Soriah Curtis-How Soccer, being an Exchange Student and one of seven led to the Airforce Reserves

Soriah Curtis grew up as one of seven children.
Her dad had been a marine and they moved a number of times.
Being from an abusive family drove her to excel in everything- 
soccer, gymnastics and academics.
She spent her junior year of high school as an exchange student to Denmark,
an experience which turned out to be anything but what she expected.
She returned to a downward spiral until she found out she could join the
reserves, where she once again excelled.
She has now found meaning with a group of young adults.

Subscribe to the Women of the Northwest podcast for inspiring stories and adventures.
Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:03] Jan: Are you looking for an inspiring lesson, something to motivate you. You've come to the right place. Welcome to Women of the Northwest, where we have conversations with ordinary women leading extraordinary lives. Motivating. Inspiring, compelling. I'm Jan Johnson, your host. I'm the kind of person who can't sit still, always have to be doing something. I'm just an ordinary woman who has ideas pop into her head and thinks, what's to stop me from doing that? And my preference is to be doing something that affects the life of someone or the community as a whole. It's what brings meaning to my life. And, hey, isn't it rewarding to see people smile? Ordinary women leading extraordinary lives. You know those women who everyone knows, the ones that balance a dozen things at once and you can depend on them to not drop the ball? Gals that are not afraid to have an idea and take the next step?

[00:54] Jan: That's the kind of gals I'm talking about. These are the women I'll have conversations with each week, telling their stories and sharing their passions. Motivating. Inspiring. Compelling.

[01:08] Jan: Soriah Curtis welcome.

[01:10] Soriah: Hello. Thanks for having me.

[01:12] Jan: You have had an interesting life. Let's talk about some things that brought you to where you are right now.

[01:22] Soriah: Yeah, so my journey up to this point has really started genuinely back when I was a kid. So I grew up in a military family and my dad was in the Marine Corps, and I'm one of seven kids. For the first 13 years of my life, though, there were only five of us, and later on, my parents ended up having two more. So I grew up with having a lot of siblings. There's chaos everywhere all the time.

[01:50] Jan: Something I know about.

[01:53] Soriah: Yes, as you're mentioning. And then they were not only having five kids, but all five kids involved in sports.

[02:03] Jan: Made it a little bit even going every direction. I had five kids in high school at one time. Yes.

[02:09] Soriah: It was crazy.

[02:10] Jan: And no cell phones.

[02:11] Soriah: Yeah, no, I can't even imagine that because the elite has cell phones making. So I grew up in a very chaotic environment, and we moved quite a bit due to my dad being in the Marines. So we started out on the East Coast for his military training and then ended up moving to Japan for three years. And then once we got back from Japan to the States, we lived in Michigan for seven years, so we were there for quite a while.

[02:44] Jan: It was like a stable place.

[02:45] Soriah: 100%. It was my whole life up to that point. And prior to Michigan, we had been home schooled. But once we got to Michigan, my mom had said, I've had it, I am done with homeschooling, and decided I.

[02:59] Jan: Have the utmost respect for parents that think that they can home school. I could not do that.

[03:04] Soriah: Yeah, well, my mom did a good job for the first couple of years, but having five kids of school age is a lot for any person to do on their own. So she ended up putting us into the public schools in Michigan once we got there. And so we started doing school and then travel sports. I was in competitive gymnastics, which is a huge commitment, and then all my other siblings were either in swimming or soccer, and at that point ended up due to a couple of extenuating circumstances, one of them being the time commitment of gymnastics, and there were a couple of injuries, and then just the expenses, super expensive sport. Ended up switching over to soccer, which was really the family sport and the sport that my dad really wanted all of us to play.

[04:00] Jan: So you were kind of doing it vicariously, he was doing it vicariously through you a little bit.

[04:04] Soriah: It was definitely something that he was super passionate about. He was coaching and involved in the referee community. And there was no American football in our household, it was only real football. And so I ended up switching to competitive soccer. And I was very academically focused and was very centered on having good grades and being the best in the class. And I was a very high, strong kid in all senses of the word.

