*Originally posted April, 2026 on Substack. Reposting here for posterity.
They say the body keeps the score. Tally marks through your flesh and blood and bone. Carved into your memories as suffocating panic and wrenching grief.
It is a violent game.
//
On Feb 28, 2026 the US launched targeted strikes against Iran at the direction of the President, using peace talks as a decoy for the surprise attack.
There is a peculiar, awful sort of permanent state of high alert I lived in as an Army wife, as an aviator’s wife. Flying is a dangerous job. But the reality of modern warfare now is that no one is truly safe.
So when I woke up on March 1 to the news from US Centcom that American lives were lost in the initial attack on Iran, my body arrested, every cell in full fight or flight. Immediately I started the mental roll call from my active duty roster – a roll call that begins again with every bit of breaking news.
My friends still serving.
The children of my friends now.
The next generation of my own family members.
Each name flaying open the scars, unlocking doors I have fought to keep closed for a very long time. Even writing about it now, I’m riding the edge of a panic attack, heart stuttering in my chest, breath hitching in my throat. We are intimately familiar with the cost that is so recklessly spent by ignorant, arrogant men and while my rational brain knows that it is not my husband, not me standing in the gap, it is still the people I love. Creatures of the Imago Dei, names and faces and families who signed up to serve, who sacrificed everything for a country they believed worth fighting for.
//
There are two halves of me living in the upside down right now, one fighting to be present for tennis tournaments and soccer and t-ball and little girls dancing, while the other half is crying out at the rubble of an elementary school and little girls dying.
How. Are. We. Here. Again?
I’m livid with rage, railing nonstop internally at the casual cruelty with which violence is inflicted and the camouflage of righteousness painted over evil deeds. Watching in horror as the Secretary of Defense advocates for war crimes and the President runs this illegal conflict on *checks notes* a vibe. Weeping for mothers like me who will bury sons and daughters alike.
//
The alertness never really fades, just reshapes itself around new fears until the old ones are unleashed again, but how do you tell your neighbors what’s really at stake? How do you tell the story of what you lived, what others are living again now? I see Jaime’s coffin all the time. I hear the sound of the Blackhawk at a hundred feet, rattling my bones. I carry still the crushing agony of waiting after other crashes – desperate to hear if it was our best friend or someone else’s. Hating myself for feeling relief when it was someone else’s grief. Unexpected phone calls are my undoing even now.
No one truly wants to know.
So now I’m just drifting around my small town, bleeding out.
Keeping score.
This is a terrible game to be winning. So much winning.