- 8 months ago
Moderator-led conversation about mental health strategies to do well in the military and succeed in military life.
Themes: Mental Health, Trauma, PTSD, Motherhood, Marriage, Racism
Themes: Mental Health, Trauma, PTSD, Motherhood, Marriage, Racism
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. My name is Deshonda Brown. I'm an associate editor here at Essence.com,
00:11and I am so excited for our conversation today at Essence Wellness House about Black women
00:15in the military. And today, joining us, we have Army veteran and beauty influencer,
00:22Leslie Latrice, as well as Army veteran and bestselling author, Lila Hawley.
00:27Thank you, ladies, for being here today.
00:30Thank you for having me.
00:31Yes, thank you for having us.
00:33So I want to start off with a rather generalized question, but we can go as deep as y'all would
00:38like just to set the precedence for the conversation. So what do you believe is the
00:43direct correlation between race, gender, and PTSD for Black women in the military or Black women
00:49veterans?
00:50This is a great question. And I just want to clarify, first off, that a lot of people equate
00:58PTSD to combat experiences. But I would say you can get PTSD without even having combat experiences
01:07as a Black woman in the military because there's so many layers to being a woman, Black woman in the
01:13military. First, I'll just give you like three real quick things to keep in mind. For instance,
01:20my career field was military intelligence. So I was a lot of times one of one on a staff, one of one in the
01:29office or in a meeting or anything. So I didn't have women, Black women, especially to my left,
01:36to my right, to have as confidants, to have as mentors. So I had to fit into a group of individuals
01:43that didn't look like me. So that's challenging in and of itself. In addition to that, I set these
01:49very high standards for myself in order to fit into that club, you know, because you always feel
01:56like they're looking at you. And I always tell people this as me, my experience, I walked into
02:03the staff room. First, they're going to see a woman. Then they're going to see a Black woman.
02:07And then they will finally see my rank arrive in the room after all those layers are, you know,
02:15processed. And so I'm setting these very high standards for myself to fit into this boys club,
02:21if you will. And then add on top of that, the combat experience. I deployed several times and having
02:28that combat experience and just having that, the dynamics of that experience, it plays into
02:35race, gender, PTSD, all those layers take, play into processing that as a Black woman in the military.
02:46And then I also want to ask you, Lila, you know, you're the author of Camouflage Sisters,
02:51Revealing Struggles of the Black Woman's Military Experience. So how does this book encapsulate the
02:57experiences of Black women in the military and their mental health journeys?
03:01Well, I would tell you, we don't shy away from any topics in our books. Right. We tell our whole
03:09honest truth. And the reason why I started with that book in the series is because I'm a Black woman
03:13who served in the military, first off. And my experiences were unique from other women who
03:18served in the military, bringing, you know, the African-American experience into the military as a
03:24woman. So we hit heavily on mentorship. We hit heavily on the good, the bad, and the ugly of
03:32mentorship amongst us as women, amongst us as Black women, especially. There's a lot of competition
03:38between us sometimes. And I feel like, you know, we address that in the book and we talk about that
03:43if we work together, we can go further instead of competing against each other. And so that I really
03:51wanted to hit on that topic, especially in that book. So that is heavily throughout the chapter,
03:56each co-author addresses her experiences with mentorship and as a Black woman in the military
04:03and the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so, like I said, we don't shy away from any topics. We tell our
04:08truth. We tell our experiences, learn the lessons that we learn from that in hopes that anybody who reads
04:14our books can take away something from our story. And Leslie, I want to turn to you. You know, we have
04:21an author on here and we also have yourself who is an influencer. I love the duality. I love the fact
04:27that, you know, as Black women, we do it all. So I want to know from you as a beauty influencer and as
04:33an active member, what's the importance of implementing self-care and beauty into your daily routines?
04:40So I think it's extremely important. As Black women, but as women in general, especially
04:48as serving women, we tend to be very selfless. But I think that the misunderstanding behind being
04:57selfless is that we take care of others so much that we forget about taking care of ourselves.
