Surviving Iraq and Beyond: Melissa Kilgore on Trauma, Creativity, and Finding Compassion -68
Ever wondered what it’s really like to be a woman serving in a war zone—and what battles rage on back home? This episode of Dog Tag Diaries brings you Melissa Kilgore’s powerful journey through military life, combat in Iraq, and the hidden challenges of military sexual trauma and family separation. Melissa reveals the costs of resilience, sharing how she rebuilt herself through creativity and art after surviving deep loss and disappointment. From strict military roots to grappling with transition and mental health, Melissa’s story sheds light on the realities female veterans face.
If you’re searching for authentic stories of survival, healing, and hope—or if you want to learn more about veterans’ mental health, creative therapy, and military family dynamics—tune in for a look at the human side of service that rarely makes headlines.
Melissa Kilgore was born in Spokane, Washington, and spent much of her childhood in Europe as an Air Force brat. A single mother of three by age 24, she worked multiple jobs—including with American Airlines—while pursuing her education. At 31, she joined the U.S. Army, later earning a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs with honors and a second degree in Art Practices.
Now based in Portland, Melissa continues to seek meaningful and challenging work while pursuing her passion to become a full-time artist.
Connect with Melissa:
Instagram - @mlk_studio_us
Website - www.mlkstudio.us
Read her writing - A Woman Turning 55
Kim Liszka served in the United States Army/Reserves as a Combat Medic, Combat Nurse, Flight Nurse Instructor and one of the Top Female athletes in the Army. Kim worked 20+ years as an ER nurse and decided to explore the world as a travel nurse. She's an Advanced Wilderness Expedition Provider and Chief Medical Officer for numerous endurance/survival expeditions in different countries. Kim has a son, Jace and a daughter in law, Sammy and 2 grand animals, Joey & Bear. Her dog Camo is her best buddy. Camo is the sweetest yellow Labrador Retriever to walk this earth. He loves licking snow, riding the ocean waves, visiting carnivore food trucks and loves belly rubs and treats. Fun Facts: Kim's lived in the Reality TV World! Fear Factor, American Ninja Warrior-Military Edition, American Tarzan, Spartan Namibia and more to come!
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Learn more about Reveille and Retreat Project:
Instagram: @reveilleandretreatproject
Facebook: Reveille and Retreat Project
You aren’t alone.
If you’re thinking about hurting yourself or having thoughts of suicide contact the
Veteran crisis line: Dial 988 then press 1, chat online, or text 838255.
Transcript
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Kim [:What does it take to survive war abroad while fighting battles at home? Melissa Kilgore's story is one of grit, survival, loss, and ultimately healing through creativity. From a strict military upbringing to her own service in Iraq, Melissa's path has been anything but easy. But her resilience and artistry shine through. This is an episode you don't want to miss. We made it Season 6 of Dog Tag Diaries where every military woman deserves a platform to tell her story and have it be heard. I'm your host, Captain Kim, and this community has already racked up over 4,500 downloads. So let's smash 5K together, share these episodes and help us make season six our biggest yet. In this episode of Dog Tag Diaries, we're going to talk to Melissa, who served in the army from 2002 to 2006 in logistics, including a 14 month deployment to Baghdad.
Kim [:Melissa is a creative experience maker and no bull regeneration mother. Her journey through poverty, military sexual trauma, and the devastating separation from her children highlights the hidden costs of service and the courage it takes to rebuild life after. She's a proud single mom of three, an accomplished artist, and a lifelong learner who has turned her pain into passion. With degrees in both global security and art practices, Melissa's work bridges resilience, advocacy and creativity. Today, she continues her healing journey through her art, her writing, and by today speaking openly about the realities of service, trauma and renewal. Melissa, thank you for being here on Dog Tag Diaries with me.
Melissa Kilgore [:Thank you for having me.
Kim [:Yeah, I just want the viewers to get like a back story of us, how we met. We met at one of our retreats, the equine therapy. And then you and I ended up having a sleepover. We had coffee and talked about your story and then we met up again on the beach with a few other women and had a nice long walk. It's not easy to tell your story. So let's just sit in that for a little bit talking about how difficult this could be and why you chose now to share your story.
Melissa Kilgore [:It is a hard story to tell. There's a lot of pain in it. There's a lot of disappointment, a lot of being let down by the people that were supposed to be supporting you and taking care of you and just having to deal with this word, resilient. Both you and I were at the women's conference recently down in Bend and I think it was the first time really that we had a speaker that said resilience sucks. Yes. You know what I mean. I was just out in a session Today with someone who does something called compass navigation. And it's really something that's for creatives who get stuck.
