Childhood Trauma Builds Resiliency for the Military | Jennifer Fostino

Trigger Warning: This episode includes references and actual experiences of different types of abuse.

The love that we attract is the love that we project. 

Consciously or not, we captivate the kind of love that reflects us. So, we often ask ourselves: Why did I end up with somebody similar to someone I hated the most? Why do I stay in the cyclical highs and lows of a relationship when it was what I escaped from home?

Jennifer Fostino finds that the answer to this question lies with familiarity. It’s because it’s the kind of love that we were used to. Even in this sense, it’s so true how our childhood shapes the individuals we later on become.

An abusive and unequal family dynamics make the home a place for trauma. And you can only imagine how torturous the home can be if one finds the military more of a safe haven than home. At least, that’s what my sister, Jen, feels like. 

In celebration of Veterans Day, I sit for a chit chat with my sister who worked at the military and now in the Air Force, and we revisit her journey to the military, to being deployed in the war field, and why, despite all the traumatic experiences she was also exposed to in the field, she thinks her civilian life has given her more trauma than the military. 

Words of Healing

• Mentally, coming home was very hard, especially being gone that long, getting back into society, dealing with stop lights, dealing with everyday people, just all the little things, even just having to do your own laundry and food not being cooked. - Jennifer Fostino
• We definitely wanna look back and we would've done it again, especially if we had our kids. Regardless of the crap that we dealt with, we got these babies out of it. I would do it again for that, but I wouldn't do it again for anything else. - Regina Marie
• There's a certain grit, resilience, and trauma that were experienced at a younger age that allowed them to believe that they’ve dealt with this shit. The military is going to be nothing compared to that. - Regina Marie
• It's gonna reverse the hope, the negativity from our childhood, and put a positive spin on it to use that anger for our passion, for our job, to protect others, to have your comradery, and to have your battle buddies and protect them at all costs. - Regina Marie
• We were in a household where you were definitely scared of your father—who preferred it that way cuz he thought that's what created discipline. - Jennifer Fostino
• I had a lot of resentment towards mom because I felt that she was allowing this to happen and that she wasn't able to stop it. She wasn't addressing it or thinking of her children first. - Jennifer Fostino
• Because you have those good times, you think you can deal with the bad ones. What I didn't realize is, because out of everybody, I hated dad the most, so why would I end up marrying somebody like him? - Jennifer Fostino
• It is familiar. It's something they're used to if it's the devil that they know. So that’s the whole reason, even with me, why I stayed so long. - Jennifer Fostino
• For me, being in the military is just giving me that outlet where I could be more myself because the military is a little bit more direct. They are a little bit more straightforward. - Jennifer Fostino

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