Moral Injury Support Network Podcast
Join us as we embark on a powerful journey, exploring the often-unspoken challenges faced by servicewomen and the moral injuries they endure in the line of duty.
Moral Injury Support Network for Servicewomen, Inc. (MISNS) is a dedicated non-profit organization on a mission to bring together healthcare practitioners, experts, and advocates to raise awareness about moral injury among servicewomen. Our podcast serves as a platform for servicewomen and those who support them to share their stories, experiences, and insights into the profound impact of moral injury.
In each episode, we'll engage in heartfelt conversations with servicewomen, mental health professionals, military leaders, and individuals who have witnessed the toll of moral injury firsthand. Through their stories, we aim to shed light on the unique struggles faced by servicewomen and the transformative journey towards healing and resilience.
Discover the complexities of moral injury within the military context, exploring the ethical dilemmas, moral conflicts, and the deep emotional wounds that servicewomen may encounter. Gain a deeper understanding of the societal, cultural, and systemic factors that contribute to moral distress within the military community.
Our podcast serves as a safe space for servicewomen to share their experiences, find support, and foster a sense of community. We also aim to equip healthcare practitioners with the knowledge and tools to recognize, address, and support those affected by moral injury. Join us as we explore evidence-based interventions, therapeutic approaches, and self-care practices designed to promote healing and well-being.
MISNS invites you to be a part of a movement that seeks to create a more compassionate and supportive environment for servicewomen. By amplifying their voices and promoting understanding, we strive to foster positive change within the military and healthcare systems.
Whether you are a servicewoman, a healthcare professional, a veteran, or simply passionate about supporting those who have served, this podcast offers valuable insights and perspectives. Together, let's forge a path towards healing, resilience, and empowerment.
Subscribe to Moral Injury Support Network Podcast today and join us in honoring the sacrifices of servicewomen while working towards a future where their well-being and resilience are at the forefront of our collective consciousness.
Moral Injury Support Network Podcast
Military Women's Voices: Moral Injury and the Fight for Authentic Leadership
What happens when your personal values collide with the organization you're expected to serve? For military women, this clash often leads to a profound sense of moral injury that can impact every aspect of life.
Shelly Rood brings a refreshingly candid perspective to this challenging reality. As a former military intelligence officer who now coaches high-achieving leaders, she shares powerful insights about navigating the tension between excellence and authenticity. The conversation takes us beyond typical military discussions into the raw, human experience of feeling perpetually at odds with systemic expectations.
"When I watched Cinderella," Shelly reveals, "I wasn't identifying with the princess waiting to be rescued—I was the little mouse making things happen." This telling observation illuminates the fundamental disconnect many service women experience when their natural leadership tendencies clash with traditional gender expectations both within and outside the military structure.
Dr. Roberts and Shelly discuss the false dichotomies that plague military culture—the myth that compassionate leadership somehow compromises combat readiness, or that family support inherently conflicts with operational demands. Their conversation explores how these artificial divisions particularly impact women who are navigating dual identities as leaders and caregivers.
The statistics are sobering: the average female veteran is 46 years old, and more than half are single. Traditional support systems rarely address their unique needs, leaving many to create their own networks from scratch. Through her work with Others Over Self and Woman Veteran Strong, Shelly is building those crucial communities where authentic conversations can flourish.
Whether you're a current service member, veteran, or simply interested in authentic leadership, this episode offers valuable perspective on how to maintain your core values while operating in challenging environments. Discover why Shelly believes we need to strip away gender from these conversations and focus instead on our shared humanity—creating space for genuine connection and growth.
Learn more about Shelly and her organization at:
https://othersoverself.com/woman-veteran-strong/
Help Moral Injury Support Network for Servicewomen, Inc. provide the support it needs to women veterans by donating to our cause at: https://misns.org/donation or send a check or money order to Moral Injury Support Network, 136 Sunset Drive, Robbins, NC 27325. Every amount helps and we are so grateful for your loving support. Thanks!
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Hi, this is Dr Daniel Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated. Welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast Today. We have a great guest Today.
Speaker 1:Shelly Root is the visionary behind the TARGET framework and creator of Others Over Self, the proven system that helps ambitious leaders stop swimming upstream and start operating in flow from their tactical center. She specializes in working with frustrated high achievers who deliver outstanding results but feel like they're constantly fighting against the current instead of moving with authentic power. Shelley's breakthrough methodology the hardcore and at-ease system solves the critical problem facing ambitious leaders how to maintain relentless pursuit of excellence while operating from authentic self-alignment. Her framework helps leaders move beyond the frustration of constantly pushing their teams to instead become the kind of powerful, grounded leaders that other excellent people want to work with.
Speaker 1:A military veteran who served as an intelligence officer and attained the rank of captain, shelley brings tactical precision to strategic leadership development. She holds a Master of Arts in Ministry Studies from Moody Theological Seminary and is a distinguished military graduate from Western Michigan University. Combining discipline with compassion in her coaching approach, shelly is a civilian chaplain, published author and advocate for mental wellness in high-performance environments. As a proud wife and mother of three. She exemplifies the balance between intensity and authenticity that define her coaching philosophy, demonstrating how to hit your bullseye and achieve exponential impact through serving others over self. Welcome to the show, shelly. How are you?
Speaker 2:Dr Roberts, I'm tired after listening to all that. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm great. It's great. These bios are great. They help. You know, really, people understand a little bit about us. But you know, I feel the same way when anyone's reading my bio. It's like, okay, that's a lot. So tell me a little bit about yourself and the work you do, besides what's in the bio.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, sir, and thank you so much for holding a space for this conversation. You and the Moral Injury Support Network for Military Women is unique. It's something that doesn't really exist out there, and certainly hasn't until you came along, and it's something that I've been trying to align myself with. It's a forward movement, right. It's an arrow that's moving in a specific direction, and I want to be part of that movement, and so that's what all of this corporate speak and jargon is really all about. Right, it's how can we figure out who has this shared mission and what can we do to lean into each other to move it forward.
