There was a version of me that thought I had to choose.
I thought I had to pick a side.
Soft or strong.
Feminine or fierce.
Lip gloss or load-bearing vest.
I didn’t know yet…
that I was allowed to be both.
I Didn’t Look Like What People Expected a Soldier to Be
I was a sorority girl at LSU.
I cared about my outfits.
I loved getting ready with my friends.
I knew how to walk into a room with confidence—and a curling iron.
And then I joined the Army.
Not because I grew up dreaming about it.
Not because I felt some lifelong calling to serve.
I joined because I needed a way forward. Because I was figuring life out.
Sometimes the path doesn’t look heroic when you’re standing at the beginning of it.
Mascara + Mortars Can Exist in the Same Life
There’s this image people have of women in the military.
No makeup. No softness. No space for anything that looks like femininity.
But that wasn’t my reality.
I wore mascara in Iraq.
I fixed my hair in a mirror hanging inside a CHU.
I went on air for radio with a Southern accent and a full heart.
And then I’d walk outside…
and hear mortars in the distance.
That contrast?
That’s the truth no one talks about.
You don’t stop being who you are just because your environment changes.
You carry her with you.
Even into war zones.
Even into hard places.
Even when the world tries to convince you she doesn’t belong there.
The Pressure to Be “Hard Enough”
There’s an unspoken expectation for women in high-performance spaces, especially the military.
You have to prove you belong.
And not just once… constantly.
So what do we do?
We toughen up.
We quiet parts of ourselves.
We try to become more “acceptable.”
Less emotional. Less feminine. Less… us.
Because somewhere along the way, we learned that softness could be mistaken for weakness.
But here’s what I know now:
That wasn’t strength. That was survival.
I Learned Strength the Hard Way—But I’m Choosing Softness on Purpose
The Army gave me discipline. It gave me resilience. It taught me how to keep going when things felt impossible.
But it also taught me something I didn’t recognize until much later:
I don’t have to live in that intensity forever.
I built my strength in hard places.
Now I get to build my life in softer ones.
And softness?
It’s not the absence of strength.
It’s what happens when strength is no longer in survival mode.
I’m Done Shrinking Myself to Fit One Identity
For a long time, I felt like I had to explain myself. Like I had to justify how a girl who loved sorority life could also serve in a war zone.
Like those two things somehow canceled each other out.
They don’t.
They never did.
I am the girl who got ready with her friends before a night out
and the woman who stood inside Saddam Hussein’s courtroom.
I am the voice on the radio bringing comfort to deployed troops
and the mom building a soft life at home.
I am both.
And I’m done pretending that doesn’t make sense.
We Were Never Meant to Be One-Dimensional
If you’ve ever felt like you had to choose between parts of yourself…
this is your permission slip.
You don’t have to be less feminine to be taken seriously.
You don’t have to be less strong to be soft.
You don’t have to explain your story just because it doesn’t fit someone else’s expectations.
You are allowed to be layered.
You are allowed to evolve.
You are allowed to be both.
This Is What Breaking Stereotypes Actually Looks Like
Not a headline. Not a campaign. Not a perfectly curated version of empowerment.
It looks like real women…
living real lives…
refusing to shrink into categories that were never built for them.
And If I Could Go Back and Tell Her One Thing…
The girl sitting in that recruiter’s office…
wondering if she was making the right decision…
I’d tell her this:
You don’t have to become someone else to do hard things.
You just have to become more of who you already are.
Because the Truth Is
I was never just a sorority girl.
I was never just a soldier.
I was always both.
And now?
I finally live like it.