[04:42] Jan: What propelled you to be a good student?

[04:46] Soriah: It was really just a focus on trying to be the best that I could be. Because for me, I think I thought if I was a good student that I wouldn't be in trouble and that I would be deemed good by my parents. And everything that I was trying to be was so that I was good in my parents' eyes, so I wouldn't get in trouble. And it was an abusive environment. So anything that I could do to be not to avoid that, to avoid that, was absolutely for me, grades was one of those things. And I used grades to perform and to try and stay out of trouble as much as I could. And so between school and soccer, I was busy every night of the week and all weekends. You didn't have time to get in trouble? No, which was great initially. And then my parents went through a separation when I was in the summer between 6th grade and 7th grade when we were still in Michigan. So, my mom and the kids, we moved out and my dad stayed at the house where we ended up switching schools while we were still in Michigan. And then about halfway through, maybe a quarter of the way through my 7th grade year, my parents got back together, and we moved to Texas. So, this was a huge shift for me, huge change, because up to this point, my cognitive memory was in Michigan, and that was where my life was and kind of all that I had known. And so, moving to Texas was a huge deal. For us. It was a huge culture shift from not necessarily smalltown Michigan, but it was not a large area, and we were super involved in the community there, both sports wise and then also pretty involved in the church community, whatever that looked like.

[06:40] Jan: Changed friends and had to everything and.

[06:44] Soriah: Everything very much the environment in our house was we couldn't be upset about the move and so we just had to move on with our lives. Yes, absolutely. So for me, I am a deeply emotional person. All of the things in my house were leading to like emotions are not a good thing. So it's very emotionally repressive and not allowing me to genuinely process what I was feeling and whether that was healthy or not. And it wasn't teaching me to really understand the impact huge shifts like that can have on somebody and was immediately thrown into the Texas school system which is different, very different and very high speed in comparison to some other state's school systems. So I went from generic math to taking pre AP math courses and extremely behind the curve compared to my classmates. And for me it was an academic challenge and really pushed me to be better at the time. And it really drove me to have a huge focus and huge pressure on my academics to the point that it was detrimental. I was so focused on getting good grades that if I got anything below a 95 I would have a full on mental breakdown. I could not handle it because that.

[08:10] Jan: Kind of became your identity.

[08:11] Soriah: Didn't absolutely. It was soccer school and then presenting this image of being a good kid, quote unquote. I was by no means an angel but I did my best to stay out of trouble because it was something I was so focused on. But I can't stress enough that it was just a facade. But with the transition to the Texas school system, it was a huge, huge shift for me. And they do things called weighted GPAs in Texas and so you could be on a four point scale with a 4.5. Because of these weighted GPAs. For me, I was like, I have.

[08:52] Jan: To get, because you're the advanced placement.

[08:54] Soriah: Class 100% so you take the grade that you're getting as the normal cost and because you're an advanced class, they have a multiplier.

[09:00] Jan: I see.

[09:00] Soriah: And so, you can get greater than the scale. Wow. And I was like, I have to have the highest score possible. And then on top of that, I was now playing travel soccer in Texas, which is significantly different to travel soccer in Michigan because of the amount of time you spend driving and just the level of play is significantly higher. And initially I struggled with the shift and I went through a period of time where I was ready to quit just because of how the coaches created an environment that was super negative, and they didn't really like middle school age girls are mean. They are not nice people. And the coaches just let that environment fester on the field instead of cracking down on it. And I was which is counterproductive, don't you think? Absolutely. You're supposed to be a team, and here we are. Having a team full of just is not good. And I was a small kid when I talked about small. I was four nine and really 100 lbs wet. Maybe I was really small. And it wasn't that I wasn't good at soccer. It's just when you're that small against girls who are way bigger than you, it is a challenge. And so, I wasn't really getting the playtime I was used to. I was used to having coaches belittle me and put me down. And so, I was kind of like, you know what? I'm done. I want to hang up.

