Sherry's Blog

LATE IN 1996 I had a fall out with my daughter which left me without a home.

I got smart and drove semi-s, then with the economy failing that wasn't even secure so I collected unemployment for a year and attempted to relocate to a region where jobs and success are blooming.

I believe in N county San Diego and it's been good to me, 

I have a state job, assisting Veterans, and I have a beautiful home that I am grateful to have found.

I am renting a room in an awesome house, and there is another room available if anyone is looking.

OR if you are a Vet seeking services call me 760-658-3008

Through much learning, effort and work on my part with help and support from each and every single person I have met through SWVBRC. I was hired today as a Welcome Home CALVETs rep. I have been following the guidance of our mentor, and freind AL every step of the way,


KFC Know what you want
       Follow your dreams
       Confidence in your skills and abilities

(I just made that up, but that's what I did.)

I took.... and still do take, the 14 step reintegration process very seriously and it is GUARANTEED to give you back as much effort as you put into it.

I Know I was to serve Vets,
I am now networked from  San Diego to Sacramento
All the skills and abilities I have amassed over the years makes this a dream come true for me

and LEARNING LEARNING LEARNING as I go along.


Comments are welcome, I can't move into the next phase without them, and also Call me if you want to chat, if you have questions, if you have needs. And I will be here and there, working for you, always. If I can't find the right person with the right answer, I have Al's number on speed dial :) and he's a PRO.

I still have more learning to do, and I am still committed to the 14 steps, there is a big mythological "pot of gold" at the end of that journey waiting for me. But I kinda like to eat, so getting worthwhile employment was my hard push. Now I can work on my SWOT, my VA assessment, and the rest of my bright future.

I love you all and thank you for your unending encouragement.

I have spent a lot of time since I last wrote trying to find the best way to tell you who I am.

Part of my philosophical learning has also taught me, not to put labels on people, “As soon as you define me, you negate me” and because I believe I am limitless, what holds true today, might not be the same tomorrow. If I set my definitions in stone, I am limiting the possibility of who I am to become.  Part of me knows I am defined on some level by my past experiences, endeavors and my dreams for the future. So that’s what I want you to know about who I am. The past which is, most definitely shaping my future.

 I am a Mother, but I don’t do much of any mothering these’s days, my daughter is grown and her Gunny has taken over my role.  As I look back on those years I am astonished to discover how much growing I did in those years, there’s a reason they don’t give you children as teenagers, you get them when they are little and needy and as they develop, the Mother is the one who really grows up.  She is my source of honor as a Marine, reminding me, I did it right. Despite the hardships, and pitfalls, we made it, she made it, and she loves the Corps.

I am very single. Introducing a new baby into a family is difficult even for the most prepared families, but going about it backwards the way I did and introducing a man into my readymade family was always disastrous, so now, we will just have to see, if it works better one to one, rather than the two of us trying to make space for a third.

I’m also a daughter, I grew up, hunting and fishing and watching the CUBS games, with my Father, he’s my favorite hero. I almost lost him last year, due to complications from knee replacement surgery, a simple operation, where everything went awry and I can never thank the V.A. enough for putting him back together and saving his life, he’s on the mend now, but it has been a strenuous year, watching him struggle through recovery and I am grateful for every day, that I am blessed to still have my Father and Mother around to share my life.

I’m also a sister, I have a very cool sister, who retired last year after 22 years in the Navy, and now she is helping my Dad learn to walk again, she’s up every two hours tending to his needs, probably no different than all those years getting bits and piece of sleep when she was out to sea. I also had a brother, I was extremely close to, he passed away at age 36 after many years of hard drinking. He wanted to join the military but they wouldn’t let his flat feet join. Maybe they could have kept him on a straight and narrow path; he never could keep himself on.  Boot camp definitely gives you fortitude and perseverance. I miss my little brother, and never forget the lessons I learned from his wild ways. Everything in moderation.

I’m also a college graduate, from a small private Iowa University, I have a love of learning, and the best thing I learn in college was to keep learning, long after the ink dried on my sheepskin. I am one of those rare birds, that will consume/devour an average of 3 books a week, some entertaining, some educational, some inspirational.

I am employable, that is to say I am too young to retire, but I feel like I have had a million different jobs doing a thousand different things, struggling and suffocating most of the time. Government accounting for Army depots is what I did the longest, but the last two years I toured/drove the entire USA via an 18 wheeler, and I could tell some stories. It’s mostly like being in boot camp though, tough when you are doing it, and glad when it’s over. I have such an eclectic background. So what is next? I keep asking myself. If you love what you do, then it never seems like work, I want to love what I do and look forward to waking every morning. When I worked in an office, I used to pray the snow would cancel work so I would get an extra day off from the grind, LOL, not much chance of that happening in Southern California, so I better love the next job I find.  

I want to be a valuable part of SWVBRC and a good example of the Learner’s process. As I forge through my commitment to 416 hours of learning, I know I will find the answers to my question.

I recently opened a group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VeteransLearningCircle/

I love yahoogroups as a way of keeping small conversations going whenever you have time to read email, I am also cross posting a few of those messages to our member’s only discussion forum, in the hopes of generating discussions there also.

Please leave comments and feedback here, but get to know me better through the two discussion forums too, I would love to meet some of you and get to know you better.

 
  Please wait...

I am a person who cares deeply about our military, and our Veterans, someone who takes the words, "leave no man behind” to heart.

The most definitive piece of my personality should start off with an introduction of PFC Bowe Bergdahl, let me tell you what I know about him, which isn’t much, really, he is only 6 months younger than my daughter, and in July of last year he was captured in Iraq and is now a POW, and a pawn, in the War on Terror, While I don’t know anything about his family, I can guarantee that if it was my child, I would be a wreck, and PFC Bergdahl and his family are in my thoughts daily.

Then there’s Terry Waite, remember him? He was held captive from 1987 to 1991 in Beirut, I read his story over and over when it was published, and it’s inspiring to see how much courage and determination some people can muster up, in the coldest, darkest hour of their lives. There are 100’s of POW stories out some with good happy endings, some not, and for some, like PFC Bergdahl, the story is still being written. These guys are my hero’s.

You can’t grow up in Iowa without having heard of the fighting Sullivan brothers, all 5 boys were killed in action when the USS Juneau was attacked in WWII. They changed the way siblings can serve together in today’s Navy and their family has seen much suffering, probably never accepting the sacrifice those men were willing to make.

There is nothing pretty about war, even in victory, the price is often high and the cost to the men, women, and families who serve cannot be measured in dollars and sometimes it doesn’t make any sense.

I don’t think my military service is much of a story to tell, but 25 years later maybe it is. I was one of the first females enlisted in an Army combat classification. If I had known what that meant I’d probably never have joined. The old soldiers already decided women didn’t belong in the military, let alone in combat, and they were determined to see those early programs for females in combat MOS’s fail.

Now, I never saw combat, but I was under fire daily from the barrage of sexual harassment, discrimination, and politics that went with being a female serving in an air defense artillery unit. I was so young and so inexperienced; I didn’t know what I was up against.

25 years later my daughter is presently serving her third combat tour in theater, on her second enlistment, and she is successful, because of the roads, women like me, paved before her. Serving in the military has less to do with what’s in your pants and more to do with what’s in your heart. 

Taking care of our returning Veterans is something I have the heart for, I have lived through the experience of trying to reintegrate when coming home, and I am a Mother who has watched her daughter march off to war. Her reintegration, even if she becomes a career soldier, is something I want to help make a successful transition.

This is only a small part of who I am, I look forward to writing more.