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Renee Carter
Age 50 · US Army Veteran · Mother to Devin & Maya
Service and what it taught me — for my children, and for anyone who wants to understand.
Before I Begin
I served in the United States Army for twelve years. I was deployed twice. I came home both times.
I am fifty years old now, and I have two children — Devin, who is twenty-three, and Maya, who is nineteen. They grew up knowing their mother as someone who wore a uniform and was sometimes far away and always came back. I don't think they fully understand what that time meant, or what it made me, or what it cost, or what it gave.
So I'm writing this. Not a war story — that's not what this is. This is a story about what service teaches you: about discipline, about community, about knowing what you're made of, about learning to lead and to follow, about the particular kind of friendship that forms under pressure. These are the things worth passing on.
To Devin and Maya: this is me, before you, and because of you.
Service, and What It Taught Me
Core Values
Discipline
Not punishment — structure. The freedom that comes from knowing you can rely on yourself.
Service
The instinct to ask 'what does this situation need from me?' before 'what do I need from this situation?'
Resilience
You don't have to be fine. You do have to keep going. These are different things.
Honesty
About yourself first. It is the hardest kind and the most important kind.
Community
You cannot do hard things alone. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't done truly hard things.
Letters to Devin & Maya
To Devin
Devin —
You were three years old when I came home the second time, and you didn't speak — you just grabbed my legs and held on. I've thought about that moment more times than I can count. You didn't need words. You just needed me to be there.
I have not always been there in every way you needed. The years of service took me away when I would have chosen to stay. I want you to know that every time I was away, I was thinking about getting back. You were the thing I was getting back to.
You are twenty-three and building your own life now, and you do it with a steadiness that I like to think you learned somewhere and I hope one of those somewheres was from watching me. You are a better communicator than I am. You are kinder, I think. These are not small things.
I'm proud of you. I'm proud of every version of you. — Mom
To Maya
Maya —
You were born six months after I returned from my second deployment, which means you came into the world when I was a different, harder-edged, more careful version of myself. I softened, progressively, because of you. You required it. You arrived with an openness and a trust that I had to earn, and the process of earning it made me better.
You are nineteen and you are figuring out who you are, which is exactly right. I want to tell you something about that process: there is no deadline. The people who tell you to have it figured out by a certain age are usually the people who haven't figured it out themselves and made peace with it.
Here is what I can tell you about who you are, from the outside: you are braver than you think. You are funnier than you know. And you have a quality I've only ever seen in a few people — you make whoever you're talking to feel like they're the most interesting person in the room. That is a rare and precious thing. Use it well.
I love you, always. — Mom
Your story is worth telling.
Every life has chapters worth preserving. Start yours today.