Melissa Kilgore [:And so one of the hardest things about my time in the military is the after effect, the transition out and the ability to still be a creative while you're dealing with mental health and pain and physical injury. And again, pain, like the physical and mental parts of pain, they kind of consume your life for a long time. Sometimes it feels like. But the lesson that comes from that is if you do the work, you get to be on the other side of that in a way that you can accept and live with. And I think that's like the most important thing that you learn from the word resilient is that to suffer is human. And we all have to suffer. We all will be dealing with pain. We all will be walking through that journey, and some of us have to do it all by ourselves, which really is so much harder.
Melissa Kilgore [:And the. The thing about that is when you come through that suffering, that's where the resilience is. That's really the end of that, is that you get to then live in compassion and have an understanding for yourself and others that you would not have had, had you not suffered. And you can't have lessons and you can't learn from those lessons without the suffering. Like, it's one of the hardest things to accept about life. Right.
Kim [:And just from talking with you, you've done the work.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yes.
Kim [:I've already heard this story.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yeah.
Kim [:So why now? Why now? Are you deciding?
Melissa Kilgore [:Because I'm not ashamed of my story anymore.
Kim [:Say that again.
Melissa Kilgore [:I am not ashamed to tell it like it is. I never was ashamed to tell it like it is. But in a world that. Where you have lived and worked with men exclusively for nearly all of my adult life, my story would not be accepted in those walls. It couldn't even be heard. Because how could any man actually know what it's like to walk in a woman's body and to know the things that we are dealing with every single day? And that's not to say, gentlemen out there, that there are not men who can have compassion and empathy for us or even sympathy. But biology is the difference here. And we can't do anything about biology.
Melissa Kilgore [:Truly. Truly. Because some things I've learned later in life is that we're going to age and things are going to change about your biology that you just didn't know about and no one talks about either. So it's like that becomes a part of your journey, too. And if you're dealing with mental health and physical pain and injury and transitioning from military life. And then you're also going through the aging process and not having a good time of it. Yeah, it's tough.
Kim [:It is. You grew up in that lifestyle, the military lifestyle, because your dad was in. Because I know your story already. But, like, let's start in. What was it like being you as a young woman?
Melissa Kilgore [:Well, it was myself and my brother. We were just the only two for a very long time until I was about 16 or 17 when my parents divorced and my dad joined the Air Force when I was three. But before that, my grandfather, my great aunt, and my uncle all served in the military as well. My grandfather was a Marine initially and was a prisoner of war during the Bataan Death March. So who can even express what that was like, except for the people that survived that? And he's not with us anymore, but he survived that. And so that was like, you know, something that was always kind of whispered about because he never spoke of it. He never spoke of anything to do with his military service, certainly not to my brother and I. And so my father recently shared with me all of the newspaper clippings that had been saved talking about his service.
Melissa Kilgore [:So he was a lifelong server. He transitioned from the Marines after he survived and was rescued and brought back home safely, and then he continued with the army until he retired. Can you believe that? He went from the Marines to the army and then retired and then continued in community service in Spokane until he retired from that career as well. As a civil servant, I definitely know where I get my spirit for fighting.
Kim [:From him.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yes. Making sure that the right thing is done. There's some articles about him in the Spokane Review talking about his time as a civil servant and how he was like, you know, fighting for people to do the right thing then. So definitely service was in our blood and has been all along. My father retired out of the Air Force.
Kim [:Well, what was it like, though, being a military. Well, they call military brats, but someone who has to move so much, it's.
Melissa Kilgore [:Like kind of a blur, to be honest, for a lot of reasons. You're only there for 2.5 years maximum for any place that you live. So you're always going to be the new person starting in school, and you get to leave all your friends a year later because they're also moving and transitioning. Because we went to Department of Defense schools, except for the time that we lived in England, my brother and I had to actually go to British English school, which was a Huge difference.
Kim [:What a culture shock. How old were you?
Melissa Kilgore [:That was fourth grade for me. Yeah. My brother was a little younger and we had been in the California school system at that time. And this is the 80s, so very bad schooling up to that point. And so for us, going to British school was the best thing that ever happened to us. Even though it was really like our first school wasn't that bad. It was a very small village school. We didn't live on post, we lived off post and in a very small village.
Melissa Kilgore [:And that was actually really calming in a way because you had all the same age groups together and they would all learn together at their levels. Then you go off to a bigger school later. So. And I think it was like fifth or sixth grade, you go to a bigger school, but at that time, from kindergarten all the way up to like that age group, you're with the same people and the same teachers the whole time. So it's a very, very good educational way to get started. Right. It helped my brother learn how to read fully for me. Both of us, we had to learn how to use to write better.
Melissa Kilgore [:We were both left handed, which is very rare for a family to have two people left handed. And of course they tried to get that out of us, which was the way of the day. It didn't work. We're still left handed. So there was like a lot of that. There was corporal punishment. That was just a part of it. I only got punished one time and that was enough for me.
