You'll save on time with me for sure.
I am Sergeant (Retired) Alannah Gilmore. I retired in 2015 after 23 years served in the military, including reserve time when I joined as a pipsqueak in high school. Prior to that, I was also a dependent of my father, who retired after 34 years, so the military has been my family since birth.
I'm also an Afghan vet. I was part of the 2006-07 tour in Afghanistan, also known as Operation Medusa. A lot of you can say you're probably familiar with that. After that tour, my spouse, Jody Mitic, who is one of the ones who got blown up, became a very strong voice for those with significant catastrophic injuries. He ended up as a double below-the-knee amputee. Since then, he has been a strong voice for the injured and ill through the military.
Obviously, our lives and our careers completely changed post-Afghanistan. His ability to stay in the military was limited due to the significance of his injuries. Then, of course, in terms of my injuries, I have PTSD and I'm pretty sure I probably have spousal PTSD, and you top that off with the amount of struggle, heartache, and stress that came along with the bureaucratic red tape that we're constantly cutting to try to get services for our family.
Jody released in 2014, so we went through the transition process with him; and then in 2015 I followed suit and I retired as well. It was a very difficult transition, so I feel that I can actually speak quite truthfully, with some possibly good lessons learned from my transition. It isn't easy to say that someone can't transition easily, and for a soldier, that makes it even more difficult, knowing that we don't just bounce back. I do think that the more we can do for our members to try to mitigate any of those issues would be very beneficial.
Presently I am working with the advisory groups, so I have found one method that helps me, to stay a bit in the game and still have that connection to the military or through the veterans. I've been doing stuff with Veterans Affairs through the advisory group, helping with the families, and also with the Legion OSI section. I was also part of the governance group for the MFRC. I have been quite able to give my opinions and my thoughts and perspectives on various veterans and military groups.
I'm very happy to be here. I appreciate the fact that you considered me as one of the people you'd like to speak with. I hope my testimony, and that of those before me, can be helpful. Hopefully we can make it better for the next ones coming through.
Thank you.