’m thankful for that every day. EXTRAS

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27Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022she had to go back to the U.S. and sell his busi-ness and their house then return back to Iraq. In the fall of 1991, Nadeem, her mother and sister had their bags packed and ready to go to the airport. at’s when their father said their mother could only take one of them back to the U.S. eir mother asked their father why he was making her do this. Nadeem shared, “My mother started crying, and in that moment my heart sank. I don’t remember all the words shared among her and my father, but she was forced to get in a car with my sister and I was left behind.” e rage, anger, and helplessness Nadeem said she felt is indescribable. at day would be burned into her head -between the emo-tions, the smell, and just pure anger she was going through. Nadeem said she was angry for being left behind, “Why was I being left here? What was I supposed to do? Why did she pick my sister and not me? I took it one day at a time because that was all I could do or com-prehend as an 8 year old. I was an American child, who didn’t speak Arabic, lost my moth-er and sister; and later that year, the rst Gulf War in Iraq started.” RESCUEDDuring the time Nadeem was stuck/kid-napped in Iraq, her mother worked tirelessly with the FBI and local authorities in Ohio to try and gure out how to get her back. e FBI helped with devising a plan, but her mother had to execute it. Her mother had to convince her father that she was going to sell his business in the U.S. and she would give him the money for the sold-o business; but he needed to come to the U.S. Surprisingly, he agreed to go back, but only to Canada. Once Nadeem’s father landed in Canada, her mother was able to get him to cross over the border into the U.S. where he was arrested by the FBI. eir father was then ordered to prison until Nadeem was returned. By this time Iraq was a war-torn country and Nadeem only had her American passport, so it could never be high-lighted that she was an American as the Iraqi government could detain her. So in the night, her uncle drove her to Jordan where she was re-united with her mother. at’s where they ew back to the United States. Ohio’s local Con-gresswomen at the time (Marcy Kaptur), the FBI, and Canadian authorities all helped make it possible. Nadeem’s mother worked tirelessly for 3.5 years to get her back.During her time in Iraq, Nadeem said, “I had no choice but to become an Iraqi girl, learn to speak Arabic, embrace the family I had, and survive the war.” ankfully, Nadeem did survive and she nal-ly returned to the U.S. MILITARYWhen the U.S. was attacked on Septem-ber 11th, 2001, Nadeem was back in the United States and a junior in high school. Be-cause people at that time were saying negative things about Middle Eastern people, Nadeem knew at that time Americans could not tell the dierence between a terrorist, a Muslim, or an Arab. She said, “Everyone seemed to be lumped into one category. at was the rst time I was hyper-aware that I was of Middle Above: (then) CaptainNadeem with Lester Holt NBC Nightly News.(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

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28Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comEastern descent.” She continued, “I remember people saying nasty things about Middle East-ern people and Muslims. I remember think-ing my family in Iraq are amazing people and Middle Eastern people and Muslims in general are good people.” Like so many others, Na-deem felt she was called to serve and help. She thought her language and cultural experience could help the U.S. military. While she was still very, very naive, she thought she would be able to just join the military and deploy right away. What she didn’t realize is that she would have to go through basic training and be as-signed a specialty code. So she enlisted in the Security Forces, because she was told they de-ploy the most, and she left for basic training in 2004, right after her high school graduation. Nadeem’s rst year in the military was both exciting and tough at the same time. She said, “I remember when I was at basic training; I thought, ‘is was a dumb decision to join the military,’ but after basic, and going to my tech-nical training for security forces, I was able to see the community and the bond that comes with serving in the military.” She became a typical E-3 doing her job and onto a new ad-venture in life. Loving her job, Nadeem decided she want-ed to remain in the military longer, so she sought a commission as an Ocer, beginning as an OSI agent, then cross-training into In-telligence. Nadeem is currently an intelligence ocer in the U. S. Air Force Fellows program with Congress. Nadeem said, “I enjoy my time in the mil-itary. It’s given me purpose and has oered me opportunities that I could never have dreamed of elsewhere. I feel I’ve been able to help bridge some of the cultural gaps between the U.S. and Middle East. e U.S. is still operating in Iraq and other places in the Middle East, so I love when I can contribute to those mission sets that focus on the Middle East. I also get to help change policy for servicewomen through the Air Force Women’s Initiatives Team, and that has been especially rewarding.” Between the events that happened to her as a child and what happened on 9/11 that led

