I Marched Out of a War Zone as a Toddler. I Was Almost Homeless from 15 to 21. I Never Stopped.

This is not a story about overcoming adversity. Adversity never fully goes away. This is a story about what you do when it doesn't.

I was a toddler when my family marched out of a war zone. I do not have clear memories of that march — I have fragments, impressions, the emotional residue of things I was too young to understand. What I understand now is that the experience of displacement, of having everything stripped away, becomes either a weight that crushes you or a foundation that you build on. I chose the foundation.

Almost Homeless from 15 to 21

Between the ages of 15 and 21, I was housing-insecure more often than I was not. I slept in places that were not meant for sleeping. I ate when I could. I attended school when I could get there. I dropped out after 9th grade not because I didn't want to learn, but because survival required my full attention.

I am not telling you this for sympathy. I am telling you this because I want you to understand that the people who built the careers I am describing — the nurses, the officers, the public servants — many of them started from places like this. The starting point is not the determining factor. The direction is.

What Cannot Be Taken Away

In the years since, I have learned that there are things that cannot be evicted, bombed, or taken away. Your capacity for learning. Your ability to observe and adapt. Your willingness to keep going when the rational response would be to stop. These are not things that circumstances can remove. They are things that circumstances can develop — if you let them.

Keep Going

I am 48 years into a career that began with a GED and a decision to enlist. I have been a private, a lieutenant colonel, a staff nurse, a clinical director, and now a founder. None of those transitions were easy. All of them required the same thing: the decision to keep going.

That decision is available to you. It has always been available to you. It does not require the right school, the right family, the right circumstances. It requires only that you make it — and then make it again, every day, for as long as it takes.