Melissa Kilgore [:And that was a ruler on the back of the hand. It hurt enough for me to go, I'm never doing anything wrong again. Which is, you know, a part of the military growing up. Anyways, you don't do things that are wrong because you're gonna like you're on a post where everybody knows your parents, they can't do anything wrong. And my dad was a cop, so that was doubly challenging. Right.
Kim [:What was it like in your household then? Was it really strict?
Melissa Kilgore [:Very strict, yeah. Our house was always presentable because you never knew who was coming over. So you never had like dirty anything anywhere. It was like that all the time. Our rooms had to stay tidy all the time. You could only have so many things because they have to fit in a trunk because you only have so much weight. So that becomes a challenge too. Like you only keep the things that really, really matter.
Melissa Kilgore [:And you have to learn what that is really early in life. For your stuff, you only have like seven outfits. Because for me, I went to British school, so we wore A uniform. So we never really had personal clothes except for at home. You don't have a lot of clothes because they have weight. All of that is, like. You don't really think about that as an adult now as much. You know, like, I can buy whatever I want now.
Melissa Kilgore [:I have way too many shoes. Maybe that's why. Because I couldn't have that many shoes when I was.
Kim [:Exactly. You grew up in such a strict household, and then so much instability because you were moving so much.
Melissa Kilgore [:But we don't think about it as instability. We just. That was the way. So when you come out of a life like that, and we stopped moving like that as a family. When he was stationed in California, in San Bernardino, and that was a huge culture shock because we went from small schools where the number was maybe 2,000 kids total for every age group, right. To a school that was. For my graduating class was over 2000 people. Up to that point, had never been in a place that was that big.
Kim [:Was that overwhelming?
Melissa Kilgore [:It was overwhelming. It was a little bit terrifying, actually, because this was also the time of gangs and the Bloods and the Crips and, like, there would be days they would send us home to walk home because there was too much gang activity. Like, we had never gotten anything like that. So both of us were just like, where are we? Like, how do we behave? What do we do? I remember getting chased down hallways by other girls because I didn't dress like them. How could I? I didn't know how to dress like everyone else.
Kim [:Yeah, you had uniforms.
Melissa Kilgore [:Just because I looked different and.
Kim [:Oh, so I know you said because of your grandpa, the military ran through your blood, and your dad was in the Air Force. How did you end up finding the Army?
Melissa Kilgore [:Well, oddly enough, the army found me. Okay. My brother and I had made a pact when we were, like, really young that we were never going to join the military ever. But we both tried to at different. Different times in our lives. My brother couldn't because he had a back injury. And I tease them about it all the time. I was like, you're the one who broke the pact first, not me.
Melissa Kilgore [:But I had already been a single parent and was going to college when I married for the second time. And the grant that I was getting through the state of Colorado was denied after that because I was married, so two incomes are listed, you know? Then I was like, well, how can I finish? And I was contemplating that when the army was recruiting actively at my college, and they called my mom, actually. And my mom was like, are you sure you want her? She's. She doesn't do discipline very well. You know what I mean? They're like, well, we'd like to talk to her ourselves, so we'll take care of that part. Right. They called me and asked me, you know, hey, can we have a conversation with you? I was like, I don't know. Are you sure? I'm maybe not your best option.
Melissa Kilgore [:Plus, I was also 31 at the time when we even started having a conversation.
Kim [:That is late to go in.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yeah, it is late. And normally under normal times that you wouldn't be able to join. I think it was 28 was the cutoff at that time. And so they had to do a bunch of waivers for me to even get in. I was like, you know what? Let's just see what happens. Because I could go to college, and four years is nothing. In the blink of an eye. When you're like 30 years old, you're like, I could do this.
Melissa Kilgore [:Four years. It's nothing. And so I was like, all right, I'm aware of what I'm getting myself into. I understand the discipline part. I don't think that basic training is going to be that hard for me. I went and talked to the recruiters, and they offered me $40,000 for college. And I was like, this is my way out of poverty. I will be able to get out of poverty.
Melissa Kilgore [:I will have job skills that matter to the job market, and I don't have to work every weekend and every holiday for the rest of my life because I was a bartender at the time.
Kim [:And at that time, how many kids did you have?
Melissa Kilgore [:Three.
Kim [:Oh, at that time, you had three. Okay.
Melissa Kilgore [:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I became a mom at 18, and by the time I was 24, I had three children. That is around the same timeframe that my first marriage ended. Yeah. So I had been a single mom on and off all of my adult life, pretty much up till they all were done. Yeah.
Kim [:How did that feel to go in and have to leave them for basic training and ait Your first job?
Melissa Kilgore [:I thought naively at the time that we had done a lot of family counseling for a hard reason for our family. With my husband at the time, and I felt like we were pretty solid as a family unit. Let's do some pros and cons. And so we sat down as a family, and I talked to all the kids. None of them were really little, except for my son. He was the youngest, and he was like 6 or 7 when we started this adventure. And so it wasn't like he was a baby. So he had some advocacy to say, I don't know if I like this idea.