[10:29] Jan: Because it wasn't motivating to 100% abused at play and at home.

[10:35] Soriah: Exactly. Yeah. And I was just kind of like, I don't need this in my life. At the time, I had already started refereeing, and so I was like, Look, I'll just do the referee thing. I'll make money. This will free up my weekdays. And I was ready to quit playing. And my dad's boss at the time had a daughter who was my age, and she was playing on a lower level team that I had not played at that level before. And they were just like, well, we don't even have eleven people and just come play with us for the tournament. So I went and played with them for this tournament, and it really took away so much of the pressure that I was used to. A soccer, like, you have to be great, and there's one mistake and you're taken off the field. And the coach had zero tolerance for bullying. And it was just like, we're all here to learn and get better. It was an entirely different world the.

[11:22] Jan: Way it was supposed to be.

[11:23] Soriah: Yes. And so it really allowed me to have a passion for the game of soccer again. And so I went from hating it and everyone who was involved in it to being like, okay, this is something I can do again. And at the same time, I was playing at this varsity soccer team at my freshman year of high school at a magnet program that was focused on engineering and technologies. And so that academic environment that I was just really stuck in of, like, performance. And this was setting me up to graduate high school with an associate degree in Stem. And I was doing robotics and physics and all of these things. And I was doing like I had a good grade point average, everything. I was doing really well. But it was just not something I actually cared about.

[12:13] Jan: You didn't feel passionate about?

[12:15] Soriah: No, absolutely not. Which was a huge blessing in hindsight. Of not feeling passionate about that particular subject because I didn't have to go to college to figure that out.

[12:23] Jan: Right.

[12:24] Soriah: But at the time, I was just like, man, I hate this.

[12:28] Jan: But you kept getting good grades.

[12:30] Soriah: Yeah, but I kept getting good grades and I kept performing. And now I had a new reignited love for a sport that was to me, the only way I could have a relationship with my dad. Because up to that point, it was very polarizing and it was really the only thing we could connect on. And so things were to me, like very things were looking up, I guess you could say. And then my sophomore year, I switched to a very high level travel team. I switched to a different school because I didn't want to be engineering focused anymore. And so all of the friends that I had made my freshman year of high school were gone. I felt like I didn't really have a ton of friends that year. Yeah, but I had also applied to be an international exchange student with Rotary, and I got accepted to that program, and I was going to go to Denmark for my junior year of high.

[13:24] Jan: School, which sounded good.

[13:26] Soriah: And I was so excited. It was going to be I was like, everyone talks about this being the best year of their life and how they always want to just go back to that year. And my dad had done it as a kid. He went to Brazil and I was just like, man, this is going to be so good. And then the spring of my sophomore year, at a showcase tournament for soccer, I tore my ACL. And so I was like, man, all these dreams I had of playing D-1 college soccer and everything that I thought was lining up perfect started. I was like, okay, well, this is just one factor. I saw my grades. I'm going to go do this exchange year. Everything will be fine. And then I went to Denmark, and it was the worst year of my life.

[14:09] Jan: It didn't turn out to be no thought it was going to be.

[14:12] Soriah: Absolutely not. I struggled with several of the host families that I was placed with, whether they wanted me to be their kid, who was on exchange, and anything that I did different from that kid was not okay in any capacity or one family was really amazing. But they lived about 45 minutes away from the city that I was in, and it was just, like, too far to really build any relationships. And then the third family that I was officially scheduled to stay with was just well, they were hosting an exchange student for political gain. And so that relationship was already kind of not great scented. And then their kids, both of which are Olympic athletes, had rooms in their house. But because they wanted to have those rooms available for their kids, any time that they wanted to come over. I was sleeping in the laundry room on a couch that had to be put away every day and it had to look like I didn't live there. And then I actually was coming home one night from an event, and I was sexually assaulted on the way home. And one of their strict rules was that I had to be home by 10:00 and I was passed out in a back alley because I had just been assaulted. And so I missed crew for you, but they kicked me out the next day.