05:02And if we get lost in that and we lose sight of taking care of ourselves, we're doing a disservice to
05:09the people we are taking care of. And we're not advocating for ourselves, let alone them. So I
05:15think that it's very important to daily. I mean, you can do anything that you feel like, you know,
05:22contributes to making you feel good and centering yourself. That could be reading a book once one
05:28hour a day, turning your phone off, watching TV, whatever it is that you do, but just take time
05:33to reflect and like get into your own mind, not think about anybody else. And, you know, continue
05:39to advocate for that, not just for yourself, but when you're talking to your soldiers too, because
05:45they'll do the same thing. If they see you being selfless, which is great, but more so not taking
05:51care of yourself on that, then they'll do the same thing in the cycle and keep repeating itself. So you
05:57have to tell them it's okay to take a step away, take a mental health break and let them let people
06:02know that, you know, things either aren't okay, or that, you know, it's time to step back and really
06:08take care of yourself.
06:11And Lila, I want to check in with you real quick. How are you feeling?
06:16Today's a good day.
06:18Today's a good day.
06:19Look, amen.
06:20It is absolutely a good day. And I want to ask both of you because, you know, I am not
06:26a, I'm not an active member, but I do know people who have served in the military. I know
06:31people who are serving in the military and oftentimes conversations come up where I'm, where I can
06:36relate to it, where it's really important to not only turn to your colleagues or turn
06:40to your friends or family, but it's also know, it's also important to know that the people
06:43that you're working with essentially have your, your mental back as I like to call it.
06:48So that's the administration, that's the people you work with. So for both of you ladies,
06:53what are some mental health resources available to black women who actively serve? And how
06:57can we be better at holding administrative administration accountable for being there
07:02for our serving women?
07:05I like that question. Go ahead, Leslie.
07:08Okay. Okay. So some, I guess some non-DOD or Department of Defense resources that I've used
07:15are just those mentorship forums. I found out about them mainly through like Facebook. I'm glad
07:22I'm hearing about Camouflage Sisters because it was the first time I ever heard of it, but those
07:28things are really important, especially because we're a different demographic. We go through different
07:34things just based off of our, our demographic. And so knowing that there's other people out there
07:39that may be experiencing or may have experienced the same thing that you have, and you're able to
07:45bounce ideas off of them and say, Hey, how do you, how do you feel about this? How would you go about
07:50handling this? I think it's super important, but I think it's also important to understand that,
07:54you know, it does take a process to find your mentor. Everybody isn't your mentor. Everybody isn't
08:01for you. And that's just like going with picking your friends and who you want to hang out with.
08:05The same thing, you know, youth, you'll have that feeling of what's right. But those are forums that
08:11I feel like I wish that the force had more of standardized versus us having to go out and find
08:19it outside of the standard resources. But just for those things that are in the army or in the forces,
08:28behavioral health, military family life counseling, master resiliency training. There's a lot of different
08:35things that if you put in the efforts to utilize that I feel like would be a value and help
08:41personnel that are in the force who want to seek mental health, mental health treatment. And then
08:47the last thing about about what we can talk about our administration or how we can hold them
08:53accountable is I think that's just it holding, holding them accountable by using your voice and
08:59telling them when things don't work and what things do, not just the things that don't, but what
09:04things are working for you and taking those surveys that come to us or, you know, utilizing the reporting
09:13procedures that we have in place to advocate for yourself. Hey, it's taken me a long time to get an
09:19appointment or I really need to speak to somebody more than just twice a week. You know, tell somebody
09:25what you need so that they can find the resources to help you. I think that, you know, you using your voice
09:31for that will not only help you, but it'll help people down the line who may not have that voice to speak up for
09:37themselves when the situation arises. Absolutely. That's a great answer. And I'll piggyback off of that as well. The VA
09:45system as well, all the resources there, go use your VA health services and give them feedback because they need that,
09:54especially from us women. If we don't utilize them, they don't know how to serve us. I am harping on
10:00that so much. So to my camouflage sisters community. Um, I also am a big advocate of journaling, write
10:07things down, get those things out of your system, write them down in a book, write them down in a
10:13notebook, get them out. And that's how we became authors. Really? That's how we became authors by
10:17journaling our feelings, by journaling our challenges and by journaling the tools and things that we
10:22implemented ourselves from our military experience that helped us through those challenges. And so,
10:27um, our hope is that as people read our camouflage sisters books, just like Leslie said, is that they
10:32do find stories that they can relate to. They do find experiences and, um, situations that they may be