Melissa Kilgore [:And so we basically decided that the cons were definitely being away from you. Not knowing what was going to happen to me was a hard thing, you know, but we did not anticipate and nor did the military at the time that I would be going to war. So that wasn't even on the table as a thought. It was more like, we're going to be away from our family. Because I picked Germany as my duty station. I got it. So that was like my number one on my dream list. And I got it.
Melissa Kilgore [:So I was like, shh. Brilliant. I get to share things that I had from my childhood that I thought were really cool with my kids. They're going to be military brats, too. I am so uniquely suited to help them with this. Right. So we basically felt as a group that the cons way were under the amount of pros that we were going to get from this experience. Sadly, though, when I finally finished basic training and went off to my first duty station, 10 days after my family arrived, we were sent to Iraq.
Melissa Kilgore [:And this was after me having multiple conversations with my chain of command going, are you sure I should bring my family? Maybe I should leave them in the States, you know, because they're going to be in a foreign country without me. He's like, no, we've gotten our orders rescinded twice already because that unit had just gotten back from Bosnia, so they shouldn't have been in rotation. But these things happen, and they happened a lot at that timeframe especially. And so 10 days after, my first sergeant was like, don't worry about it. Tell your family to come. They arrived, and I got sent immediately out. And so we didn't even have a proper transition into, like, this is how everything works. This is who your people are to talk to.
Melissa Kilgore [:Like, any of that. We didn't even know how we were going to get mail yet. We didn't get mail for six months. And we didn't have a sat phone initially either. So communication with our family was really limited. That's all of us. That's 90 people in my unit alone. And it was our entire seventh army that went.
Melissa Kilgore [:That's a rough start. This is like World War II days, in a way. You know, no communication. Don't know if you're going to hear from your family. Don't know if your family's going to hear from you. You're writing letters. You're hoping you get there.
Kim [:They Just got to a foreign country, you're getting shipped off to a foreign country.
Melissa Kilgore [:Right. Where women of America are not understood, nor are they wanted in any way, shape, or form. You know, this is not a place that I would want my daughter to go for sure, you know, without her whole family with her, you know, to protect her. But.
Kim [:So what was it like over there?
Melissa Kilgore [:It was so mind culturally different that it was a challenge to try to understand how, as a woman, you would even survive in such an environment where you're not allowed to have education, you're not allowed to, you know, make a lot of choices for yourself that we are born with. Right. And to know that your religion and the way you think about life at all is so very different than what theirs is. And that truly, the bottom line is that almost everyone there that I came in contact with, we all wanted the same thing. We wanted the Iraqi people to be safe, to be able to live how they wanted to live, to have the jobs they wanted to have, to have the same safety of place that we are afforded as Americans. We wanted that for them too. And that's what we thought we were doing there. And so, like, it was dusty and hot all the time, and when it wasn't, it was cold and dusty.
Melissa Kilgore [:You know, it's a very different environment from Germany and even from Colorado, which I thought I had, you know, a little bit more acclimation to such a dry climate than most people, being that high desert is incredibly dry, no humidity whatsoever. I'll be a little better. No, I am very pale, and I don't belong in that. I'm not made for that life. In fact, we had so many mosquitoes that they used me as a representative of why we needed mosquito nets because I had mice all.
Kim [:Oh, my gosh. You were the poster girl.
Melissa Kilgore [:I was the poster girl for why you need a mosquito. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Because they didn't give us any, you know, initially when we got over, and we're the supply, you know, I was.
Kim [:Just gonna ask, what was your job when you were over there?
Melissa Kilgore [:So I was a 92 Alpha, which I'm told that MOS does not exist in that version anymore. It's gone back to some previous version. But basically that means logistics at my level. I came in as an E3, was promoted to E4 pretty quickly when I got to my unit, while we were in Iraq, actually. And that means that I was just doing the ordering of the supplies. I wasn't in the warehouse, but I had my own section which is with motor pool. So I issued driver's licenses when they were necessary, helped PMS vehicles, ordered all the, like, tires, batteries, alternators, like, everything that the mechanics needed. That was my job specifically.
Melissa Kilgore [:And then taking all those parts back and deciding if they could be refurbished or had to be returned for destruction. So that was another key piece of that. So it's like a 247 job, basically.
Kim [:Yeah. You have to make sure you're keeping those soldiers safe.
Melissa Kilgore [:We're doing that. We're fixing all of the, like in the motor pool, we also fixed a lot of the things. We had our own set of mechanics and in our unit there was another unit that did all the engineering stuff. So, like engines and the more complicated things that we couldn't fix at our level would go there. So there was a lot of talking between those two shops. There's a lot of people coming in from all over Iraq and what they're dealing with. And they would just come and sit and chat with me while they were waiting to find out if they had to stay overnight or if they're going to get their vehicle back or, you know, whatever they came for. Yeah.