[15:37] Jan: Not my fault.

[15:38] Soriah: Yeah, absolutely. And so I was sitting here. I had this awful, awful thing happen and no support. No support. I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't want to tell my family. I didn't know how to communicate anything. And because I didn't have this support network, because the club that was hosting me was not doing a lot of what they were supposed to be doing. And the relationships that I had with my host families were just super not great, with the exception of the one family who lived 45 minutes away, but they still lived 45 minutes away. And so in all of this, one thing about Denmark is they don't have a drinking age. They just have an age where you can buy alcohol in the age of 16. And I was 16 and you were 16. And they have a huge party culture, which is healthy or not healthy. It was available, and it was something I fell into quite deeply. And I was drinking pretty heavily while I was there. My grades were in the garbage can.

[16:39] Jan: Plummeted.

[16:40] Soriah: Yeah. And I was in a really not healthy mental place. And so I decided to end up sticking it out, mostly because if I said I wanted to go home, I would have to say Why?

[16:53] Jan: Right.

[16:54] Soriah: I didn't want to expose that to anyone. And so I stuck it out, stayed for the rest of the year. And then when I got home, I was told, we're moving to Japan. And what I was expecting, I was expecting to kind of come back, do two more years of high school because of the Danish school system and the way that the Texas school system works. That year wasn't going to translate at all for me, which is why I wasn't really worried about grades while I was there. In response to, like, we're going to move to Japan, I was like, well, first of all, I don't want to. I had friends in Texas. I had this idea of what I was expecting the last two years of my high school experience to look like.

[17:42] Jan: Right?

[17:42] Soriah: And so I was upset about that already. I was already in deep emotional turmoil of how to cope with this. I had just been living out on my own, essentially for a year. And now I'm coming back to live under my parents’ house, with my parents’ rules, in an environment that's super unhealthy and a bunch of siblings who I barely had a relationship with at the time. I was not a good sibling because I was just so angry with the world. And at this point, I had also kind of recognized the way that my parents was treating us, was very unhealthy and abusive. It was not a good environment to come back to. And then so with this move to Japan, my parents were like, we're going to take a cross country road trip to kind of say bye to people before we leave the country for a couple of years. And so what that meant for us was piling into an RV with me and six of my least favorite people on the planet at the time. And at this point, my parents have had two more kids. So we've got of those six people, one of them is less than a year old, and one is three. And then I've got my two younger siblings who are both in the angsty preteen teenage years, and you've got me, who just hates everything, and my mom, who doesn't know how to cope with any of it because I don't know who would. My dad chose to stay back in Texas because of work, and my older sister and older brother at that point were 18 and moving out of the house and happy to live their life the way they wanted to. And so I was the oldest child essentially in that environment and was looked at as like, you're supposed to know what's going on and you should.

[19:33] Jan: Be helping with the younger siblings 100%.

[19:36] Soriah: And I was we're in online school so that we can maintain, like, at least going to school in the time we're on the road. So this is my senior year now.

[19:46] Jan: Of like, where you had dreams of what your senior year should have looked like right.

[19:51] Soriah: And all of like, whether that's playing soccer or not playing soccer, whether that's homecoming or winter formals or all of these things with people that I had known, like, forget about it because you're in an RV with your family, when.

[20:04] Jan: In my mind, we do all those things online, right?

[20:06] Soriah: Absolutely. And in my mind, we're moving to Japan. And so we made some stops through different areas we used to live. So we took a trip up to Michigan, and then we took through the Dakota and everything. And my mom's mom, my Grandma Jeannie, she met us when we were driving through Idaho, so she flew out from Oregon to Idaho and stayed with us. And that actually had a huge impact on my family's trajectory. Because of her health, we ended up choosing to stay in the States to stay with her so that we had the last few years of her life with her rather than living across the world. So we ended up moving to Sweet Home, Oregon, which was another culture for me. Town, 6000 people and has all the charm of a small town. And everyone's been going to school with each other since they were in kindergarten. And if you don't and who are you? Yeah. Because you don't really think you're my mom grew up there, so I knew a lot of the adults.