Speaker 2:Military women Even when I was in, I definitely felt like I have not had that many female friends, and you know when it's hard to get along with women and you don't really know why, you just kind of always feel a little bit different, a little bit on the outside. That doesn't change in your life. You know. It's not like all of a sudden. Now you have a thousand friends and when you were younger you had one or two.
Speaker 2:So what is really kind of become a passion, and a very interesting project for my company has been to develop a peer support system for military women where we can connect with like minded women, we have a safe space where we can have these really tough conversations and not feel judged and, most importantly, we can establish some healthy friendships. It's really really hard trying to make friendships amongst a group of people that have really high risk rates of mental wellness issues, whether it be substance abuse and use or depression, anxiety, all of the above. As you know, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with, those rates are much higher in this population.
Speaker 1:But there are some of us right that that are healthy and we think we've got some of it figured out and we need friends to yeah, it's a great point and there's, I really think, you know, the more I do this work and I didn't really get as much of a sense of it when I was still in the Army chaplaincy and I was, you know, you end up doing a lot of different things, administrative things and a lot of general army things and not as many counseling type things you really want to do.
Speaker 1:But it really hit me until recently that you know, I think everybody is struggling with some aspects of mental health, um, and and we just aren't being honest enough about it, but there are those who are high performing, high functioning um, and those that that are not as high functioning Um, and so you know it can create um. You know you have some relatability across gender, I mean across high functioning versus low functioning, whatever, because of gender and different things, but also there's also some gaps and some differences, and so you know, sometimes you need to be around folks that are more you know, on common ground with you, and then other times you're able to be with everybody from wherever they're at, whatever their station are, because you have the commonality of we're all just as valuable being human.
Speaker 2:You know, you absolutely said it whatever you know the.
Speaker 2:When you look at mental wellness, right, suicide is in there death by suicide and some of the top suicide rates in the world come from the higher income areas right, south Korea being one of those that it kind of surprises you how high their rates are, you know. And why should it be right If we've got the money to take care of our most basic needs, but we're still feeling unfulfilled deep down, and you know, that's kind of the beauty of what we do. It's to show you that it really doesn't matter what stage or flavor or transition or season you are in life. What really matters is the fact that you're human and you're going through life, and there's people around that have been through that same phase. It's the beauty of humanity, even when things are extremely difficult, you're not the first human hate to tell you this, but you're not the first human to go through this situation, even when those situations like oh my gosh, sir, I've been listening to your podcast ever since I met you and the stories that are told are unreal. I mean, they just are so unique and yet the themes and the mental wellness struggles that come out of them, those are not new.
Speaker 2:The application of them may be interesting and unique to the individual, but at the end of the day we're all facing the same seven deadly sins, or we're all facing those same temptations. They just wear a different type of clothing every now and then. I know like for me personally, I am a person of extremes. I have to really, really watch myself when it comes to binging, particularly with baked goods, and sometimes I will be like I will do a bodybuilding show. I will be so extreme in one lane of my life just to turn around and eat like four chocolate cakes in one sitting, and just because I apply it right in one setting, I could very, very easily apply that to, you know, addicting substance or alcoholism, which runs in my family. So there's a lot of different ways that Shelly Rood could look and it's kind of trying to rein in those choices day after day that helped me hold on to the blessings that I've been given.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great point. I remember talking to a one-star general and he was open enough and honest enough to share some of his struggles that he had. And he was speaking to a group of senior chaplains. So people always feel more comfortable in the setting of chaplains and it's common for the chaplaincy to invite, you know, senior leaders to come talk to us and stuff. But he was being honest about some of his health challenges, financial, some of the things he did each day to, some of the daily affirmations, prayers and other things he did each day to help him get ready for the day. As a result of these things he had been through.
Speaker 1:And after his talk I ran up to meet him and, like you know, elbowed people out of the way to meet him and shake his hand and because I've never been starstruck but I just loved his honesty and I said to him I said I bet there are a lot of senior leaders at your level and higher who are struggling with guilt and shame because they have struggles, real human struggles, but they're expected to maintain an outward presence of having all the answers and being able to advise these soldiers and tell them you need to do this and be this and do all that.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, in their own life they have their struggles, but they can't be open about it because they're expected to be the example for everybody. And he said that I was exactly right, that he knew a lot of senior leaders that were really struggling in the dark of night because they really had very little to turn to. Who are they going to be honest to when you're the most senior ranking person in any room? Now he said chaplains were a great source for him, but that's not true of every leader you know.
Speaker 2:So Well, and, as you know, there's a nationwide shortage of chaplains. There has been for decades. And it was my dream actually to transition from military intel into the military chaplain corps. But I was discharged before I even was able to make that transition. And then when they said we'll just re-enlist right back in straight into the chaplain corps, I tried for four years and they marked me medically unenlistable and I fought and I fought and finally you got to put your hands up and say God's will. So that's where we are now.
Speaker 2:We're moving forward, you and I, both just as civilians out here in the chaplain world with a ministry heart, trying to figure out how can we best serve. And to your point, sir, that idea we call it hardcore around my parts. You know that higher level leader or that person who is just like rocking it out and going for it. And they've got dreams and they're running hard. Who do they turn to? And there's not that many choices. And especially if there's a shortage of chaplains, if there's a shortage of people who are supposed to be the ones answering the phone call, then really who do we turn to? Right? And I think sometimes the assumption is that, you know, maybe we can call our parents or maybe we've all got mentors right and that's a huge opportunity for anybody listening who feels like they have time in their lifestyle. Go ahead and just be a mentor, because, lord knows, I needed one. I still need one, but I've like 10 different mentors in my life now.