Kim [:Were there a lot of females in your company?
Melissa Kilgore [:There was a lot of females in my company, but in my section there was only two. Myself and another. Yeah, two. There was only two of us initially.
Kim [:Did you feel safe?
Melissa Kilgore [:You know, that's a weird, weird.
Kim [:It is, yeah.
Melissa Kilgore [:Because. No, you don't feel safe because you're in a war zone. Anything could happen at any moment. When we arrived in Iraq, it was directly after Jessica lynch. Right? That's her last name. Yeah. She was kidnapped with her battle buddy. That happened immediately as we arrived.
Melissa Kilgore [:So that's the time frame we're talking. The day we arrived in Iraq. We had driven across into Iraq and the day we arrived is the day they opened all of the prisons and they gave us this nice speech of be vigilant. Remember your training.
Kim [:No.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yeah. The person who was. I was driving and he was the gunner for our drive in. And we're driving the broken vehicle, but we needed it. So, you know, because it could be repaired and we needed that bobtail. So we're driving a bobtail and he is scared to death and I'm trying to keep him calm while not freaking out myself. And the scariest thing for any of us is to be stuck on a bridge. And that's what they were telling us too, when we arrived, is don't get stuck on a bridge.
Melissa Kilgore [:Well, guess what? We got stuck on a Damn bridge for two hours. And this is the day we arrived to Iraq. So feeling safe was not really something I felt ever. But in terms of, like, having men all around you, I didn't really feel that I was so much older than all of them. So they were more talking to me like a sister or a mom most of the time, you know, so there's that responsibility of, like, don't say stupid shit, you know, or also, I'm, like, telling you, I'm calling you out because you're saying stupid shit, you know? Why are you talking like that? Yeah, you know, things like that. Because it's mostly boys, if you really want to know the truth. They're mostly just young men. They're not even fully finished growing up inside their own minds.
Melissa Kilgore [:As we now know, most of us are not done growing up until we're about 25, 26. And for men, it can be even longer. So you know when you're thinking about that, I didn't feel unsafe in that way, but that doesn't mean that MST didn't get me anyways.
Kim [:Yes, your body and your mind stays in fight or flight. From the time that you left your kids unexpectedly, then you're in a war zone. Now you're stuck on a bridge for two hours where they tell you not to get set. Like all these. All these.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yeah, all these kind of things were happening. And our unit, because we were supply, every single one of us, except for one very young person, had to go out, Meaning we were not in the Green Zone already because we were in Baghdad at the police academy. That's where I was stationed. It's changed name so many times, I don't remember what the actual name was. I think it was Camp. I don't remember. Doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter.
Melissa Kilgore [:What matters is that every single one of us had to go out and bring supplies to all of the soldiers that were in Iraq. And I mean all of them everywhere. We were one of the very first warehouses to be set up. So we did a lot of travel all over Iraq. So if you ask me, where was I, I can't tell you all of the places, and nor can I tell you what that feels like to have that fear, because it's just a part of you. Every single day for 14 months. I could have gotten blown up every single day. That's the fear that you're living with.
Melissa Kilgore [:I could have gotten kidnapped. I could have gotten shot. I could have gotten trapped somewhere with. You know, you've seen the lioness Story of the lionesses. That wasn't our mission, but we could have had similar experiences happen to us and they did happen to other counterparts of ours. We were incredibly fortunate. And that's all you can say is that no one got shot in my unit. No one died in Iraq.
Melissa Kilgore [:We all made it out. And that is a testament to our training and our leadership at that time.
Kim [:And it is because really like the talking to the viewers, every time you leave the compound, even in the compound, you have the susceptibility of being attacked. However, once you leave with your vehicle, the roll over a landmine, it could blow up the whole truck and you.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yes, because what are you carrying? So for us, we had all of the ammunition as well. In my unit, we supplied water, food, clothing, parts and fuel. We had fuelers that went out and fueled everybody up. Right. So for example of like, like you said, you don't know if you're going to get. It's going to happen to you that day and you can't think about it. So it was my first day off ever, the whole time. And I was in my office doing work as I usually do, and I left, I'm in my pts.
Melissa Kilgore [:Finally, I'm heading back to the command office and a bomb drops outside my office right next to the fuelers. So had it actually gone off, it would have taken me and half of our unit out, but it didn't. And so I was then on alert in my pts. I had like rifle, you know, vest and helmet and all that. And we're running up to the roof with the 50 cal. My battle buddy and I had to be on the 50 cal. So we're setting that up and we're watching EOD come in and check this out. And it's a female, by the way, who did this? Female eod.
Melissa Kilgore [:She comes in, she whips out a laptop. She's moving around in her marshmallow suit. I don't know how else to describe them. And she's checking this thing out. She's on the ground, she's up, she's all around it. She's got her. Her laptop going all around it. She throws the laptop on the back of her Humvee, takes her helmet off, looks around it a few more times, picks it up, throws it back in the Humvee and off she goes, just like that.