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29Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022her to where she is today, Nadeem still never thought in a million years -as she put it- she would join the military. It was never on her radar. She said, “I sometimes say the Air Force called me, I didn’t call it, but I love every mo-ment.” e Air Force has given her a lot and she shared that she is grateful to serve because the United States rescued her from Iraq and ensured she got back home safely. Nadeem added, “I can assure you that in Iraq, if a child is kidnapped or taken, there is no search party like there is in the U.S. So I’m forever grateful to this country and love serving it. If it was not for the U.S. I might still be in Iraq today.” Nadeem eventually got to meet the FBI agent who worked the case to bring her back from Iraq.She sometimes wishes she had taken a path other than joining the Air Force. Nadeem said, “Much like the rest of DoD, the Air Force is a bureaucracy. ere are challenges associated with bureaucracy and I don’t much care for that. I think if I was not in the military I would probably have liked to pursue a doctorate in psychology or neurology or be an advocate for women or animal rights.” Based on what has happened to Nadeem, she is involved in an organization called No One Left Behind (NOLB). It is a nonprot helping Iraqis and Afghans who have been persecuted while working for U.S. troops as translators. Most of the Iraqi/Afghan inter-preters who helped the U.S. had bullseyes on them after the U.S. left or their services were no longer required. e U.S. acknowl-edged this and started a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) specically for Iraqis and Af-ghans and NOLB helps them when they rst arrive in the U.S. e interpreters receive a one-way ticket to the U.S. with their fam-ilies, but they have very little resources or anyone waiting for them when they get o the plane. So NOLB assists by helping with initial rent, furniture, cookware, beds -ba-sically enough to get them set up. Nadeem said, “We want to help them with their tran-sition to the U.S. and ensure they succeed in the U.S. I’ve had a family who has been di-rectly aected by this so it’s very important and personal to me.”When asked what she likes to do in her spare time, she said, “I usually spend every Sunday with Ray Ray -my beautiful Belgian horse.” https://nooneleft.org/ Left: With Navy veteran, Melissa Washington, founder of the Women Veterans Alliance.

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30Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comFrom the budget overview: Supports Women Veterans’ Healthcare. The Budget invests $9.8 billion for all of women veterans’ healthcare, including $767 million toward women’s gender specic care. More women are choosing VA healthcare than ever be-fore, with women account-ing for over 30 percent of the increase in veterans enrolled over the past ve years. Investments support comprehensive specialty medical and surgical ser-vices for women veterans at a VA facility or through referrals to the community. The Budget proposes to increase access to infertility counseling and assisted re-productive technology and to eliminate copayments for contraceptive coverage. The Budget also improves the safety of women veter-ans seeking healthcare at VA facilities by supporting implementation of the zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment and assault.From the VA’s Budget Justication:Relevant Proposed Legis-lation Treatment Authority for Infertility Counseling and Infertility Treatment using Assisted Reproduc-tive Technology, Including In Vitro Fertilization, for Certain Veterans and their Partners, and Authority to Provide Reimbursement for Adoption-Related Expenses for Certain Veterans This legislative proposal would enhance equity by expanding access to As-sisted Reproductive Tech-nology (ART), including in vitro fertilization (IVF) and adoption reimbursement to single Veterans, those in same-sex relationships, and those who need donor gametes and/or embryos to VHA - 314 Medical Care build their families. This legislative propos-al is necessary to ll the gap created by the legal requirements, exclusions, and limitations in VA’s cur-rent program. It would also help VA comply with its statutory mission to provide a complete set of hospital and medical services for Veterans.Eliminating Veteran Cost-Sharing for Contraception VA proposes to eliminate copays for contraception. Contraception ensures that individuals capable of pregnancy are able to decide whether and when to become pregnant. However, many people face barriers to accessing contraception, which can result in unintended preg-nancy and adverse physical and mental health out-comes. Reducing unintend-ed pregnancy in women is an important element of reducing maternal mortali-ty by reducing the number of high-risk and high-par-ity births. Contrary to the situation of the general United States population under certain other Federal or private insurance plans, however, VA still requires some Veterans to pay a copay for contraception. VA proposes to eliminate cost-sharing for contra-ception medications, and to eliminate cost-sharing for contraception-related health care and services when contraception-related services are the only care provided within the visit, to improve access to contra-ception and improve health outcomes.PRESIDENT’S BUDGET2022Proposes to eliminate copayments for contraceptive coveragefor veterans and proposes legislationto expand access to assisted reproductive technology, including IVF.

