This Veterans Day, and every day, I am immensely grateful for our soldiers, present and past, that live a life of sacrifice to defend our rights and continue to keep America the home of the FREE.
If you just started reading here, you may not know that my little sister recently started her career as a Marine. While this is her story to share, today I felt it was fitting to share a few photos of her bootcamp graduation. After three months of intense, grueling training that many can get though, she DID and earned the title of United States Marine! My dad and I flew to South Carolina together in October for her graduation. Seeing her after only communicating through delayed letters for three months was so great. Her bootcamp start date was pushed three times due to limited woman’s barracks, which resulted in her even missing my wedding. This was hard on her and me, but her career and protecting our country is more important than one day of celebrations. We have our whole lives to celebrate together. I’m so proud of her.
Even only a few months in, I’ve witnessed a glimpse of the sacrifice our military members make.. all to protect their families, friends and people they’ve never even met. Everything they do is surrounded with sacrifice.
She’s now well into her second phase of training at the School of Infantry. We haven’t heard from her in a month, which sounds like nothing, but has been really hard. We communicated for three months via only letters during bootcamp, but one month with zero communication or letters seems to be much harder on the family side of things, but this is the reality of this career, I suppose.
While my baby sister just started her military career, it’s enough time to say I’m completely humbled by the selflessness and inspired by the bravery and self discipline this career takes. I’m immensely proud to call this Marine my baby sister.
While there really is no act big enough to express my gratitude, today I want to say thank you all those who are serving or have served and to every family member supporting them along the way.