Speaker 2:But I just I was thinking about you running up the middle of that hall right and like I call it fangirling. Obviously I'm a female, but I did that at a Memorial Day parade over the woman who was the original poser for Rosie the Riveter, naomi Watts, and she passed actually a couple months later, but I did it. I had it. I had that moment. I had the chance to just run down the hall right and for me it was outside, literally on a parade route and run up to her and hold her hand and kiss her on the cheek and I just told her thank you so much for being that representation of something that I needed.
Speaker 2:And I think you're really onto something there, sir, with when you see it, when you know what it looks like, when you're like that right there. I need some of that in my life, being brave enough to actually run up there and grab it, and it's not about the recognition going to that one star. I mean, lord knows if that one star even remembers that right. It's not about him, it's about you. It's about me being able to mark that life in my moment of being able to hold Rosie the Riveter's hands like the real one. I'll never, ever forget that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it also served. As you know, it gave me, you know, something to talk about, other chaplains about and say, hey, you think, because you know, before I retired I was a sergeant major and so I worked with senior chaplains. They were all colonels, but I would so, but even they would so all their bosses were one and two stars, um, and three stars, and so it's not that they were starstruck, but they just, you know, kind of, but but often like, tended to see these, these generals, just in their, their outward appearance and what they put on, and so, and so most generals, right by the time they become a general, they're really good speakers and they, they're so used to like giving speeches and giving talks. They always sound so polished, and so, whatever, whatever, it was a good thing to remind them like, hey, that guy that you're seeing or that woman that you're seeing that is so polished and so strong, you don't know what's going on in their house, you don't know what's going on in their life, you don't know what's going on in their health or their daughter or their son, or what's happening. They've never actually talked to anyone of a senior rank, of any rank, that, when they opened up about their personal life wasn't facing some major challenge never happened.
Speaker 1:Now there's been people that it's like, hey, how you doing, I'm great, we're talking about the football game or something, but I'm talking about people that that sat down, let their hair down just for a minute and shared what's going on with their life. I remember a hardcore chief of staff we had one-star general and I always thought, man, she is tough Like. I never had any kind of conversation with her. I was a little not frightened of her, but she did intimidate me a little bit. But one day she was visiting a Strong Bonds you know marriage retreat event, just dropping in as a senior leader to kind of like see what was happening.
Speaker 2:Because that's what everybody loves when you're at a marriage retreat with your spouse and your boss comes in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was just there for admin support. So I was just kind of sitting outside the main room and she came down, plop down next to me and just started talking and I found out like she'd love to get married again but she can't find a guy who's not carrying a bunch of baggage or just wants a sugar mama and this kind of stuff and all these things. We talked for like an hour about her personal relationship to her life. It was the most amazing thing I ever experienced. You know, I don't know about that, but I mean it was just. It was just so interesting that I'm like wow, she's a real person and that real issues and she's actually.
Speaker 1:You know, after that conversation I gained a lot of respect for and a lot of compassion for her. Like, who does she get to just sit down and have that conversation with Right? Because I was in the chaplaincy and because you know just whatever she was in this mood and it was really good. So I want to get to your stuff though, because I could have this kind of conversation forever, but I do want to talk about the work you do. What initially drew you to focus on moral injury?
Speaker 2:learning what it was. I didn't know there was a name for it and I know that you've done some incredible academic work to define it. The easiest way with that I can kind of lean into how the VA defines it is when your personal values don't match the organization that you're expected to operate in and that conflict. And I've had a lot of red tape and brick walls in my life where I just felt like it wasn't working and I didn't know why it wasn't working. And maybe if I could change myself, maybe if I was a little bit more hard, maybe if I went after things a little bit differently, maybe I should be a little bit softer, maybe I like right, if I, if I just kept adapting, then things would fall in place. And then things do fall in place. And then now I'm intimidating. You said that word about strong women, right, and now I mean I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm looking statistically at the data of what it means to serve women veterans and more of them than not are single and the average age of a woman veteran now is 46 years old. I mean this is a very bold statement but it's almost like widow's work at this point when you lean it and parallel it with the biblical understanding of who and how we're supposed to serve. So how can I, what can I, bring to the table to women who are 46 years of age and getting older, and half of them don't have a life partner and aren't married and maybe that is not in their future and, to be honest with you, sir, a lot of them could care less about that. They don't even want it in their future. So it's a whole different conversation than a lot of these assumptions that are out there and a lot of these programs that are out there, and they're really fun conversations to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's really good.
Speaker 1:And you're right, like many, strong, powerful, successful women are without partners, and there's a whole lot of reasons for that, but a lot of it has to do with, you know, just a lot of weak men out there that are really looking for something that these strong women don't't want to be, you know they, they don't want to adjust, um, so so they often have made decisions to pursue uh, just like men, right, they made decisions to pursue careers and pursue self-actualization, which I think is fantastic, but then they find themselves outside of, you know, not in a relationship they want, and having really tough sledding trying to find a good partner, and I think a lot of them then go okay, it's not in the card Doesn't mean I can't have a good life, though it doesn't mean I can't have fulfillment in life and I would love to see society be more open and change so that, um, you know, these women who, who are really would make great partners because they've they've learned a lot of things've become successful in many ways, and that's that to me is a is a good partner when they are a whole person and successful in their own right.
Speaker 1:They bring a lot to a relationship.
Speaker 2:So just preach, sir.
Speaker 1:Preach, because you're saying a whole lot yeah, our society still largely expects, you know, women to get married early, have kids and all that stuff, and then, if you got time, maybe you can do some career stuff.
Speaker 2:And that's sad, that's unfortunate and it's interesting, right, because it's like, well, well, like, I'm not speaking of me, but you know, if you're a combat fighter pilot, right, who does who does she marry? Let's be honest, like, who's going to understand her? Who? Who is going to you know who's going to understand her? Another combat fighter pilot, that's a good marriage, right there, right, and you know. So it's almost like we have to find our professional equals or we have to find somebody that absolutely loves what we did professionally.