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31Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022A Wild Ride Called Life began in 2016 after my retirement of over 17+ years in the U.S. Army. I was struggling emotionally and needed to nd a way to save myself from the dark thoughts that para-layzed me. I knew I did not want my children to see me this way. I wanted to leave a legacy -and I am.It was trademarked and registered in 2019 and has since been viewed all over the world. Under A Wild Ride Called LIfe we have created a community to include speaking en-gagements to include international speaking, a mentorship program and a top-ranked veteran owned podcast. e Podcast has highlighted guests as far as Australia and Spain. We share stories of over-coming obstacles and giving Hope to those who are suering in silence. We have an international four-episode show broadcasted from Singapore and are working on an international book tour.We have collaborated with several veter-an-owned businesses to create branded mer-chandise in order to spread our message and to give back to and work with non-prots which provide therapy to our military, veterans, rst responders, and their families. Our community is made up of men and women who need a safe space to be heard. We help them nd the courage and strength to use their voice and not be ashamed of their mental health struggles. BUSINESS SPOTLIGHTA Wild Ride Called LifeTHE TRUTHS WE HIDE PODCAST/ MENTORSHIP PROGRAMwww.awildridecalledlife.comhttps://linktr.ee/a_wild_ride_called_lifeARMY RETIRED DISABLED COMBAT VETERAN, MOTHER OF TWO TEENS, MILITARY SPOUSE. I HELP ALL THOSE WHO ARE SUFFERING FROM THEIR OWN MENTAL ILLNESS TO KNOW THAT IT IS OK TO NOT BE OK. AS A TRAUMA SURVIVOR MYSELF, I SHARE HOW I LIVE.

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33Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022On July 7, 1976, the U.S. Military Academy welcomed 1,452 new cadets on Reception Day, including 119 women marking the rst time women enrolled at West Point in the academy's history. Four years later, 62 women would graduate as members of the Class of 1980 becoming the rst female members of the Long Gray Line. PHOTO BY BRANDON O’CONNOR, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT Brig. Gen. Cindy Jebb has served as the Dean of the Academic Board at the U.S. Military Academy since June 2016, becoming the rst woman to hold the position. Jebb grad-uated from West Point in 1982 and played in the rst Army-Navy volleyball game while a cadet.COURTESY PHOTO UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT < U.S. Military Academy cadets sing the West Point alma mater during their graduation ceremony at Michie Stadium. Nine hundred and thirty-six cadets from the Class of 2017 received their diplomas May 27. The class included 151 women, 72 African-Americans, 60 Asian/Pacic Islanders, 102 Hispanics and six Native Americans. There were 133 members of the class who attended the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School (114 men and 19 women). This class also included 21 combat veterans (20 men and one woman). U.S. ARMY PHOTO BY MICHELLE EBERHARTthe rigorous U.S. Military Academy's curric-ulum. So what? Why the big deal you ask? Not only is the academic curriculum grueling (21 to 24 credit hours per term) whereby each minute of every day for about nine months could consume a cadet, but there are military duties, team sports, group projects and more on top of the academics! One of those years as a cadet, I recall only having a nonconsecutive three-week break (including travel time to and from my places of duties). West Point's mili-tary training opportunities are aimed at devel-oping leaders of character to keep the nation's defense strong, robust and in a high state of readiness. You rst serve the U.S. Corps of Cadets, about 4200 students strong, organized into 36 companies, serve each other (and learn teamwork), then serve the public (upon graduating) throughout the world. On top of that, you don the Army uniform as a Lieu-tenant and an Ambassador (of sorts) for this nation. e bonds you develop as a cadet strengthen -like making a diamond. Fire and pressure make these relationships strong. West Point Women (WPW) of all ages are my sisters in arms in an instant. We can share funny stories and compare silly anec-dotes; in fact, we stand as maids of honor at each other's weddings or house a college son/daughter at each other's homes, should the need arise. Time zones or miles do not sepa-rate our hearts because we zoom or visit with one another! So you see, whenever there is a WPW gathering we take our calendars and SAVE THE DATE, blocking our calendars for these events. WPW have only had such a gathering of the "Long Gray Line with Curves" in 2005; 2013, and hopefully a third gathering this April 2022. How my heart yearns to see my sisters; I cannot wait! Class of 2023 Cadet Savannah Achenbach, above, entered West point set on joining the infantry upon graduation. To help prepare, she joined the Black and Gold Sandhurst team during her plebe year. PHOTO COURTESY OF SAVANNAH ACHENBACH

