This piece is best read as a personal resilience narrative rather than evidence that a military-style mindset is a broadly effective mental health strategy. Its core value is not proof of a method, but a vivid example of how identity, structure and purpose can help someone function through overlapping stressors including serious injury, caregiving strain, grief, financial pressure and professional instability.
That distinction matters. The article suggests that decisive action, tactical thinking and relentless forward motion were protective for this author. For some readers, routines, clear next steps and mission-focused thinking can indeed reduce overwhelm by narrowing attention to what is controllable. But the same approach can also carry trade-offs if it turns into emotional suppression, delayed help-seeking or the belief that struggling means personal failure. In mental health, functioning under pressure is not the same as processing trauma or loss.
A practical takeaway is to separate the useful elements from the rhetoric. What may transfer to everyday life is not “push through at all costs,” but building a repeatable response under stress: define the immediate problem, protect essentials, reduce unnecessary decisions, and identify where support is needed. That can complement therapy, rehabilitation or social support; it should not be mistaken for a substitute.
Readers should also note that this is a high-performance entrepreneurial story, not a roadmap guaranteed to work across personalities, resources or health circumstances. Inspiration can be real without becoming prescription. The healthier question is not whether you can copy this intensity, but which parts of its discipline help you stay grounded without ignoring your limits.
And so there I was, navigating new terrain with the understanding that people judge your decisions not knowing the choices you had. During my second-to-last year in the Army Reserves, I sustained multiple fractures while completing a two-mile run for an upcoming Army combat fitness test. The injury immediately changed the course of my life. I was in the final year of my PhD program, raising an 11-year-old, and accepting that my husband was dying. Suddenly, learning to walk again was not optional. It was the difference between the life I had built and the life I almost did not get to have.
When my body shattered, the textbook theories I studied and shared, died. I had spent three and a half years teaching graduate-level counseling theories online to master’s degree students in clinical psychology. But injury made one truth undeniable: Not every therapist is a healer, not every healer is a clinician, and not every clinician will minister to a soul. What I was teaching was not enough to dig me out of the situation I was in. I needed something far more tactical.
Against the odds
Injury did not just threaten my mobility. It threatened my livelihood. At the same time I was going through these crises, I was building a multi-state telehealth practice that had become the sole economic engine funding my physical survival. I could not romanticize the hustle. I had to execute.
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When the school where I was teaching did not support me after a negative teaching experience, and a new employer would not let me keep staff members accountable for their actions, my military training activated instantly. Psychological operations taught me how to assess terrain, anticipate resistance, and move with precision. My last airborne mission was not out of an airplane. It was mental. My drop zone was resilience, clarity, and an intolerance for limitations I did not create. I relied on the same combat survival protocols I learned in basic training: “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down.” Drop, secure your perimeter, mask vulnerabilities, and plan your next bound under fire.
Building a small business is hard. Building one as a Black clinician in the Mountain West is statistically improbable. Only 5.5 percent of practicing psychologists nationwide are Black, and that number drops to a fractional sliver in independent private practice across this region. I was not trying to build an empire out of vanity. I was trying to turn microscopic odds in my favor so I could survive.
A digital ambush
Then came the digital ambush.
Early in my journey, I converted my Instagram content into commercial assets, including an online course, a counseling framework, and consumer products stemming from my #tactfuldisruption movement. But when you carve out your piece of the pie, the market sometimes strikes back. My ecosystem was hit with a coordinated cyberattack. It was not a glitch or an accident. It was a targeted hit on my economic stability. My inherently kind nature had convinced some very dark people that they needed to teach me a lesson in business.
Instead of panicking, I treated the breach as a tactical asset loss scenario. We salvaged our intellectual property and rebuilt the work into the Heal the Ages program, co-created with subscribers and funded in strategic silence. Scaling practice while managing catastrophic injuries meant I did not have cognitive bandwidth for shallow metrics. I was preparing my nervous system for multiple surgeries while protecting clinical governance and navigating defense contracts.
Just do it
My clients—neurodiverse leaders, first-generation professionals, and executives—do not hire me for a pretty Instagram grid. They hire me for a tested map. They know if I can weaponize digital setbacks into revenue, protect clinical governance, and scale an enterprise while my skeleton is being rebuilt, I can guide them through any crisis.
Operation Tarot Warrior was in full effect. The fight left me exhausted, but it left me standing long enough to claim the title of 2026 Vetrepreneur of the Year for Colorado. I secured victory by literally moving to higher ground.
I may never physically run on pavement again, but I have not stopped running toward my ultimate vision: to become the Nike of mental health. Pain teaches undeniable truths, and science guides physical recovery. My leadership philosophy is simple: Just do it, even broken. And I encourage every leader facing impossible odds to do the same.
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