Melissa Kilgore [:If you sit too long thinking about the what ifs, the what ifs will kill you, right? So that's the safety factor of like, how does this stuff affect you? It just makes you numb After a while, honestly. So you'll do anything, feel something, and sometimes it's the stupidest things. And that's really what gets us is complacency, you know, in a war zone and making poor decisions because you just want to feel something. I didn't hear from my kids the entire time I was in Iraq, and that is because of my ex husband.
Kim [:I was going to say you were going through all this in Iraq and there was so much more that you had no idea was going on at home.
Melissa Kilgore [:No idea. I still don't know the whole full story. Because my kids were separated from each other by this person who was happy to tell them that I was having more fun being a soldier than being their mother, which. That pain. When I found that out, I could never have ever dreamed my children would believe it. But they had nothing from me. All the letters that I wrote to them, he put in a trunk. And all the letters they wrote to me, he put in a trunk.
Melissa Kilgore [:So I never saw them until I was home. And unfortunately for my time frame, when we came home, some spouses were getting killed or damaged because of what had gone on while we were away. And so I was not allowed to go home. I was not allowed to see my children. When I first came home, I didn't have a big homecoming ceremony. I was a part of the echelon that goes home and sets everything up. So I didn't get any of that. No one with me got that.
Melissa Kilgore [:And the person who was the leadership in charge at that time knew that there was a brothel on our housing installation, knew that my children were being neglected and abused by this person and my stepdaughter and never did anything about it. And I know that because people came up to me and told me they knew it was happening. How dare you come up to me and tell me you knew my son was getting beaten and you didn't do anything? You didn't call the MPs? Like, I can't blame the MPs because they were never told. So, you know, that was what was happening while I was away and many other things with just my family that doesn't have anything to say about all the other people that had to deal with what was happening with their families when they came back. So on one hand, I understand that they wanted us to be separated and have a moment to, like, integrate and then start to recover. But 90 days later, we were sent back to Iraq. Not me. I was being kicked out of the military.
Melissa Kilgore [:Talk about that.
Kim [:What happened in that situation?
Melissa Kilgore [:So when I came back and I learned some of the things that he had done. I had already asked him for a divorce while we were in Iraq because of some things I learned about when I was on RNR. So I knew this was not a good person. I didn't want to do this, but he forced my hand and was like, I'm going to tell the kids about this stuff if you don't make a decision right now about whether you want to stay married or not. And I was like, okay, well, I don't want to stay married if you're going to be like this, you know? So I was like, just wait till I get back and we'll talk to the kids together. He did not. So regardless, there was stuff already happening, and I had to go back to Iraq and try not to do terrible things to myself. And, like, you know, yeah, there was a lot.
Melissa Kilgore [:There's a lot in your mental health that just goes completely awry when you have to go back to a place that you might die and you might not get to see your kids again. And so when I came back and I didn't even know then, my kids didn't tell me then when they had a chance to tell me, because he had threatened them.
Kim [:I was gonna say they were probably so confused and scared. It sounds like he instilled a bit of fear, not just in you, but.
Melissa Kilgore [:In them, in the youngers, the ones that was actually abusing. He instilled fear in my middle child. She was allowed to run rampant. So she was, like, busy trying to find a new family, you know, and having the best time. And then my oldest daughter, she was allowed to go on so many sports trips. She was kept away so that she would not tell what was going on and would not know, because that was the dynamic of our family. She was the oldest, and she knew her responsibility deeply was to care for her younger siblings in my absence. And she has dealt with those feelings, too, of not knowing.
Melissa Kilgore [:And the guilt that comes with that, like, that's the major piece for me that for 20 years, no therapy could touch was the guilt of leaving your children with a monster. And then every person that set in place to make sure that the monsters don't get your kids failed. Failed at their jobs, failed at life, failed at even telling anybody else that could do something about it.
Kim [:And you're right, even though you didn't know at the time that the guilt cannot be taken away.
Melissa Kilgore [:No, that guilt suffocated me for so, so long. And like I said, no therapy could touch that I had gone and done so much work already. But you're also, like, for us, all of us in the military and women in particular, you're expected to just go back to your regular lives when you transition out. And for us, there wasn't, you know, when we were transitioning at that time frame, there wasn't these big, you know, hey, you're gonna sit in this unit while you get all your stuff done and then transition into your life? No, you're done, you're out. Bye. You know, thank you for your service.
Kim [:You know, did they medically discharge you? Did they? Like, how did.
Melissa Kilgore [:No, I was told I had to get out because I did not have a family care plan. So when you're in a foreign country, you have to have two family care plans, one for the long term and one for the immediate. Like when you go to the field and stuff. And I didn't have any care plan because that person was a monster. And no one from my family could come to Germany at that time frame. So I had to send my kids back to the States, come back to Germany, and kick myself out of the military, which was so fun, let me say. Because then at that time frame, because of the MST that I suffered, I was no longer in the logistics section. I was actually being the assistant to the commander and doing a lot of personnel actions and things like that.
