‘Your kids gaze up, ever so confused. ‘Who was that, mama?’ ‘Oh, just someone I used to know very well, baby.’ I will never take this place for granted.’: Woman urges ‘home is still waiting for you’

“Your friends, the ones you bump into unexpectedly then can’t wait to tell your mom about. ‘You won’t believe who I saw today…’ You forgot how much old friends meant. How much they still mean. Home. A place where we spend our youth running from it and our adulthood trying to recreate it. It’s still there, you know. Waiting for you and waiting for your children, too.”

‘My MARRIED Corporal would call me drunk at all hours of the night, calling me ‘baby.’ I was punished for not wanting to socialize with him outside of work.’: Female veteran, assault survivor says ‘we are all Vanessa Guillen’

“I was young and naïve when I left home at 18 years old to join the Marine Corps. I remember lying awake in my empty barracks as Marines knocked on my door saying, ‘I’m gonna get you first.’ I was harassed and accused of ‘sleeping my way through the ranks.’ I quickly realized not everyone in the Corps was my ‘brother’ or ‘sister.'”

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