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GLAMPING35Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)Hello everyone and welcome! We started o as a gathering of wom-en veterans just going to Maine Forest Yurts, an o-grid glamping (fancy camping), after receiving such a high num-ber of women veterans wanting to meet other women veterans in a safe environment with no judgment.While women in uniform are noticed; a woman veteran is often INVISIBLE. Many women who experienced horric events do not even self-identify as veterans. In addi-tion, women often choose not to partici-pate in organizations when they are treated as if their service didn’t matter or their con-tributions didn’t count. ose women who opt out of veteran organizations present a challenge as they miss out on resources that are available to them. In turn, organi-zations may not feel the pressure to adapt to women veterans by maintaining their Good Old Boys club atmosphere. We rec-ognize the need to build mutual support over shared experiences of military service. With 300,000 women veterans in the U.S., it's nice to be able to know you have a sister from service no matter if you ever served together. You tied your boots the same way and served your country. Women veterans are assets to our communities. ey are sis-ters, aunts, nieces, cousins, mothers, grand-mothers, friends, and neighbors. ey served and sacriced just like the men. Here at Women Veteran’s Glamping Organization, our mission is to oer wom-en veterans an opportunity to recreate the comradery of shared experience in a safe environment. Our vision is for any women veteran who needs support and wants to at-tend Women Veteran’s Glamping should be able to do so.We honor every woman veteran as they are and acknowledge what they have gone through by paying it forward to care for our women veterans by empowerment, receiving support, and encouraging their soul to shine! e courage, love, dedica-tion, devotion, respect, integrity, con-dence, and loyalty each woman has in her for raising her right hand to defend her country encourages our patriotism to Our vision is for any women veteranwho needs support and wants toattend Women Veteran’s Glampingshould be able to do so.BY NICHOLE D. JORDANHolly Long and Cleo out for a canoe ride on Run-around Pond in Durham, Maine. Ice had just started forming on the shores Nov 2021.

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36Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comremain strong. By supporting one another as women veterans, they can have strong comrades to support them in tough times through the bonds of sisterhood. Inaugural GlampingAt the inaugural Women Veteran’s Glamp-ing in October 2019, Jordan heard how many of the veterans knew only one other woman veteran in their state. Being a woman veteran herself, that really hurt to hear. Jordan only knew a few women veterans herself from her American Legion activities of volunteer-ing and attending meetings. Unfortunately, many women veterans nd that if they don’t belong to the Good Old Boy’s Club or hang at the bar, they may not get involved to meet others. Often, due to the way many of the male veterans treat women veterans or due to assaults perpetrated against women veter-ans while on active duty, they want nothing to do with the veteran service organizations (VSOs). In these instances, they may not meet other women veterans at all.In 2021, 16 months after surviving lung cancer and skin cancer, Jordan wanted to do something more to give back to women vet-erans who have sacriced so much and seen hardship. Founder and President Nichole Jordan, U.S. Army Veteran (SPC 88M10), continued the months-long process of ap-plying for 501(c)3 nonprot status, which we’ve just received. e women veterans who attended during 2021 all paid for their stay and their food for the three-day weekend; however, for 2022, we will have no wom-en veterans paying to attend the Glamping Retreat. Several more senior women veterans came forward with their own donations to cover others who were not able to pay the fee to attend. is generosity drives us to do more for our women veterans.Above: Sunset at Hideaway Yurt at Maine Forest Yurts in Durham, Maine. Below: Our tree ladies are Rachel Putnam, Kristin Soucy, Sooz Roberts and photo from Holly Long.

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37Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022LodgingOur lodging is in collaboration with Maine Forest Yurts in Durham, Maine. ey have four yurts that sleep ve-to-six people in comfort. We have ve weekends scheduled through 2022 for the retreats posted on our website (www.WomenVerter-ansGlamping.org) where women veterans can submit an application to attend. is retreat is an o-grid Glamping event where one only needs to bring clothes and a tooth-brush. We have kayaking, canoeing, hiking the 100 acres of woods, and canvas paint-ing. Grab a hammock with new friends and relax by watching wildlife run-around a pond, relax at a walk-about pond in a bench swing, or dry o after swimming in the pond.Our meals are cooked by group of women volunteers who want to honor and serve their women veterans. Our host, Bob Crowley from Survivor: Gabon, stops by to thank the women veterans. We’ve also collaborated with Paul House in Lee Maine with his nonprot e House in e Woods retreat (https://houseinthe-wood.org/retreat-center/). House’s son, Sgt. Joel A. House, was killed by a roadside bomb while serving in the U.S. Army in HERE IS OUR COSTS BREAKDOWN:$250.00 — covers 2 nights lodging and food for 1 veteran$500.00 — covers 2 nights lodging and food for 2 veterans$750.00 — covers 2 nights lodging and food for 3 veterans$1000.00 — covers 2 nights lodging and food for 4 veterans$1250.00 — covers 2 nights lodging and food for 5 veterans$5500.00 — covers 2 nights and food for 20 veteransWe plan for 7 or more weekends of Glamping a year for women veterans$38500.00 — 7 Weekends of GlampingEmail: WomenVeteransGlamping@gmail.comWomen Veteran’s Glamping Organization283 Vassalboro RdChina, Maine 04358207-456-6114 NICHOLE JORDANPresident/FounderOf Women Veteran’s GlampingUS Army Gulf War Veteran(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)Fisher Ridge Yurt at Maine Forest Yurts in Durham, Maine.Toasty campre- Rachel Putnam and Holly Long- taking picture with Cleo, Holly’s service dog staying warm at 45º outside. Nov 2021.

