While many of us are isolated right now and worried about
the future, our livelihood, and our families. I still feel a comfortable calmness
amidst the chaos. While I have many shared frustrations, they aren’t things
that worry me much as I continue to find ways to entertain myself, keep focused
on work and fitness, and end each day with a feeling of accomplishment and
reassurance. How do I manage to keep my head amidst the craziness around us? To
put it plainly, because I’ve seen so much worse.
When I graduated college in 1993, I was thrust into a
military career that I wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about, but needed the
scholarship money and decided that if military service was what it took, I’d
jump in head first and do it to the best of my ability. I entered the Army
Aviation world as the first female pilot assigned to a particular combat unit
when they opened those positions to women in 1995. I arrived full of fire and
drive for my career. I was recently married but had zero desire for children as
I intended to pour myself into my job and continue to break down barriers and
stereotypes regarding what women could be in the workforce. Having grown up in
a somewhat tumultuous household, I was generally callous to family life and
wanted only to hang my aspirations on things that I could control – which was
myself and my career. Little did I know that in nine-months’ time, I would
recant on everything I believed and desired.
I went to Haiti in 1998 to serve as the Secretary to the
Joint Staff, or assistant to the commander of the US Support Group. The group
was responsible for humanitarian assistance in the form of mobile hospitals, drilling
wells to provide water, building schools for children, providing general
security, and sometimes even working with organizations such as Food for the
Poor to help feed the people of Port-au-Prince.
Shortly upon arrival, I knew that Haiti would change me. I’d
never seen such poverty anywhere other than on my television, which doesn’t
begin to provide the full effect of the smell, sounds, and feel of true human
neglect. I watched a society so broken it was unable to effectively distribute
the assistance it received, and I witnessed suffering in ways I’d never
considered from the comfort of the United States. I watched our military
hospitals treat unfathomable illnesses due to non-existent sanitation and horrifying
hereditary conditions. I then watched parents, after waiting hours in the sun
to receive treatment for their loved one, immediately trade medicine for these
conditions outside the walls for food because, you see, your child might die
eventually from that disease, but before that, they will die of starvation. I
watched children bathing in drainage water and carrying buckets of the same for
use in the shacks they called home. That same drainage water, before being
transported, had already been used as a human toilet further up the road and as
a means to rinse filth off cattle. I watched hordes of children and adults
clamor around US vehicles in hopes of a handout and I felt the sting of a stick
across my hand from a Food for the Poor worker as I tried to give an extra
scoop of slop to an adorable child who looked like he needed and deserved it
all. Still, if you give more to one, you give none to another, so the struggle
was heartbreaking and life changing. I wanted to help them all, but the problem
was too vast and complex. It seemed hopeless.
But more profoundly than the extreme poverty I witnessed was
a commonality that seemed to bring these people together – and it was love. The
same love you see anywhere in the world, but with a different background and
circumstance. I began to see that if you have love, you can survive even the
darkest, most hopeless and painful conditions. I know because I saw it. I saw
smiles on faces of those who had no reason to smile. I saw hope from
individuals who had no reason to expect such a luxury. Ultimately, I saw
families knitted together in their own meager happiness through it all. I saw
laughter and affection, and joy. And it melted my cold, little Grinch heart. I
left Haiti knowing that I now wanted children more than anything. My career
meant far less as I boarded the plane to depart. I wanted this magic that conquered
all fears and hardships.
I returned home early in 1999 and my first child was born in
March 2000. Had it not been for Haiti, he, nor his two siblings may ever have
graced my life. I’m glad my eyes were opened during those times and I decided
to toss my careers goals to the side for the opportunity to groom lives and
build better humans. My kids are everything, even though they are now almost
all adults and they bring me more joy that I ever imagined.
And today, as I scroll through all the social media and
listen to the woes of a nation during the current crisis, I think back to
places with real, lasting, and impactful issues that we don’t have to consider.
I don’t worry about fresh water, a lack of health care, schools for my children,
or safe housing options. I sit at home with my high-speed internet and blog
about my gratitude and love for my family and friends. No problem outside my
walls is too much to handle because as I learned in Haiti, all you really need
to make it through is love. And I have that and more right here. Therefore, I
have no fear.