[21:09] Jan: Right.

[21:10] Soriah: But I didn't know any of the kids. And so it was this really weird dynamic of like, all of the adults knew who I was and they would talk to me and all these things, but none of the kids who were in my grade knew who I was.

[21:22] Jan: So you finished your senior year there?

[21:24] Soriah: I finished senior year. I started just after graduating class of less than 100.

[21:30] Jan: Yeah.

[21:30] Soriah: Coming from a school in Texas where my graduating class was a thousand people.

[21:34] Jan: Yeah. Little bit of a difference.

[21:36] Soriah: A little bit. So it was just a very different dynamic to me. And I had missed the soccer season, which to me, at that point I had given up on the soccer side of things just because of the ACL tear and then the moving and all sorts of things, but was very much trying to just kind of shift my focus to how do I get out? Because at this point, my grades still haven't necessarily transferred from Denmark. So I'm still thinking I've got a little bit of time. Well, Oregon does accept credits from Denmark, in case you were wondering.

[22:13] Jan: Yeah. Okay.

[22:18] Soriah: Yeah. My glorious GPA that I had taken so much pride in plummeted and ideas.

[22:24] Jan: For scholarships out the window. Yeah. So no sports scholarships, no academic scholarship.

[22:30] Soriah: No. And so my options of how to get out of Sweet Home were very limited and I was still in a very angry place.

[22:41] Jan: Which at that point probably puts you deeper into an angry place.

[22:45] Soriah: Yes.

[22:45] Jan: Because you're boxed in.

[22:47] Soriah: Yes. And at that point, my dad had moved to Oregon with us and was working remotely for this company. And it was a very unhealthy environment, and we thought that it would be a lot better than it had been just because my parents both had support systems and they knew people in the area and they both grew up in Oregon. So a lot of these things. But it was not healthy. And I by no means helped the situation, but it was just a very negative, abusive cycle. So I ended up hearing from my dad's friend who was in the Air National Guard. And one thing that had come from my dad being in the Marines was I had a very deep seated dislike for the military because it had moved us around so much and my dad was gone a lot and I attributed him being in the military to a.

[23:49] Jan: Lot of the family's behaviors 100%.

[23:52] Soriah: And so I was just kind of like very anti me going into the military at this point. Not necessarily anti-military, but it was just not where I saw my life going.

[24:00] Jan: It wasn't on your radar?

[24:01] Soriah: No. And he was just like, hey, just so you know, the International Guard will pay for all your school. And me coming from a place of I've got no academic scholarships, I've got no sports scholarships, and I just want to get out, was like, Sign me up. But I was 17, so I couldn't sign myself up. So my parents ended up signing the dotted line for me. And then I graduated in June and I went off to basic training in August. Which one thing to know about the International Guard is typically it takes six to twelve months for you to go from signing the dotted line to going to basic just because of getting school dates.

[24:39] Jan: Okay.

[24:39] Soriah: But I signed up in May and had school dates within a month and a half. Oh, really? It was very fast. So I went to basic when I was still 17. I was almost as the second youngest in my flight, but I did not act like that. I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder and despite my life crumbling around me, was still like, I'm better. But it was a very humbling experience because everyone is equal. It doesn't matter where you came from, it doesn't matter what you've done. You're all going through basic training together. You all know nothing.

[25:26] Jan: And we're going to make sure that you know you know nothing.