Speaker 2:And I can only lean into myself as an example where I was formally married and it was to an active duty army ranger, super hardcore personality ended up being an abusive situation. So glad that I left. But now I have a kid and I'm in my 30s and I'm trying to make it happen again, like these are not easy life transitions. And in that dating process, oh my goodness, trying to sit down and date and look at men across the table. One of them was a doctor, right, and he was like, well, you can just calm down at this point in your life, you know, I'll just take care of you and your child. And I'm like, no, that's not what I want.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's huge. And the other thing you brought up too is um, you know when women being at odds with their organization and I've heard this a lot from women is I just I was treated like I was just wrong to be a woman in this military organization, and so when something you cannot change about yourself makes you wrong, that's really hard to deal with, right it's so hard your physiology makes you somehow wrong.
Speaker 1:When I mean which is totally of course, but when you're treated like just the fact of your physiology, something you can't change, makes you wrong, that's really devastating to your self-esteem and your morale and everything else right.
Speaker 2:So you can see me right, I'm like climbing out of my chair trying to figure out like the best way to frame this response. And my husband and I were just having this discussion yesterday about how I had a roommate in college and she had a poster over her bed of the Disney princesses and these were, these were the classic ones, right? So you had Snow White, you had Sleeping Beauty, and I thought that was so weird. I was not raised that way. I mean, I watched the Disney movies or whatever. But my husband was like why did you think that was so weird? Like there are women that love that and embody that, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but to me, okay.
Speaker 2:To me, when I watched Sleeping Beauty no, cinderella, let's do cinderella. When I watch cinderella, so you know she's got this whole domesticated chores, servant type of life who, who are you in the movie, sir? When you watch cinderella, you're that guy, aren't you right? And you're on the horse and you're slaying the thing like do you know who I am when I watched the movie Cinderella.
Speaker 2:I'm the mouse, jacques, who is just like that little tiny fireball that gets it done and makes it happen. I'm not Cinderella, and of course my husband joked and he thought that I was Gus Gus, which is like the fat mouse, because of my, you know.
Speaker 2:I already disclosed to you my binge eating tendencies, but it's just such a great example of you know, we didn't have Mulan and we didn't have Brave and we didn't have Frozen and we didn't have these young female figures that we could look to and even say or have the option of, I want to be her when I grow up. Right, we had women who cried in the forest and threw themselves on their beds and were always at the mercy of men. Yeah, and I love, I love that the narrative is shifting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's fantastic. I married a very strong woman who intimidates a lot of other people, just that, not because she's mean or she stomps around like a dragon, but she's just powerful and you know, she doesn't take garbage from anybody and she doesn't feel the need to conform to what everybody thinks she needs to be. But she's a successful business person and I admire a lot about her. The way we made our marriage work is we just support each other and didn't try to, like, determine what the other person should be.
Speaker 1:But in your work, as you're working with people because you're doing, you know, more or less the equivalent of life coaching and consultation and that kind of thing Are you working with a lot of women in terms of, you know, knowing what we've been talking about, like these cultural expectations, and knowing that not conforming to cultural expectation has a price right, because there's a potential price to relationships, but also just the internal, like am I wrong? Should I be? You know, am I weird? Am I, should I be doing this? Certainly, we have certain religious narratives that would suggest that a woman you know pursuing in churches that would make women feel bad for wanting to have a career, and that kind of stuff. Do you work with women on these things and how do you help them navigate this stuff?
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are great questions and I would say, you know I'm not out there as, like, a Christian coach like that is totally not, shelly rude, because I didn't even come to Christ until I was 30 years old. So if you knew me in my 20s, I was literally the fire five foot fireball that was doing keg stands. Don't tell my parents.
Speaker 2:And I could hold anybody to the table, Right Like I get it. I've been there, Right Like you know I was army. I've been there right Like you. You know I was army. And if you want to have any friends at all, you say mean things and you tell dirty jokes, that's. If you don't, then you're completely isolated. And you're not only isolated, you're ostracized. And not only that, but your job is so much harder because nobody likes you, Nobody wants to talk with you, Nobody shares information, Nobody goes out to lunch with you, Like that show Friends, which I barely watched but my roommates always had it on.
Speaker 2:I just remember this episode where one of the friends was pretending to smoke or took up smoking because her coworkers always got all the good dirt and the promotions on the smoke breaks. And I mean that's how the military is right, and I hate to say the phrase good old boy network, because it's not necessarily like that, but what it is is relationship building. And if you're not ingrained with the people on your left and on your right 24 hours a day, then you are missing out on opportunities. And if you don't really understand them, then they're not going to understand you. And I think that's really the shame of it, sir, is nobody cares, Like the military has a really, really nasty culture and you know, I've heard one-star generals explain me that it will. It was just a Sparta lifestyle, you know, and that's just how it is Right. And it's like OK, but you realize we're not Sparta, nor do we want to be Sparta Right. So it's like why are we celebrating something that we don't want to be Right?
Speaker 1:It's like the cool factor yeah, it's true and and I don't I don't think the current administration is doing anything to make that better. I mean, I think the uh, I think what I get frustrated about with the military, what I have gotten frustrated about before, is there's this false narrative that if you're doing, if you're, if you're doing things you know doing training and spending time trying to make things better for the people that serve right, like trying to infuse more compassionate leadership and diversity and include this kind of stuff You're not, you know you're wasting time when you should be training for war and stuff like that. Like as if you can either train for war or make things better for your people, and that's a false dichotomy. It's also a false dichotomy that you know hardcore military, you know combat leaders. They can't also be compassionate and caring and all that stuff. That's total BS.