Melissa Kilgore [:And so when my unit, as I mentioned, transitioned back to Iraq after 90 days of US being there, those that went on to other duty stations had already left. Those that were in my unit that I served with went back to Iraq. I was left to, like, deal with that by myself. I remember my commander telling me, because I was like, how can I figure this out? How can I stay in? One person suggested I marry my German boyfriend. And I was like, well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. I'm not going to do that. What a ridiculous suggestion, you know, and then my commander said, you know what, Specialist Kilgore? You have done everything that the army has ever asked you to do, and you have done it to the best of your ability and to exceed our expectations. So it's okay to take a knee.
Kim [:That's been your identity as, you know, taking a knee.
Melissa Kilgore [:Oof. No one wants to take a knee. But I have always appreciated that he said that to me because he knew. He still doesn't know. Even to this day. No one knows what happened to me and what happened to my family except for the people that didn't do Their job, they knew, but not the people I served with. There was only one other person that kind of knows what happened, and that is because she was my battle buddy that I had to take with me because she was a sergeant at the time to go get clothes to wear because I had no clothes when we first came back.
Kim [:And you're right, no one knows. And trying to live with that, with that unknown, especially when it's with your kids.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yeah. And I didn't even know about the abuse and stuff until my ex had already left the country. And so I tried to get him arrested on post, and everyone agreed. Psychologists, police officers, everybody. There was evidence enough left behind that he had done what he was accused of, and they couldn't because he already left the country. So then I tried in our home state at the time to get him arrested there, and they all agreed. They all agreed it was the right thing to do, but they couldn't do it because it happened in Germany. So he got away with it all.
Melissa Kilgore [:I had to live with that too. You know, on top of it that I did try to do what. What was right. And our justice system failed.
Kim [:So how did you even start on this healing journey?
Melissa Kilgore [:I was living in a very isolated place and only had two of my kids. My oldest daughter decided not to move with us because she was in high school. And I honestly agreed. I didn't want her to have to go to yet another high school. That's a hard part about being a military kid, is when you get to high school, you really are changing in so many ways. You need to stay in one place. And she just didn't want to go to another high school. So I was like, all right, that's cool.
Melissa Kilgore [:It was her senior year. The rest of us moved to this tiny place on the Olympic Peninsula. And that's very isolating there. And I started dealing with suicide ideation. I would fantasize on how I could just drive off this bridge and it wouldn't even matter because my car doesn't weigh that much. So it would just float really fast, you know, it wouldn't be messy. Like, seriously thought and fantasized about every single detail of how my kids wouldn't have to deal with stuff. But then that same thought kept coming back to me as that, but you killed yourself, and your kids would have to live with that.
Melissa Kilgore [:So I was like, okay, I need some help. And I went and started seeking out therapy on my own. Around the same time, I got a letter from the military that said, oh, yes, you are actually really Messed up physically. So we're going to give you. I think it was initially 60% from the VA, so that actually helped precipitate going and receiving more help. Because then I was like, oh, it's not all in my head. I actually have physical injuries. This is real.
Melissa Kilgore [:I am not hysterical or making it up or even as weak as I think I'm being. You know what I mean? It's like, no, you have a physical injury.
Kim [:You said it right there. The thinking that we're weak.
Melissa Kilgore [:Yeah. Because I had to take a knee because I'm injured. Because I cannot do what I want to do in my life or be the person I was because I'm not that person anymore. Right. And big things happen to me and I need help. I need help transitioning. You know, even talking to my family was difficult because they didn't go and they don't know and you can try to explain, but my family, the word therapy was like, I was talking tongues. You know, we don't talk about our things out loud.
Melissa Kilgore [:We don't tell anybody about our problems. We just don't talk. And so that's not a healthy way to live either. Especially when you're dealing with things like suicide ideation or the guilt of your children being abused and neglected while you're doing something that is so much bigger than yourself. Because I wasn't doing it for me. I was doing it for them. So that's what started the whole process. And it started really slowly because as you know, when you're dealing with physical pain and emotional pain, you can only deal with one or the other.
Melissa Kilgore [:You can't do both at the same time. And I think that's really important to hear, and I'm going to say it again. You can't do both mental and physical at the same time. So it's going to be. You're working on the mental just enough so you're not wanting to, you know, shoot yourself every day. But then you got to deal with the physical because it's getting a little too hard to handle, which will cause you to go back to that other side. So then, you know, it's an on and off moving back and forth between the two until you get to a stage where you're stable and then you can really focus on the mental. Right.