[25:29] Soriah: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And it was back to the basics of cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing chrome and folding T shirts and things like that that just are so it took me all the way back to square one. And things that I had as part of my identity up to this point that we talked about of like sports that was gone because of my ACL tears and academics, which were gone. And then I had been I cannot stress enough I was a terrible sibling as a terrible kid. I was so mean to everybody around me. I was just so angry about a lot that a lot of it had been kind of stripped away and crumbled as to so I had no idea who I was at this point. Like, I was just so when you.

[26:09] Jan: Entered, how many other gals were in.

[26:12] Soriah: There with there were about 40 of us. OK, so it was a decent amount, but yeah, you put 40 girls in a room together and told them they have to see each other every day for two months. Good luck.

[26:23] Jan: It was like being on the middle school soccer team.

[26:25] Soriah: Yes, absolutely. It was all back to anything that I mean, I was counting the meals until I could leave and so one thing that you use delicious meals oh, yeah. The ones you have ten minutes to eat. And from the time you enter the chow hall doors, to walking out of the chow hall doors. Yeah, those were great. And so after getting back from training, I was spending some more time with my godparents, mostly because my relationship with my parents at that point was almost no contact. I was really struggling with a lot of coming to terms with how I grew up and the abuse and really recognizing it for what it was abuse, and just really trying to wrestle with the forgiveness and even just coming to terms with a lot of it. And so to do that, I really just needed distance. And so I took a lot of that. But I was hanging out with my godparents a lot. And so it just really was getting to know people and experiencing the joy of the environment we were in. We were breaking in a zipline and ropes course on the top of a mountain in South Lake Tahoe. Yeah. Whoa. With me they see the beauty of what's around them and they really appreciate it and they search for ways to find that beauty and everything.

[27:45] Jan: Yeah.

[27:46] Soriah: And so it was such a different way for me of looking at life than I had seen up to that point. My life up to that point had been a very negative dark cloud. Find the gray cloud, even though there's in spite of the silver lining.

[27:58] Jan: Right.

[28:00] Soriah: Whereas this was finding that silver lining.

[28:02] Jan: And everything in everything.

[28:04] Soriah: And if I was in the military, still in the military, super familiar, but you're talking about war all the time and death and the military is super bad with sexual assault and suicide and all these things. It's not a super positive environment all the time, but being able to recognize that for the potential that it is in the darkest environments, lights can shine the brightest. And so just finding a way to be a light and seeing all these people so in awe of everything that was around them all the time.

[28:36] Jan: Yeah.

[28:37] Soriah: It was really refreshing. And so coming back from that, I was super stoked to just go out and be like that light and finding the awe and everything. And I went on a deployment to the Middle East and it was just going from a spiritual greenhouse to a literal desert.

[28:55] Jan: Desert.

[28:56] Soriah: I really, really struggled and that was, for me, kind of a turning point. And I ended up moving out here to the coast and Seaside and was working at Camp Rilea. And I was going to work and I was going home and there was nothing else I was doing. And on the weekends I would go back to Sweet Home because I was losing my mind or I would go to my godparents house in Beaverton. And there was one day that I was like, I know that God at this point had put me in the military for a reason, but I couldn't figure out why. And I was so miserable. I hated it out here. It was raining all the time. I just could not get over it. And at the time I was on a temporary status at the unit. So it was like as soon as the temporary status is up, I could go do whatever I wanted. And I was kind of at a crossroads with my military career in general, like whether or not I wanted to stay in or get out. And I was like, God, I know you have a plan, but I have no idea what it is. This is not sustainable for me to.

[30:00] Jan: Make the plain to me.

[30:02] Soriah: And so it was really amazing. And the other thing that it really provided for me was work life balance. Because after work, I had other things that were non work related that I was doing that allowed me to not put my whole identity into what my job was, which for me was a struggle in the past of identifying with what I was good at. And my job is something that I love and I'm good at. It's something that I very strongly believe God has put me in for a reason. And it actually led me to going through this pretty stringent course of essentially getting a PhD in my career field. That is six months of 20 hours days and very stringent. Yes, it's a lot and it has a very low pass rate, 50% pass rate. So it's not an easy course by any means. And just because you get accepted, which is hard enough on its own, will mean you pass.