10:39facing and a solution to those situations. We also have a lot of coauthors who are experts and advocates
10:45in different fields, um, who, uh, uh, share resources in the chapters that they share in the book. So,
10:53um, and, and then something else that Leslie talked about, reach out and find your platoon after you
11:00take that uniform off, you know, you, you have your group that you, uh, serve with, you have your group
11:06that you connect with and that you, uh, form that bond with while you're in uniform. But when you come out
11:12of uniform, you got to find that same group. And just like she said, be very conscious of who you
11:16connect with. And it may take you a little bit to find that group, that new platoon or whatever,
11:21but, uh, don't be afraid to step out and connect with other women. I, we hold, uh, different, um,
11:29events throughout the year, uh, get togethers. And it's a lot of times these women veterans say,
11:34this is my first event with other women veterans. And it just blows my mind because you have to find
11:40women who can relate to your experiences, women who can have compassion towards your challenges
11:46after you come out of military service, because those challenges look different than someone coming
11:51out of corporate America. Those challenges look different than our male counterparts coming out
11:54of the military. So you need someone to balance things off of, to have a listening ear when you're
12:00challenging, when you have challenges who can understand what those challenges entail. So reach out
12:07to your resources. And then for my last question, I want to talk about the black experience,
12:13the black female experience as a whole. We know that it's not monolithic. We know that
12:17my, my life experience is different from yours and from anybody who's watching. There's no one size
12:22fit all for the black woman experience, but we can all agree that balancing life as a black woman in
12:27America is no walk in the park. It's definitely a challenge, you know, between some who are mothers,
12:32some who actively serve, some who are students, some who grew up on a different side of the earth,
12:37like we, it's just different for everybody. But why do you believe that there's such a pressure
12:41on black woman in the military or military personnel in general to have this mental toughness? And at the
12:50same token, what's the toxicity of that mindset that you always have to be mentally tough?
12:56Ooh, that's a, ooh, honey. Right, honey. We ain't got the time, but real quickly, honey, child, listen,
13:09that's where I struggled when I came out of the military because it do, Leslie's living it right
13:14now. It takes a mental toughness to be in the military and to be successful in the military.
13:20And you take that same toughness with you when you come out of the military. So you have to kind of
13:25relearn some things when you come out of the military. And for me, it was a struggle because
13:28I worked so hard in my military career to achieve so much success. And then coming out of that,
13:35I still had that same go get them attitude, that same hard charging, you know, mentality. And,
13:42and I really, it really, I really struggled. I really did. And a lot of women do, and they feel
13:47like they're alone in that struggle. They feel like, you know, so much of their identity is tied up in
13:53their military service and that right that they work so hard to achieve because they're not giving
13:58us nothing in there. We got to work hard for it just like anybody else. And so you bring that same
14:03tough mentality out and it, and you're right. It is a level of toxicity, toxicity that, that comes with
14:09that because you have to relearn some things and you have to, you know, you have to be retaught some
14:15things. And if, and if you don't get the right, get attached to the right resources, you'll go down
14:21a dark, dark road, you know, and it, and it can really take you somewhere really scary. We're talking
14:26about mental wellness and, um, you know, I, I, I'm not ashamed to say I struggled with that. You know
14:33what I mean? And I tapped in the resources that helped me through that. Um, and so I would tell
14:40anybody who feels like they gotta be tough going in, coming out, you don't, you, you know, you gotta
14:46let some of that stuff go. And there, there will be a period where you have to go through that
14:50transition as well, in terms of your mental, uh, toughness and tapping the resources that you
14:56probably never thought you'd be using, like the mental health, uh, services at the VA tapping to
15:01that stuff is there for us. It's there to help us. It's there to reteach us some things to cope
15:07with life outside of the uniform. And, um, I agree, but I'll caveat off that and say just
15:14that even society wise, like as far as women, as far as women in society and how we're dubbed,
15:22we're already dubbed as lesser or weaker. I mean, historically that's the case. So it's not
15:29un, un, you know, unconventional for us to think that that's the same thing, you know, going through
15:35the force or with the, or within any different unit. So I think that's where the mental toughness
15:40comes in because we want to feel like we want to be a part of the team. We want to contribute
15:46as we should, as is our right. So we do that. Thank you so much, Lila and Leslie for this
15:53incredible conversation about black women in the military and mental health. It was very well needed,
15:58very necessary. And thank you at home for tuning in and joining us today for Essence Wellness House.
16:03And if you need any additional resources, please do not hesitate to head to
16:08camouflagesisters.org and try care online. Now make sure to stay tuned for more Essence Wellness House.
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