Melissa Kilgore [:And that's how it went for me. I know it's gone that way for other folks as well, where you're just like, I'm in a safe space. I have a home. I'm not homeless anymore. I'VE been there. I'm not hungry, I'm not starving. I'm able to do my things that I want to do or have to do. And now I can focus on the mental health or now I can focus on getting that surgery that I needed.
Kim [:And just from talking to you, I mean, I didn't know you before when you first started your journey, but I do hear all like the anguish and the pain and the confusion. And now I just want everyone to know that you have done the work because you've used your art. And now you are, I'm going to call you a world renowned artiste because I've seen your work.
Melissa Kilgore [:And it's not.
Kim [:World renowned, we'll manifest it, but your art. How has art and writing helped you?
Melissa Kilgore [:I want to say two things. One, I never wanted my art to be affected by what happened to me because I was an artist long before I ever joined the military. And so I do not agree necessarily that art therapy is for everyone. It definitely was not for me. So art for me is the validation that I've done the work. Because I don't want my art to be about my journey per se. I want it to be a reflection of how I'm fighting injustice, how I'm fighting for all of us to have better lives, to see something that you maybe wouldn't have seen for yourself until I put it on the canvas type situation. That's what I want my art to be about.
Melissa Kilgore [:It's with purpose and with understanding of how we are human. And writing is purely for me to be able to express the journey that I've gone through and how, you know, I didn't grow up with privilege per se. Nobody in the military in the 80s was making big bucks, I'll tell you now. And we also went through a lot of the same thing that federal employees are going through now where they just don't pay you for a while. So, you know, and then being a single mom with three kids, I worked a lot of things in places that I would not have done had I not been in that situation. And my kids always ate, but I didn't always eat type thing, you know what I mean? We moved a lot because, you know, you can't pay the rent or that place was full of black mold or that kind of stuff that you have to live with when you're in extreme poverty. Motel rooms are very familiar to me with my three kids and all their stuff, you know what I mean? I've lost everything. I've owned seven times.
Melissa Kilgore [:Everything I'VE owned. So I know about resilience. I know about getting up and dusting your butt off and just getting on with it. Because at the end of the day, the journey is who you are. And it doesn't have to define who you will be. It just brought you to this moment that you are now. And we can all just take a deep breath and be like, all right, tomorrow is a new day. I'm not going to forget.
Melissa Kilgore [:I can't. I'm not going to feel less pain. I can't. But what I can do is just realize that that is now solidly in my past. It is not my present anymore. And I am able to be able to plant seeds for my future in a way that is open and free of this guilt that I drug around that wasn't mine to carry. Honestly, I didn't do the damage someone else did. I had to give compassion to myself, to say that I made the best choices that I could with the information I had at the time.
Melissa Kilgore [:And my children forgave me a long time ago, but I didn't forgive myself until this year. Last year, actually. Last year it started. And that is because of mushroom therapy. That's what got me over the hump. I had already done all the brutal hard work with multiple therapists and physical therapy and getting myself active again and getting, you know, understanding that I now had Hashimoto's and, like, a whole bunch of other things that were going on that are now all stabilized and under control. And that is all to the dedication of the naturopaths and doctors and nurses at the VA that helped me through all of this and the counselors that I've had through the VA. That has.
Kim [:To feel so good for you. So good for you.
Melissa Kilgore [:I don't have that weight on me. Like, you can't realize how heavy the burden of guilt is on you until you get rid of it. And it's not like I don't still have anger and serious, you know, disappointment. And I don't want to say regret, because I don't live in regret. Regret is not a useful tool. But not having the weight of that guilt makes it so that I can reflect on those times and have understanding and compassion for myself now. That was all that guilt on me. I couldn't do anything else.
Melissa Kilgore [:You can't. So immobilized.
Kim [:Yeah, it does. It feels like there's a bunch of bricks just in your body just pushing you down and you can't even move.
Melissa Kilgore [:And it's not even my guilt. No, no, Right.
Kim [:And I'm so happy that you came on Dog Tag Diaries and told your story because, Melissa, all you have said so many powerful statements for other women that have gone through such similar things. And the fact that you have come out on the other side is a testament to other women who may just be starting their journey. So I want to thank you for coming on and telling your story. How do you feel?
Melissa Kilgore [:I feel good about doing this. I want to say that, you know, a lot of times we don't hear from lower enlisted. We hear a lot of in the media about officers and command sergeant majors and things like that. But us lower enlisted, we went through the same stuff. And so I appreciate you giving me the chance to tell my story and to realize that when we do the work, really do the work, there becomes an opening in your soul that you can't get any other way. So I encourage anyone who's just starting their journey. It's going to get hard and you're going to want to give up many times, but don't do it for yourself. To see what it feels like on the other side.
Kim [:I love that. That's a wrap on today's episode of Dog Tag Diaries season six, baby! We're gunning for 5,000 downloads and 26 Apple reviews and I know we can get there with your help. Share these episodes Leave a review and let's show the world how powerful military women warrior voices really are.