[31:00] Jan: So you became the person you were in high school originally with getting good grades and I can do this, I have a challenge on and go do it.

[31:07] Soriah: But it was such a different mindset because for me, it wasn't doing it for the grades anymore. I was doing it because this is the door that got it open for me to walk through and there's a reason for it, I just don't know what it is yet. But I am not going to identify the success because the success isn't mine, right? Because I genuinely, without having gone in my life for that course, I would not have made it. 4 hours of sleep for six months is not sustainable. And so I ended up graduating that course in December and moving back out to the coast to a full time position, no longer temporary, and really just falling into that military mindset that, like I mentioned, can be very glass half empty gray skies all the time type of mentality. Because we're around a lot of pretty severe concepts quite a lot of the time, and it's a lot of travel. It can be very lonely if you aren't intentional about your people and who you're surrounding yourself with. And this community out here has really just provided an amazing outlet and resource around me to have other people who I know care about me and a way to still be super active and go surfing or skiing or have movie nights or dinner and just really be around each other, enjoy. And it forces me to leave work at a reasonable time.

[32:37] Jan: I have a reason to go.

[32:38] Soriah: Yeah. And so it just is a very.

[32:42] Jan: What would you tell your younger self?

[32:46] Soriah: Be more patient with yourself. I think I was really impatient with people around me, but I was so impatient with myself, and I did not give myself any grace, which caused me to have no grace for other people either.

[32:58] Jan: Right.

[32:58] Soriah: It's okay to not be good at things, and it's okay to not just be okay. So I really just struggled with not being this perfect kid or perfect person to the deficit of me and those around me. Really, I was very judgmental of myself and other people, and I was very vocal about that judgment and through this last couple of years has really just broken down a lot of that judgment and shown me that compassion gets you 10,000 miles further than judgment ever will. And whether that's compassion for yourself or.

[33:37] Jan: Others because what is to gain from being judge?

[33:42] Soriah: Nothing. Enemies? No.

[33:47] Jan: Yeah. Let me ask you just a couple of things about being in the service. What would you recommend for girls that want to join the service? Do you think the branch you're in now is great, or do you have a picture of the other ones?

[34:03] Soriah: I would say that the Air Force is definitely the better branch for women. Out of many of the branches, one, there's just more women already there. And there's a lot of women in leadership in the Air Force, which helps to have a better voice. And I would say that the people around you are much more I don't want to say progressive. Progressive isn't necessarily the right word. But for example, the Marines still have a much higher male to female ratio and boys mentality of, like good old boys, and we are the Marines, whereas the Air Force is much more run like a business, I guess is the best way to say it. And absolutely like for females, the Air Force is miles better than any of the other alternatives. And I think the biggest thing is just give yourself time to grow as you are going to the military, but just find something that is who you are, something that allows you to not lose your entire identity to the military because it's very easy for it to happen that way. As you see other people just go into the military and it becomes everything that they are, everything's military, all they talk about, all of their friends are military, which is hard on active duty. To be very clear, it is not an easy thing to do on active duty to have a life outside of the military. But I would highly encourage anyone who goes into the military to find something that is outside of the military and stay involved in because it gives you.

[35:39] Jan: A balance, a life balance.

[35:40] Soriah: Yeah. And it just gives you a way different perspective on things. When you're around military people all the time, you end up in a military mindset and that can be a very negative mindset to be in just because all it is is talking about like war and stuff all the time and it's just that's not healthy.

[35:59] Jan: And so having okay, well, Soriah thank you. This has been really enlightening and thanks for being vulnerable enough to share your story. Absolutely. I appreciate it.

[36:16] Jan: If you enjoyed this or any other of my podcast episodes, it would be amazing if you would take a few minutes to leave a review so others can find it. Transcripts are available on my website@jan-johnson.com. Please join me again next week.