Speaker 1:Because I spent 10 years in the infantry. I was in the 82nd Airborne Division, 25th Infantry Division, team leader, squad leader, scout sniper. I did a lot of different things and I always this is my own, this is like my own self-evaluation but I never believed that I always treated my troops well. I was always pretty, pretty compassionate and caring when they, when we were in a garrison. They had issues, family stuff. I always tried to help them any way I could. They talked to me about their stuff. You know I never like, uh felt like, with my troops. You know I could, unless we were in situation where we're actually, you know, shooting bullets and doing combat things. Outside of that, I felt, uh, we could, um, you know, we could create an environment where we cared about each other, we were good to each other, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm going to deepen that, sir. I'm going to deepen it and I'll keep it PG-13 rated. Ask your parents to continue. But this is the reality of what we're talking about, right? So you're explaining a military experience where you've got hardcore things going on, but there's also that care for the individual. So if you apply that to my life experience I was married to that infantry ranger who was doing those hardcore things the difference was the values. The difference was that that man would say and he in a lot of ways did support and love the people around him and I'm sure that there's a thousand men that would say that he absolutely was there for them in hard times and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:But we're also talking about sharing pornography. We're also talking about sharing hookers that are coming into the barracks, gritty Sparta lifestyle quote unquote things that are happening in our military that get disclosed from time to time, like the human trafficking rings and the sex rings, and then it's like oh, shocker, this stuff is going on Right, and so it. And that's where you're saying it's a false dichotomy. You don't get to say that you love and care for your soldier's marriage and, at the same time, lean into or even provide something that is going to be detrimental to that marriage, and to me that is like the root of moral injury. And so then you know, then you've got these people that are out there fighting at war and everybody should be, you know, holding them on a pedestal or spoon, feeding them fatherhood that's what I used to say with my son right, record every moment and put it on a box and tie it with a bow and ship it off to the man who's at war, right, who's actually over there doing very, very non-marital things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is moral injury. That's exactly what that looks like, and it hurts. It hurts deeply, and it's not something that changes overnight, and, in fact, I love the conversation that you and I have had previously about you don't fix it. It's not something that you fix. The only thing you could ever do is come to this understanding of well, why did it happen that way? And that's not an easy thing to understand, especially when the hurt is so deep and so real. Right, why is this person choosing alcohol over their family? Why is this person choosing to?
Speaker 2:I know people that you know, a lot of them. They just, straight up, will call somebody for sexual favors, right, they have no issues. In South Korea, you've got Hooker Hill. We know what these things are Like. This is, this is how we talk in the military all the time, every day, and we can either sugarcoat it or we can get in there and we can try to change the culture, and it's not, it's not welcomed to try to change the culture, right, and so I don't even know how to do it.
Speaker 2:You've got probably 10,000 people that are going to give you nasty comments for this episode, but you've got a couple that are going to be like. You know what we should be leaning into healthy marriages for our military people, right, and that's what Strong Bonds is all about. I love that you shared that. There are things that are out there that are built and created for stronger families and stronger marriages. And here's the thing, sir if we don't fix it, you get the broken veteran system that we have today, because these soldiers and sailors and airmen, they do not hold those titles forever. They will come out of the system. And when they come out of the system, where are they going to go? They're going to go into the general community, and so either they fall into community care or they fall into the veteran system. And I don't think that you know the public at large understands just how few military people actually qualify to be a part of that veteran care system to be a part of that veteran care system.
Speaker 1:You know the points you made so excellent, because you're right. I mean, what I talk about is caring for my troops, what you talked about caring for the families, and I do think that's right. I think there are a lot of military leaders who are terrible husbands, terrible fathers, but great squad leaders, great platoon leaders, whatever Right, because they found an area they can really focus on. They get a lot of accolades for there's promotion, for it. You know, there's like everything is encouraging them to be that, everything is encouraging them to be that it, the military, only does like a, like a. It talks about caring for the families, but it's just, you know, it's like a, it's whitewash, it doesn't really, it's not really willing to make decisions, um and policies that could really help the family.
Speaker 2:So when I was a I think I was a captain. Actually. I was experiencing a very difficult time of divorce, divorcing that gentleman gentleman, that man, I'll take that word back. And I was at my drill, right, I was still in the military, I was doing my drill, and I had a fellow captain ask me quote, unquote, ask me to set up the table for the family readiness group. And I was like sir, don't you? I think he was, um, I mean, we can be the same rank but still call someone sir, Right? So he was in a different position. So I was like sir, don't you have anybody else that could just take care of that table? And he was like, nope, they're all out on leave. I need you to just go walk over there and take care of it. And I was like fine, I got 10 minutes, no problem.
Speaker 2:So I walk over to the table and I look at this box and I'm like I got to pick up this box of crap and put it on this family display table. All right, Shelly, we're going to do this. And I I had to steal my heart Like I was. I've never been that upset at work before, and this is 16 years in, and I had to actually steal my heart to rip open this stupid box of pamphlets. And as I was looking at these pamphlets, what's on the front? A beautiful man in uniform with his arms around a slightly overweight wife and three loving, smiling children right there at their feet, right. And I'm taking out stacks and stacks of these support the military supports families and I'm putting them up on the table.
Speaker 2:And I'm getting madder and madder and madder every second that I'm having to put up this display table. And it'm getting madder and madder and madder every second that I'm having to put up this display table. And it was such an important moment for me to realize I should not be doing this. I do not believe in this, I do not support this, and nobody at my job even cares. Because I asked right, I did ask. I asked if anybody else could possibly do it and, let's be real, the only reason that I got stuck with that task was because I was a female. Isn't there some dude that can just go walk over and pick up some brochures and put them on the table with all the emotional crap? Can't anybody else do this right now? We're going to turn Captain Shelley into an idiot for the next hour.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll do that especially someone who didn't even it would be. Somebody didn't even recognize the issue, like god, fine, it wouldn't even like some joe who wouldn't even look at was honored to put it out there and not have to care.
Speaker 2:You know yeah that would have been great yeah, what so?