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39Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022Iraq. House created a nonprot organiza-tion oering outdoor programs to bring to-gether small groups of active-duty military, veterans, and their family members to relax, share, bond, and deal with grief and other emotions which can haunt the grieving soul. Collaborating with e House in the Woods oers Women Veteran’s Glamping in a woods-retreat setting while still being on the grid, as many women veterans have medical equipment in need of electric recharging. Running water and a large indoor recreation hall is available for a multitude of purposes. Outdoor adventures await, and we can oer Glamping to those who cannot do o grid and still honor the women veterans with our organization. Quilts of HonorWe honor four women veterans with Quilts of Valor (https://www.qovf.org/) ev-ery weekend we have an event; 28 women veterans will be Quilted in 2022 events and will be thanked this year for their service and sacrice. We are very blessed to have Maine Quilts of Valor (https://www.qovf.org/state-coordinators/maine/) working to honor these women veterans. e quilts are beautiful, and thanks to them we will con-tinue to wrap our women veterans with love and honor.NonprotWe have remained a 100% charita-bly-run member Board and volunteers. Our board is made up of women veterans giving back to those who served. Every donation for sponsorship of a woman veteran covers food, lodging, and supplies. With our recent IRS determination, all donations will be a tax exempt for 2022. e smiles at the end of a retreat and the gratitude from the wom-en veterans say it all. Glamping donations of any size big or small are greatly appreciated. Annual, Corporate and Individual Spon-sorships also all welcome. Donations can be made via through our website: Women-VerteransGlamping.org Quilt of Valor Ceremony Oct 30, 2021- Held at Maine Forest Yurts Cabin- Vicki Brissette-US Navy, Nichole Jordan- US Army, Jannene Bidwell-US Navy/US Army, Sheryl Moore-US Navy, and Dawn Olges-US Navy. Our host, Bob Crowley fromSurvivor: Gabon, stops byto thank the women veterans.

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41Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)Welcome to Spring! is issue is de-voted to the most common chal-lenges we face as women veterans.ese are the conditions that many doctors and VA providers can’t address eectively; and they are the things that our moms told us about, but aren’t here, to help us resolve. “I went to my doctor, and she told me I needed to lose 40 pounds.”“My hair is falling out in handfuls.”“Every time I eat, I feel bloated and gassy.”“I feel like I am walking in a fog.”“I can’t concentrate…”“I have no energy.”“My aches and pains have aches and pains!”“I am 51 years old and have worse acne than when I was a kid…”“My skin just hangs on me and looks so crepey.”“What sex drive??? I have none.”When I hear these comments from my patients, I stop and ponder… are these symptoms of menopause, or can they be from something far more insidious like leaky gut syndrome, adrenal fatigue, al-lostatic overload, or are they symptoms from an unspecied autoimmune disorder?Traditional medical doctors will lean to menopause as it is a clear diagnosis that requires little thought or research. For them it is a quick oce visit that makes money for no eort, is easily treat-able with hormone replacement therapy, and if it isn’t resolved with treatments… they can’t be held liable, because idio-pathic conditions are the ‘get out of jail free’ wildcard doctors can assign when they don’t know the answer.For Complementary Practitioners, these conditions go far deeper, as they explore the hows and whys of individualized medicine and functional health. ey literally take the comment, “It’s all in your head,” seri-ously and look at neurotransmitter balanc-es, hormones, diet, DNA, and gut health before making recommendations for diet changes, supplements, and/or medication consults.IDIOPATHIC:Of unknown cause. Any disease that is of uncertainor unknown originmay be termed idiopathic. For example, acute idiopathic polyneuritis, diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, idiopathic pulmonary brosis, idiopathic scoliosis,etc.

