HANNAH KING

HEALTHCARE WORKER / HUNTER / VETERAN


At 24 Hannah felt herself floundering, looking for something stable. “I didn't think of myself as a mess. But current me would think that.” She tried a year of Christian college, but found she was craving more structure. “They say the National Guard is the military’s best kept secret.” The first night of Basic Training was poignant: She was feeling “all sorts of things…fear of the unknown, How much will be Hollywood? How much will be awful?...They break down your barriers pretty quick” - on arrival shampoo was put on their heads and they were pushed into a shower together. “You lose your inhibitions and your personal identity.” But she remembers lying in bed at lights-out, thinking “This is where I was meant to be.”
 

Hannah thrived in the military environment, and served for 6 ½ years. 

Coming home from Afghanistan was the hardest. The only deployment where she had to carry a rifle 24/7, and working in munitions, one of the bigger targets, she was getting bombed constantly. “You learn to hear it and hit the deck”. It has affected her life, but she doesn’t want to be hindered. She sees it as very minor PTSD. 

With it comes the ‘guilty feeling’  – “You think ‘I  don’t have the right to feel this. I wasn’t on the other side of the wire all the time.’  But you have to speak truth to yourself in that moment.”