Speaker 1:I, I, we, we, yeah. So we interviewed 20 military spouses of service members with PTSD. A lot of them talked about and it was in relation to moral injury. A lot of them talked about these kind of military cultural things that made it really really, really exceedingly hard on their family. And so I have some ideas how the military could do better, but I want to hear from you what are some decisions or policies or changes that the military in general we're not necessarily talking about Army Air Force specifically, because they're all very similar in many ways when it comes to the family what are some things that the the military could do better, what military leaders could do to make things better for family?
Speaker 2:that's a huge question, sir, right, huge question. And I can answer that from the life experience of having been a former military spouse. I'm remarried, so my spouse now, who is a man, was considered a veteran's spouse, right, or a military spouse at one point. And I have a 15-year-old from my first marriage. So I've got all sides of it and I'm having to deal with divorce, being divorced from a current service member and what that looks like.
Speaker 2:One of the easiest low-hanging pieces of fruit I think that we need to go after is childcare. Childcare is such a joke. Childcare is not provided, especially when you look in the reserve and the guard. Situations it's starting. It is starting to be there. The Air Force is light years ahead on situations. It's starting. It is starting to be there. The Air Force is light years ahead on this and it's starting.
Speaker 2:But I don't understand why they say well, you've got a family care plan, right. You need to figure it out and be here at 4 am. Who do you think I'm going to call at 4 am? You're the one that moved me to the other side of the country and I'm married to a military spouse. He's got to be there at four in the morning too Right. So now we have to have like an in-home nanny.
Speaker 2:Like it is crazy, it's not thought of, certainly not by anybody who's actually in their child raising years.
Speaker 2:It's very totalitarian and it's so sad. It is so sad because we're raising kids like mine, my 15 year old, who, oh my gosh, if he was in the military he would be leading troops like unreal and so healthy and so phenomenally, and he won't even go near the military because of the trauma that he has associated with, you know, my ex-husband and his father, and how he doesn't want that in his life. And so we're doing more harm than good by just trying to sweep these things under the rug and move forward for the sake of moving forward operationally, when in reality, if you back out and if you look at even businesses that are extremely profitable and have great retention rates and very low employee turnover, one of the chief things that they lean into and invest in is child care. And so if the military, if the United States military, wants to continue to have the nation's most incredible volunteer fighting force, then they've got to invest in that next generation, and it starts the day that they're born, or even before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a great point. I think that if we create an environment where military leaders had to hear from spouses and spouses could be honest about what they're experiencing, it would blow leaders' minds Like. There's a couple of problems. One is service members are afraid for their spouse to talk to their commanders because of the repercussions that might happen to them when their spouses complain.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean you're talking about domestic violence right now and intimate partner violence, because how dare you talk to that commander?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How dare you say that at the picnic and it does it comes back on the spouses. That fear is legitimate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it comes back on the spouses. That fear is legitimate. Yeah, yeah, and it's. And even if, even if the service member is not violent, they're still worried about what the commander is going to say to them, or what the first sergeant is going to say to them, or whatever, because of what their wife said to them. You know, um, it's funny, my wife doesn't have that issue.
Speaker 1:I remember I was in the army reserve. We were mobilizing, we're supposed to go to Iraq no, afghanistan and and this, the the commander was a, the general was an older guy, white hair, I mean people. People call them grandpa, right, not service members, but my wife called him grandpa because he was a really nice guy. He was an Army Reserve guy too, and so he gave her his card and said if you ever have any problems your husband had any issues call me. And I told her. I said don't call the general man, you can't do it. But we had some issues and she said I don't give a shit, I'm calling him and you can't do, can't. But we had some issues and she said I don't give a, I'm calling him. And she called him and he gave her the number to somebody who works in the secretary of the army's office and the thing got fixed and fixed. I didn't freak out about it because I was like you can't stop patty from doing what she's going to do. And it helped everybody, not just me, the whole unit, because it was a unit-wide problem.
Speaker 1:But most people are afraid of how it could happen in their career. The other problem is so you need to like if you had spouses sharing their honest feelings, you need to like somehow have them behind a veil. Well, nobody would know who's really saying it or something. Oh, absolutely have them behind a veil, while nobody would know who's really saying it or something.
Speaker 1:But the other problem is a lot of because of the way the officer corps runs is that many officer wives are not career. They don't have careers. They've accepted their job is to move around with the husband every couple of years to run the family support groups and all this kind of stuff. So the commanders are looking at their family and they don't even know honestly what's going on in their minds, their own family's minds, but they're sort of like have fooled themselves into thinking oh, my wife's happy, she loves being off the wife because she gets to run the family support group meeting and she gets to do little copies and she doesn't have to work a job and stuff like that. They don't even really know how many of their own spouses and kids are really struggling because they spend 80 hours a week at work.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and you know, so I can say that I was that wife and at the same time that I was the commander's wife, I was also in the military. So you know I was an S2 in intel and I also had a civilian job because I was reserved. So I was also the director of marketing for a television station. And so that question of he thinks I'm happy, I am happy, I'm very happy in my military career and I'm very happy in my civilian career and I'm very happy playing the commander's wife and I think that I'm a good mom. I'm not happy with my marriage. And so there's all these different facets of life and happiness that can't be fixed with other things. Right, the plugs aren't fitting the right holes.
Speaker 2:If you're not stepping back and intentionally crafting a career, it's not going to accidentally happen.
Speaker 2:And the same thing applies to your personal relationships, whether it be with your spouse or with your subordinates or with your children.
Speaker 2:And there has to be some type of self-actualization and realization that just because one area of your life maybe you are that incredible first sergeant and maybe everybody does come to you and maybe you do have closets of accolades like mine over there, that's awesome, right?