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42Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comINTRODUCTIONJane Doe is a retired Chief from the Navy. After her discharge, she began to develop psychological symptoms and was prescribed multiple psych meds and other prescriptions. At her initial consultation, she relayed several relational, physical, and emotional challenges that she faced at that time. Over the years, she has gained weight and is classied as morbidly obese with over 200 pounds of excess weight.DIAGNOSESHer diagnoses include PTSD from military sexual assault and an abusive marriage as well as an antisocial personality disorder that leans to psychopathy. At present, she is working with a psychiatric nurse practitioner, counselor, and allopathic physician to manage the symptoms of the psychiatric diagnoses that she has been given. She takes multiple medications including antidepressants, antipsychotics, and sleep aids to function throughout the day, and she uses cannabis at night to help her mind relax.PRESENT LEVEL OF FUNCTIONINGJane has a poor self-image arising from her past trauma and weight gain. She understands that she has made poor choices and engaged in codependent sexual relationships in the past. From her counselor, she understands that she becomes emotionally locked in perseverant thoughts and uses eating as a coping mechanism. This is to avoid confrontation and maintain peace with her adult children, whom she tries to support nancially and ‘x’ their prob-lems. This is to protect them from the same types of struggles she endured when she raised them as a single parent. She internalizes her anger to a point where she can no longer hold it in, and then suffers psychotic breaks requiring hospitalization. Physically, she suffers from limited mobility because of her weight, has chronic pain, experiences continuous exhaustion, and of late reports losing large handfuls of hair.WELLNESS PLANBecause of the severity of Jane’s conditions, we realized that 16 weeks of intensive work would not mitigate the effect of 40 years of trauma and health challenges. To address this, we developed multiple and sequential wellness plans that have an integrative approach with her allopathic teams. These plans include a block of diet and nutrition coaching based on 5Strands testing, weekly physical stretching and healthy exercise in aquatic and ecotherapy sessions; a block of self-exploration and wellness coaching to develop plasticity in her right and left brains; and a block of emotional/relational coaching with sessions to balance her autonomic nervous system’s responses to lifestyle stressors. PROGRESSAfter a year of the varied coaching processes, following elimination and moderation diets, and participating in complementary therapies, Jane has maintained a loss of 30 pounds, reduced her BMI by 7%, and reports that her chronic pain has dissipated by about 80%. Because of her low self-esteem, she cannot see her success; moreover, she is frustrated with her perceived lack of progress in weight loss and admits to “cheating” by eating sweets with her grandchildren. As we have adjusted her goals, we decided to move forward with additional testing. To date, Jane recently completed hormonal and neurotransmitter testing, and she discovered that she has extremely low serotonin and GABA levels and astronomically high PEA levels. This is indicative of potential medication conicts which can affect her emotions and weight loss. A referral was made for her psychological and allopathic team to do a medical review and adjust her medications, and she has made new wellness goals to address through complementary care and functional medicine. PROGNOSISJane stands a signicant chance for improvement, now that we have additional understanding of the neurobiological barriers that she has been facing. She has also made noted progress through coaching, has a better understanding of her health issues, and has developed awareness of the precursors to her dysfunctional behavioral episodes.Case Study

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43Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022What are IdiopathicConditions?Merriam-Webster denes idiopathic condi-tions as those health conditions that 1. arise spontaneously, or from an obscure or unknown cause 2. peculiar to the individualMost of the above symptoms seem to arise spontaneously, but in reality they occur over time, and we are just too busy to notice them. We get caught up in raising families, going to school, following careers, or are struggling to get by and live paycheck to paycheck. To sum it up: we are too busy adulting to really stop and take care of ourselves.In the real world, idiopathic conditions can be the simple diagnosis to identify what doctors don’t have answers for, or they can be the unnamed conditions that most allopathic providers avoid, because they can’t x it with a prescription. Instead, they label them as stress-related conditions or psychological issues that need referrals. Idiopathic conditionsare NOT unknown.Women veterans are tired of not being heard or being dismissed. ey do not want to be labeled as psychological cases or passed from one provider to the net; they want answers to the challenges they face. ese women are highly trained leaders and warriors disempow-ered by health conditions that have no name -or is there a name that they haven’t heard of?Cue in the ash cards that say leaky gut syndrome, adrenal fatigue, or allostatic over-load. All of these conditions fall under psy-choneuroimmunology, functional medicine, and complementary health, and simply cannot be treated by an MD. ese issues are related to lifestyle wellness, food knowledge, and our specic DNA. In essence, these conditions are treatable with education, dietary changes, and individualized supplementation that we can’t get in our diets, not medication.“OMG, Dr. Ruth, this describes me!!!!!”5Strands Tests: In Dr. Ruth’s opinion, these are the most accessible, affordable, and user friendly for pa-tients to derive answers from. These tests are the least invasive and educate patients to their possible food and environmental challenges. They also empower patients to make controlled choices and substitutions over a period of time, so that they can track their health changes and improvements.Hormone and Neurotransmitter Tests: These tests are her second line of exploration that require urine and saliva samples. If a patient works through the 5Strands tests and still experiences health challenges that are not resolved through lifestyle and dietary changes, these tests go deeper to explore a patient’s hor-mone and neurotransmitter levels. The results of these tests usually lead to recommendations for dietary supplements that support methylation in the body so that the body can properly absorb and use the food nutrients it needs.Functional DNA Testing: Dr. Ruth feels that this test is the Cadillac or Gold Standard test when a person has made appropriate lifestyle and wellness changes, added appropriate supplementation, and still has challenges which affect their health. This test utilizes saliva and blood samples and will identify possible conditions that a person may develop, based on their unique combination of DNA that was inherited from both parents. When the results of this test are reviewed, they are usually used in conjunction with allopathy as the body may need integrative approaches to medical care. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of WellnessLiving with unknown or idiopathic conditions is simply not necessary. In life, there is a reason for everything, including health issues or challenges that seem to come from nowhere. Dr. Ruth has her patients track their lifestyle, diets, and symptoms, She recognizes patterns and then make recommendations in a specic wellness plan. This plan is more than a plan -it is a tool and a roadmap for my patients to take charge of their health in real life, make achievable steps, and measure their progress over time. Dr. Ruth’s job is to act as a health partner and help them understand how their lifestyle choices and diets impact their health and wellness. It really is this simple, and most of her patients see results in 16 weeks or less. They see their bodies change as their posture changes. With targeted interventions, they might see weight loss and have their tness scores increase. Most note that their chronic pain and brain fog goes away or is reduced; they feel better and have more energy; they develop new perspectives to life; their emotions seem to level out; and they can reconnect with themselves.Through functional medicine and complementary health perspectives, women veterans now have new resources and insights to help them take charge of their health. They no longer have to rely on biased providers. By understanding and exploring the individualized and personalized approaches to wellness, they can nd their voices. No longer do they have to accept being ignored or dismissed by the medical community. This is true medical freedom and empowerment!(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

