“Show me your War Faaaaaace!!!!” screamed a drill sergeant high in the guard tower overlooking our company of army trainees. They called us “privates”, as this was the rank most of us wore. Entry Level, but likely just to be demoralizing referring to us as an alias to genitalia. Better than seamen I guess.

The drill sergeant’s voice was amplified by a bull horn and even the distortion couldn’t hide the smile from his tone. On the ride over, I overheard a hand ful...

“Now everyone bow their head and close their eyes…” the pastor’s Kentucky accent added vowels where they didn’t belong, but I had visited and even lived there so many times, it was like a second language to me.

“If you’re ready to accept Jesus in your heart, I want you to just raise one hand. No looking around, this is an intimate moment between you and God.”

I lost count how many times I asked Jesus into my heart. Like he moved in long enough to no...

I hated my name growing up.

 

Like most kids with unique names, I tried my best to anticipate the substitute teacher’s grimace and squint as the trigger to give her the answer to such a mind boggling question... “How do you pronounce Dacia?”

 

Thanks to my quick wit, the title of this book alone has prompted me to write a memoir and answer the age ole question (age by which will remain a secret). Dacia rhymes with Geisha.

 

If you have...

I served in the US Army for about ten years in some capacity. This included three separate contractual commitments. I never though too much about what I would do if I ever left and was convinced I would be a combat boot mom. I was pretty good at playing Army and figured there was not much to being a mom, and this was the mentality I expressed to my soldiers who had children. If any of you are reading this, thank you for your patience with me in this regard. Until you have children, there are situations a...

Alright so it was technically 49 hours and ten minutes until she made her appearance. .

My little miss is my second child. I had my heart set on a natural unmedicated birth following the traumatic entrance of my son. I shared my plan with all the ladies at work. Towards the end I even joked that I would pull her out myself. Deep down in my heart I wanted this experience, but I never wrote off intervention. I knew that I wanted a healthy baby and I would do whatever it took to make that a reality.

I was born December 6th 1984 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Fayetteville sits just outside of Fort Bragg Army Post and is the home of over 25,000 soldiers and their families. As I explain in later chapters about my own birthing experience in a military hospital, Mom and Dad opted to deliver me in a civilian medical center. Dad said, “They wore their rank first and treated people with low rank like crap.”

My mama was twenty years old, not even old enough to drink, and I was her second...

In 1989 I moved to a small town north of Indianapolis called Shelbyville. We had a little white house with a full front porch and a porch swing. My dad took on a recruiting job in the small town when I was just starting school. My mother was pregnant with my baby sister and I was oblivious to everything but myself.

My most vivid childhood memories are always of Christmas, injuries, and getting in trouble. Shelbyville marked the most epic of Christmas’s and my most notable injuries and childh...

I deployed to The Green Zone during a cease-fire. I worked in the emergency room of Ibn Sina Hospital, famously known as Baghdad ER. After a month of living with a thin cloud of fleeting safety over our heads, we did not expect Thanksgiving Day 2007 would be the day the cease-fire ended.

This was my first holiday at war. Though three years prior, my father broke Thanksgiving bread with his troops in this same country. I knew the warm meal in the dining facility was much more than many soldiers got...

You planted me on this earth with a man you praised

I was fed, swaddled, and sometimes safe.

When the heat was off, I got cold and sick.

You almost lost me then.

 

I grew up worshiping a man never present

I looked for love but was met with torment

I found your drugs and followed suit

You almost lost me then.

 

In full bloom, I was off to battle to fight my father’s war

He was not there, but I found out what I stand for

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