Speaker 2:Maybe you've got this killer nine pack that Batman is jealous of, which was me right Once in the day. But if you're running around on your spouse right or your kid hasn't called you in six months, pay attention to those triggers also and really lean into what you think are your life values, instead of just glossing them over and moving on for the sake of the mission, Because at the end of the day, that uniform has to come off and those awards are going to sit in the closet and you might end up as one of these thousands of veterans that I deal with every single day that are unhappy. One of these thousands of veterans that I deal with every single day that are unhappy, leaning into bottles and bottles of pills given to them by the VA right, these giant horse pills and these giant bottles on the sides of the beds. Like this stuff doesn't happen by accident. This is, it's like, the result of what we've created.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think? Do you think women are as susceptible as men to that? Like I can speak for men and, knowing a lot of men, they, they really tend to. Okay, I'm good at that, so that's what I do. And it's not just military people. Uh, medical doctors often work more hours than they have to because they're really good at that, they're making really money at that, they're getting accolades at that. And coming home to family relationship, family problems and all that so much more difficult to solve and you can't just like you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one of my mentors is Donald Miller. He's a New York Times bestselling author, blue like jazz. A lot of my mentors is Donald Miller. He's a New York Times bestselling author, blue like jazz. A lot of Christians will remember Donald Miller, but he describes it as, like you know, when you're at work then you're the kind of the king of your castle or whatever and you get to make things happen, but then when you come home, you're a servant, and you're a servant to the other people in the home and that sucks. And so why would you want to come home Like, why would you want to walk in and serve other people?
Speaker 2:And I just want to advocate for the military women and the strong women, because there are women like me. There are women out there who have, you know, the Disney princesses over their bed, and there are women over there, like my mother, who her entire life's passion and dedication was to raise children. I'm not speaking against them, but that is not me. You know what I would love to do. Did you know, sir, that today is Monday?
Speaker 2:Do you know that I love Mondays? I love Mondays because the daycare is open. I do. I look forward to Monday morning because I can drop my kids off and I can actually categorize right, and I can come home and I can get some stuff done right, some really important stuff that matters, like being a guest on gender roles as an excuse for just the fact that we don't want to do sucky work. But at some point I don't want to do the dishes any more than you do, like, dude. I don't get any more fulfillment out of running the laundry than you do Like. I really, really don't hear me out here, but one of us has to do it or we do it together, right If we're going to do it the military way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point. I lost my first marriage because I tried to be like my dad, in charge of everything, only doing certain things man's work, woman's work. That marriage failed. I married Patty and she's like I don't play that game. And so we started doing stuff together. We do the dishes together, the laundry together, sometimes it's her, sometimes it's me.
Speaker 1:Now that I'm retired I do a lot of stuff that she used to do because I'm not working in the army 60, 70 hours a week.
Speaker 1:And I remember I was folding laundry one time and her niece, who's just a few years younger than me, comes in the house and she goes, dan's doing laundry and Patty's like, oh yeah, he does it all the time she goes, that's so hot. And it was just the idea that a man doing like that kind of stuff and I was like, hey, actually don't mind laundry, but it's just to your point of like it's not man's work, it's just stuff that when we started working as a team, just accepting each other, and started saying this has to be done plus, patty is better at tools than I am she taught me a lot about like carpentry things and a lot of that traditional man stuff I didn't learn. Growing up she taught me how to do it. Um, you know, her favorite store is on one hand, it's a great jewelry store, on the other hand, it's Lowe's hardware, I mean, you know so. So I love that.
Speaker 2:Right, and I love all of this about you, sir, and I also hear my father, who I love very, very much and nobody challenges me more than him. And my father, I hear his voice of you know why isn't the lawn mowed? And well, shelly, you just need to go get yourself a husband right, as if the husband is going to take care of the lawn being mowed. You know what takes care of the lawn being mowed, sir? A lawnmower? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:And you know you have to be willing to not only hear these things that you don't agree with.
Speaker 2:You have to be willing to sit down and have educated conversation about them and then be able to hopefully sway the mindset so that better decisions can be made.
Speaker 2:I mean, not even two years ago, my father decided to throw out during breakfast that women shouldn't have the right to vote.
Speaker 2:Right, like you don't say that to me, like to your daughter, who's a veteran who served in the military You're going to tell me that women shouldn't have the right to vote, and I can either fly off the handle and react and dump my coffee in his lap, or we can have kind of a lighthearted chat about the French revolution and only what happens when only you allow the aristocracy to vote and you can take it to those next levels.
Speaker 2:But you have to be educated yourself and you have to not lead by emotion. And you can take all of the statistics and data out there about men versus emotion versus women and all of that, but at the end of the day it's about how quickly do you fly off the handle when something that you don't agree with is being said to you, and are you emotionally mature enough to be able to counter a point? Have you taken debate lately? I mean, how many people are we engaging with that are seriously arguing and having these immature fights that don't even need to be existing because they just don't even know how to communicate?
Speaker 1:I can't really think of anything, any profession that gender has anything to do with, other than you know, we've determined it to be so. I mean, aside from, like, what we can do with medicine and and who we can make pregnant and all that, not talk about that, but, just like you know, all these different things that we have, well, this is man work, woman work, like I don't like. To me, gender is a completely unimportant factor in determining who should do almost any kind of job you can think of. It's just can you do the job or not, like you know, because I've met plenty of men who are, physically, when we talk about a woman's job or man's job, or whether a woman should do it or not, with the image we have in our mind, is a person that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:What is a woman, what is a man, or a pretty or this or that? It's in our mind and so that's who we're comparing to. But it's really nonsense. Those people don't really exist. It just does this particular person have the interest, capability, willingness, strength, whatever, to do the job, and whatever weaknesses or skills or whatever they don't have? Are they willing to learn or better themselves to do the job? If not, they're not the right person. Whether they're a man or a woman is immaterial, like we make gender a thing when that's not even like. You know what I mean. It's the job.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to do with the job and that's very emotionally mature thinking.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful and I'm going to take that and play that recording over and over and over again to a lot of people sir, because if we backed up to even the seventies, which was not that long ago, right, I mean we're talking about within four generations the reason and I won't get too deeply into, you know, patriarchy stuff but the reason why women couldn't do the job. If you're an army officer today, you are required to have a government travel card, which is a it's a personal credit card. It's not something the military gives you. You have to actually apply for a government travel card and it's your own line of credit that's used against you. If you backed up to the seventies and a little bit before that, guess what? Women were not legally allowed to have, without a man's signature, a credit card right, owning land, I mean. So these are the types of things like you said, we did this to ourselves as humanity. If you deny someone the right to open up a line of credit, if you deny someone the right to own land, these are human rights. These are not gender rights. These are human rights. And when you deny them these rights, then you do put them in a box and you are the one that is now creating these stereotypes that don't need to come into play. And now I'm too strong and I probably turned off half of your audience. So I'll lighten up a little bit and, you know, just kind of bring it back to the realization that that's why so many of us do fight for our rights so strongly, because they're human rights.