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44Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comDr. Ruth Moore is a Fellow with the Complementary Medical Association and is a national health advocate and consultant. In her practice, she is an Integrative Health practitioner and cognitive behaviorist who is able to see the broad picture, help her clients identify goals, and translate these into actionable and attainable objectives. She has a background in cognitive neuroscience and behaviorism, spiritual psychology, and holistic kinesiology, and she specializes in stress reduction and balancing the autonomic nervous system. Dr. Moore’s education was launched in military service schools, including Georgia Military College. From there, she completed her undergraduate work at Excelsior College and then specialized in Behaviorism at National University. Her doctoral training was at Esoteric Theological Seminary where she earned a Theological Doctorate in Spiritual Psychology, then she achieved her Post-Doctoral Certicate in Integrative Medicine from Saybrook University. She is now a Ph.D. candidate in Psychoneuroimmunology (Mind-Body Medicine) also at Saybrook University.Dr. Ruth was Awarded the Voice for Change Award at the Truth and Justice Summit in Washington, DC and she was featured in the documentary ‘Make the Connection; Veteran Recovery and Empowerment.’ She has also been a featured guest expert on the television show ‘Inside Edition.’ Dr. Moore has spoken at the University of North Carolina, the SheWINS International Summit, presented at the Washington, D.C.’s Mayor’s ofce on Veteran’s Affairs, and has spoken as an expert on the subjects of Functional Medicine / Neuroscience and Integrative Medicine. In addition, Dr. Ruth Moore is also the founder of INTERNITY. This nonprot organization has a MEET DOCTOR RUTH MOORE AND COOPERWhen I meet with patients to deliver their wellness plans (after their rst consultation), this is usually the rst comment that I hear. Some women are overcome with emotions and cry (either in frustration or relief), and others are excited to nally have a wellness path that they can follow. When they hear me say, “I don’t think that this is all in your head,” they visibly relax and are open to looking at the things they can control to become healthy again.The real approach of, “What can I do?”We look at lifestyle. I have my patients keep a diary or journal for one week. In this diary, we look at daily activities, work habits, stresses, house hab-its, and exercise. ey wear a pedometer and track their steps every day for a week. As a provider, I know that most of their daily activities determine their allostatic load, or how their bodies respond to daily events and personal stressors. How our body regulates these events is a complex process that begins with the brain and travels down the vagus nerve to the adrenals, which are the gate-keepers to cortisol and other hormones. We look at diet and food choices. In this same week, they record not only what they eat, but where they get their food, how it is cooked, and both how and where they consume it. In order to understand functional medicine, we need to learn about the building blocks that comprise our nutrition. Are we eating the right foods for our bodies, or do we follow the di-etary food pyramid that no two dieticians can agree on? e food that we put into our bodies makes a science unto itself when we consider nutritional value, food intolerances, digestion, and our body’s ability to use it (methylation).We track their symptoms. eir symptoms are just that: their symptoms. Symptoms are a blessing, because they tell us when something is not working correctly or when we are in danger. Doctors are taught to treat the symp-toms, hence we receive multiple prescriptions when we seek care from physicians and the VA. Complementary practitioners are taught to look at the cause of symptoms and then both the commonalities or correlations of the symp-toms to the lifestyle. is is where the comedian’s joke, “Doc-tor, when I poke myself here (point to body part), it hurts,” can illustrate the dierenc-es between allopathic and complementary approaches to healthcare. In this example, the simplest way to describe a symptom is that poking = pain. In an allopathic position, physicians will diagnose a condition and prescribe 1-3 medications to resolve the pain. is entails multiple visits to the doctors oce to follow up, the development of additional symptoms

