People often ask me why I don’t share more about my military service.
After all, on paper, I’m a marketer’s dream. Every time I work with someone new, they always ask the same question:
“Why don’t we lead with the fighter pilot stuff? People will love it!”
The truth is, I’ve had a complicated relationship with my time in the military.
My years of service gave me so much. The warrior’s path is a sacred one.
I learned courage. I faced ultimate fears, many times over. I learned about leadership, both positive and negative. I learned discipline. I learned the value of routine and muscle memory. I learned how to operate at the very limits of what’s possible. I learned so much.
But the paradox of military service is that while it gave me so much, it also took from me.
Years ago that would have been hard, even impossible to write. I didn’t want to recognize it. I feared it would somehow make my service less honorable, meaningful, and sacred.
But it’s the truth.
In 2017, if you asked me if I had PTSD, I would have laughed and told you that I was operating at the pinnacle of human performance.
How could I have PTSD? I went to combat and returned to build an 8-figure company, compete at some of the most significant endurance events on the planet, and had all of the worldly success at my fingertips.
Most of us have an idea that PTSD is watching your buddies’ head get blown off and having nightmares. That is PTSD, certainly.
But it shows up in so many other ways.
The reality is that on every flight, every mission for a decade, I existed on the razor’s edge between life and death. The margin of error is so minute, requiring ultimate precision just to arrive on deck safely.
And with enough repetition, your nervous system normalizes and internalizes that stress. It becomes mundane. I brushed at least a dozen actual near-death experiences during my service, only to shrug them off and laugh about them with my fellow warriors over a beer.
One of the first skills we are taught is compartmentalization, a both necessary and incredibly effective technique to manage this type of stress.
Until it isn’t.
And tragically, the military does a woefully poor job of preparing veterans for the aftermath of years of compartmentalization.
The military took from me the calm nervous system of a child and replaced it with one wired for hypervigilance. It’s taken years of intentional practice, including coaching, meditation and psychedelic therapy to unwind.
The military also took the innocent, patriotic bravery and commitment to service from that child. I often wonder about what would happen if I could go back and tell that 18-year-old version of myself that the potentiality of taking life wouldn’t feel the way you think it’s going to feel, even if it’s in the name of something you believe in. Would he even be able to hear me?
The military took from me the unquestioning loyalty to ideals. Many years later, I would question if those are ideals are as pure as I thought, and even if they were worth fighting for in the first place. Over time, I’ve learned that ideals are nuanced. Holding that duality is not easy.
And on this and every Memorial Day, I remember that the military also took my friends. Perhaps ironically, the service gave me those friends in the first place, but it took them nonetheless. Knowing that this is the nature and reality of the warrior path doesn’t make it any easier.
I remember and I mourn those that I lost: in training, in combat, and in the darkness that comes after for so many of us.
Today, and every day, I honor:
CAPT Jen Harris
1LT Travis Manion
LT Brendan Looney
CAPT Matthew Freeman
2LT JP Blecksmith
LT Chris “Liquor” Busch
CAPT Greg “Tater” Travers
1LT Brian Deforge
And so many others. To my brothers and sisters whom I lost and didn’t list, your memory lives on, even if mine is incomplete at this moment.
I’ve struggled to reconcile the gain with the loss for many years.
I was afraid to put out too much military-centric content for fear that it might influence a young person to sign up without knowing the full cost.
I wrote a book about the lessons I learned in the fighter squadron and how I applied them to business. I never released that book.
In the immediate years following my time in the Navy, I was deeply involved in the veteran community. But over time, I even left that behind as I sat with the paradoxical nature of military service and contemplated and mourned what it took from me.
In more recent years, I’ve begun the process of reclaiming what was lost.
Last year, I refiled my VA claim, and in doing so was awarded a 70% rating for PTSD. This felt like a significant step in acknowledging and owning this aspect of the personal cost of my service.
In the last six months, I’ve found a new home within the veteran community, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. In many ways, it feels like coming home, but to a home that I never truly left.
While my relationship with the military still gets filed under “it’s complicated,” I feel that I’ve allowed this temporarily disowned aspect of myself to come back home.
Today, I am still deeply proud of my service. I hold reverence for the path of the warrior. I’ve learned ancient wisdom traditions and the warrior class’s sacred role in those practices. I now get to walk the path of the warrior poet.
As we remember the fallen this Memorial Day, here is my ask:
If you thank a veteran for their service, take a moment to honor the cost: the ones who never came home, and the ones who did, but were never the same.
The military gives much. And it takes much.
And somehow, that paradox is not wrong.
It’s true.
Because within the sacrifice, the grief, the camaraderie, and the silence that follows it all, lives the fullness of what it means to be human.
May we remember.
And may we carry it well.
To the warrior’s path,
Mb
