Good morning, Allene. I am happy to give you an answer here. I wanted to highlight this line in particular because of the inherent assumptions, and kindly understand this is in no way a slam against you, but I have gotten this a great deal. People simply assume because I was attractive that means X. It doesn’t mean X at all. When I was 20 I had already been living on my own for four years. My parents had sold their farm and were traveling. I was working at one of the satellite hotels that had sprung up early close to Disney World, and we could see the writing on the wall back when the first oil embargo had hit us. I was putting myself through college on my own with limited resources, my folks couldn’t do it. At the time I was dating the love of my life who was then a captain, having come up from an E-1, and who was training to go to work for American Airlines. He died in a plane crash shortly after I joined, these things happen.

My parents were in no condition to pay for my college. I had no prospects other than the captain, who was the person I went to when my future with the hotel died due to the oil embargo. Disney’s attendance had dropped way off, and of course that meant that those of us working for the nearby hotels were being cut way back. Both my future and my education prospects plummeted. My looks had nothing to do with anything. I had to find a way to pay for college. The BF at the time and I had long, serious discussions, and at the time, the Army was recruiting hard for women. We went to every single military option and the Army was the best. I was able to secure journalism training. Within three months, my BF was dead, and I was launched into my career. Again, my looks had nothing to do with anything, other than they made me a target.

In many ways I owe the Army a great deal. I am also pretty verbal about those gifts, which include lifelong disability. But as with all things, Allene, we sacrifice for them. By the same token I wouldn’t trade those experiences,because of what they gave me. Compassion, insight, perspective. In sum, if I believe in a benevolent Universe, and I do, all those events good and bad sculpted me. I write about them because it’s important- to my mind- that we educate people and make the demand that they understand the cost.

Only my closest friends know that I have had the experience of two mothers, the second one a Black woman named Christine Brown. That story is scheduled to appear later this summer. Christine, who worked on my dad’s farm from the age of 32, was woven into the tapestry of my life in some ways even more than my own mother. Her kids were also my family. That experience was a gift beyond all measure. She was the last child of a plantation slave of 75; she had brothers and sisters in their 50s when she was born. She was an extraordinary woman, as was her eldest daughter Jackie. Both of them died far too young, of obesity-related diabetes. While I have had this experience, and the intimacy of having the closeness of a second family was a great teacher, I don’t have the conceit to understand what being a POC in America is truly like. I may perhaps have some understanding. My closest friends — group that would horrify a White Supremacist- includes a Black woman, an Hispanic man and a gay woman. I give credit to Christine and my parents for keeping the doors open wide for me to experience a great deal of diversity right from the beginning. Still, that said, I cannot share your experience at the deepest levels.

I chose the military because it guaranteed me an education and an income when, as a 20-year-old woman, I didn’t have other options to get an education. Again, my looks had nothing to do with it. There are plenty of pretty girls who end up homeless and tricking for the same reasons. I chose the military, it was a perfect fit in many ways, and I paid the price to get the gifts the military offered. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

It is a nearly universal comment- and many of my female military peeps heard this- that I was too pretty to be in the Army. Why didn’t just “get a husband?” Well, first of all, and again this is not a slam to you, the assumption is that just because someone is in the least bit attractive, then X is available. No it’s not. Second, it assumes that I had prospects (nobody asked me for my hand until I was forty and that was brief). Third it assumes that the only commerce I had to trade with was my face/body. I’m a career woman. Never want marriage,never wanted kids, always wanted adventure. At the time I didn’t see myself as attractive. My early life experiences with my family conveyed to me that I was stupid, fat and ugly. I am hardly alone. I can thank my father and brother for that messaging. It’s taken me nearly my entire life to see otherwise.

So you see, Allene, we look at others’ lives, and as is natural to our humanity we make assumptions and place value sets on what their experiences might have been based on X, or our experience of X. In most cases, I’ve found that when I do that I am usually way off base. The Army taught me to write, among many other gifts. It also extracted its pound of flesh. Life does that, whether it’s the Army or marriage or whatever. I would be a liar if I said that all my memories were bad ones. I have plenty of good ones. But I emphasize, my looks, good bad or indifferent, had little to do with them other that to bring me attention of the kind I’d rather have not had to deal with.

I appreciate your inquiry and hope I’ve answered your question.