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45Facebook.com/AVOWMagazine • Spring 2022mission to advocate for, assist, educate, and empower veterans as they adapt to and overcome barriers that arise from their disabilities. This work has led to the formation of the Ruth Moore Act, the creation of a provision in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, changes in Title 38 of the Federal Registry, and both direct and indirect services to over 1.2 million veterans who have received over 6 million in back benets and 7.8 billion dollars in future healthcare services.Dr. Ruth has just nished her rst book, Building Resiliency: 32 Days to a Better You. In this work book, she teaches resiliency through private coaching to her readers; and can help them learn new skills through multiple Dr. Ruth Truths. It is also available on Amazon in both a printed and kindle version.CONTINUED FROM PAGE 44Dr. Ruth Moore’s book “Building Resiliency: 32 Days To A Better You!” is now available on Amazon.comwith the addition of medications, and the feel-ing of disempowerment the patient has, be-cause she is relying on another’s opinion rather than trusting her instincts; in opposition, a complementary or integrative practitioner will observe a patient poking herself, wonder why she would do this, and then make a recom-mendation to stop poking herself if there were no justied reasons to do so. Dr. Ruth’s Wellness ApproachAfter the diary is turned in, I work with my patients to see where their challenges arise from. We will see what can be changed through lifestyle adaptation. Are their issues coming from outside inuences like the environment and environmental toxins, are they internally derived from the actions of the autonomic ner-vous system, or is it a combination of both? We then look at diet and how it applies to lifestyle. It is no secret that ‘we are what we eat.’ Our DNA predisposes us to being hunters or gatherers, and our diets may not t what our bodies need. Food diaries, times of meals, com-positions of meals, and locations where we eat all give important clues as to how we can use food to heal ourselves. ere is truth to the adage that food is the rst medicine we can use, and the best part is that patients can be their own doctors when they know what and how to eat.e nal part of the wellness approach is to explore the relationship between symp-toms and life events. In some cases, the symptoms are binary and are a simple ‘if, then’ causation; in other cases, the causes can’t be readily identied through diet and wellness, and this is where I recommend and utilize specialized testing that most doctors will not use -and sadly, insurance companies will not pay for. For those veterans who are experiencing frustration in their present health levels, they can reach out and schedule condential ZOOM consultations at http://www.downeastwellness.com. Dr. Ruth is a pyschoneuroimmunolo-gist and has a wide level of experience in complementary health, integrative medicine, and neuroscience.

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46Spring 2022 • www.AVOWMagazine.comReatha Pitman is an independent coun-try music recording artist and rising star out of Long Beach, Mississippi. She wrote and recorded her debut EP while serving on active duty in the U. S. Navy. Pit-man can be seen around the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coasts as well as the Louisiana Northshore passionately supporting local mili-tary veterans’ organizations. She also strives to mentor young women and girls to pursue their dreams and to reach for the stars. In October 2018, in Laurel, Mississippi, Pitman’s EP Road On Which We Travel was produced by Andrew Ishee. Her music is be-ing played on a variety of online radio stations including She Wolf Radio, BlastFM, Country Radio USA Productions, Karen’s Indies, and more. Her music is also available on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon MP3, YouTube, and anywhere you download music. Pitman was honored to participate in both the 2018 and 2019 Mississippi Songwriters Festivals and looks forward to continuing this tradition in 2021. She recently joined the Mississippi Songwriters Alliance as a marketing consultant to promote the alliance and increase member-ship. She is a true entertainer, and performs for listeners with her powerful voice both locally and virtually for viewers around the world. Af-ter 14 years in the military, she uses her voice to honor her country by performing the na-tional anthem at a variety of sporting events including the University of Southern Missis-sippi basketball and the Biloxi Shuckers minor league baseball games.Pitman will tell you she is most inuenced by artists such as e Judds, Martina McBride, Patsy Cline, and Reba McEntire. Her nostal-gic, old-country sound has been inuenced by these iconic women. She is often compared to a mix of traditional and modern country women such as Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker, Carrie Underwood, and Miranda Lambert. Pitman is very excited to share her stories and music with the world; we invite you to travel with her on this musical journey and explore country music from Pitman’s point of view. When you nd you need to listen to music to get through a tough time or just relax, play a little Reatha Pitman and escape for a bit into the music world.BUSINESS SPOTLIGHTwww.reathapitman.comTiktok: @reathapitmanmusicFacebook: /reatha24 • Instagram: @reatha_pitman_music • Twitter: @reatha_musicReatha PitmanCOUNTRY RECORDING ARTIST

AVOW Magazine Spring 2022

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