Speaker 2:I don't know that there are gender issues and gender rights. It drives me crazy, and the only way that I can even have a conversation about any of that is if we scratch those titles. The American Legion for the state of Michigan had me come up and do a keynote and they wanted me to talk about women veterans stuff. Right? Who wants to hear about women veterans stuff? Right? Who wants to hear about women veterans stuff?
Speaker 2:The men at the American Legion annual conference? No, they don't. Well, like, that is the hardest task that I've ever had to do. So how do we do it? We have to reframe it in a way that they'll actually care about something and we can't use phrases like gender rights and all this crap, like we have to just go back to what it means to be human. We have to take the gender part out of the entire conversation and then, right, what you call an apple is the same thing that I call an apple, and we're not, when we're not fighting about whether there's one or two apples on the table. We're just talking about one apple. Now we have a place of common understanding that we can start to go from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love what you said there and we've got to wrap up here in a few minutes, couple minutes, but I love that.
Speaker 1:I think when we what I see is a lot of issues when it comes to fighting for, you know, different groups fighting for what they want and all that stuff, they're trying to influence people outside their groups by speaking as if they're talking to people inside their group, you know, and it just turns people off, makes them angry or whatever, and you're not really influencing people, whereas you made a really wise example. You're a woman talking to a bunch of men. You can still influence them in the direction you want to go and help turn them out, however slightly you do right, Turn them to her them, however slightly you do right, turn them toward, but not by offending them, angering them, using terms they don't even know what it means. Whatever You're going to, you have to relate it to things they understand, even if you think this group that you're speaking to is the most backwards, hard-nosed-holes that you know you want to talk to, right? I'm sure that wasn't the case there, but you know you get it.
Speaker 2:No, never.
Speaker 1:That's who you're talking to. You know you still, if you want to influence them, you have to get in their shoes a little bit, at least speak their language, and not try to get too much at once. Hey, if I can get them to just open their mind a little bit, I'm doing something here, and that's. That's really smart. I think people doing the work we're trying to do, which is influence culture, influence mindset, influence people to change even people that I'm helping, that maybe a woman veteran who's come to help, I don't, you know, I still have to come at it from where they're at right now and try to see a different you know, maybe option than what they've been doing before.
Speaker 2:You do, and I'm going to quote Billy Bro as, right now, simple marketing for smart people, and one of the very first things that he talks about when you're trying to even just like start on this idea of awareness is there. The first stage is awareness, and there's three questions that you need to be able to address very, very smartly. And the first one is what do people believe about their problem? Right, if the person sitting in front of you thinks that women shouldn't have the right to vote, you need to know that. You need to know the audience that you're walking into and not have that assumption that everybody thinks the way that you do. And the second one is what do they need to believe about the prevalence of the problem? Actually was one of the biggest women suffragettes and she gave up her fight in her 70s because she got so tired of watching women be happy and content with their men's names on the credit card, and so if you don't believe that the prevalence of the problem is there, then you're really not going to be able to move that needle. And the final nugget for you is what do they believe about what happens if the problem doesn't get solved?
Speaker 2:Lucy Bivens probably had no idea how instrumental she was in women even being able to be military officers. But if we didn't have our names on a credit card and if we didn't have the right to vote, then we wouldn't be able to take the stand that we do amongst our brethren, we wouldn't be able to take the stand that we do amongst our brethren. And there's so much that goes into the understanding of the human mind and the ethical way to influence it and I'm so thankful for just our conversation today, dr Roberts, and knowing of the work that you do, and I hope that I was able to bring to light maybe a little bit of levity and also just some real world examples of how dirty and nasty this work really is and it can grind on you day after day. It really can, but there is absolute hope in understanding the why and there's wonderful places in life that we can get to yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:So let's close it up by just tell us your organizations you have a couple of different ones what services they provide, what they do, and we'll make sure we have links to everything in the show notes and stuff like that so people can find it. But just give us a quick overview of that.
Speaker 2:Sure, you can find me everywhere on Others Over Self. That's Others Over Self. That's our social media handle. Othersoverselfcom is our website. Um, we even have a private group. If you just want to interact with me and not have it be through third brother social media, third third party big brother social media, um, then join that. Others over selfcom is our community. Um, and if you are a military woman and you would like to make some other friends that have also served in the military, then I have a complimentary option for you. We don't charge you anything because I do the hard work of getting organizations and groups to take care of the funding for it, and that is womanveteranstrongorg. That's woman W-O-M-A-N veteranstrongorg, and I'm not hiding.
Speaker 1:You can Google Shelly Rood, r-o-o-d, and you can find me everywhere Awesome. Well, it's been great having you today, shelly. I think I know we went off the questions, but we were having such a great conversation about, you know, this kind of stuff and culture and ideas and paradigms, and old boy thinking and all this stuff. I really get into that. So, and I and I hope that the audience will, you know, be encouraged, especially the women that, hey, there are many others like them that are that are trying to, you know, move the needle in the right direction. You're certainly a leader in that, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thanks, dr Roberts, and thank you to you and especially for your wife. The two of you are perfect compliments and we appreciate seeing that example.
Speaker 1:Great. Okay, until next time, have a great one.
