She saw something in me before I fully knew how to name it myself — not aggression, not defiance, but instinct, survival, and truth. She didn’t try to break it. She respected it. She also stood beside me during one of the hardest seasons of my life and supported me as I chose sobriety. That kind of seeing changes a person.

For women who served in the Navy and were raped by fellow service members, victim-blamed, emotionally abused, retaliated against, and discarded by the institution they served, these remarks are not abstract. They are not political. They are re-injuring.