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A Desert Storm vet explains why it's hard for veterans to ask for help

Lucy Del Gaudio, who fought in Operation Desert Storm for the U.S. Army, has made a career in pushing for female veteran's rights.

Video Transcript

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LUCY DEL GAUDIO: You know, we get placed in these buckets of, you know, people thinking that we're broken because they automatically assume that the majority of us have PTSD. I do have PTSD. I speak about it very openly. And I just think that I want people to make it aware that it doesn't make me a bad person. It makes me a stronger person, because every day I work very, very hard to heal.

JANNA HERRON: Before you joined the Army, why did you want to join the Army? What was the impetus?

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LUCY DEL GAUDIO: So I was a student. I-- My father passed away. And my mother couldn't afford two daughters in college at the same time. Both my brothers were serving in the military, one was Army, one was a Marine. And I sat down with them and got the pros and cons of both service branches. And I went with the Army because it was a shorter basic training and my brother was actually my recruiter.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I grew up in the East coast in the New York City, New Jersey area. So I was a city kid. And then, you know, they dumped me in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I experienced fire ants and hot weather. And I was like, wow, I can't believe I'm actually doing this. I definitely learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about my surroundings. And I definitely like got the groove.

I was in the military from '90 to '98, so I'm a Desert Storm era veteran. I did my MOS, my AIT training in Fort Devens, Massachusetts. From there, that's when the war started really heating up. I was in Germany the- primarily the whole time of Desert Storm, Desert Shield, I had an experience in Germany that brought me back stateside.

I experienced military sexual trauma, and it was the 90s, handled very differently than the way military sexual trauma is handled now. So I champion. That's one of my biggest advocacy roles is to talk to women about their experiences, tell them that it's OK to talk about it, to identify as a woman survivor. Because we're all survivors.

We didn't-- you know, we didn't ask for what happened to us. And you don't expect to join the military and that to happen to you, but it does. And it's not just women, it's men. The larger numbers are coming out, and it's something that I'm really trying to eradicate in the military.

Again, I'm not shy to talk about my experience that I faced, what created what I am right now. And I think other people should have that authenticity and say, this is what I am and this is who I am.

In 2016 I was 269 pounds. I was on a cocktail of meds, about 8 to 10 meds a day between my depression, my anxiety meds, my high blood pressure meds, and then they told me I was about to become a diabetic. And that's where I was like, wait a minute. I'm scared, because my grandmother was a diabetic.

So I sat down with my family and told them, like, I really need to change. And then I sat down with my therapist, then my doctor, and we went holistic. And April 7th, 2017 was the last time I took all my meds. So I'm going on three years med free.

But then I had to find other ways to conquer my depression and conquer my anxiety and become healthy, and I started running. My task was to do the 2018 New York City Marathon. And I remember crossing that finish line and being like, I can't believe I just did this.

JANNA HERRON: What are other things-- other issues that are specific to female veterans that are not being addressed adequately?

LUCY DEL GAUDIO: When the VA was created, it was created for the male. What the VA should have done is as we were joining they should have said, wow, there's more women joining. Let's get the women's health care initiative as close to the men's health care initiative, and they never did that.

For instance, here in New Jersey, my biggest fight is we don't have a women's clinic, and we don't have a mammogram machine. There's 27,000 female plus women veterans in the state of New Jersey, and we don't have a mammogram machine.

Female homelessness is on the rise, but the biggest problem is that in the general veteran transition housing, you can't have a child because of the way they're set up. We're trying to do more of helping women prepare themselves when they're leaving the military and then helping them transition out.

JANNA HERRON: Did you, yourself, when coming out of the military, did you experience difficulty finding employment?

LUCY DEL GAUDIO: Oh, I experienced-- everything that we just talked about, I experienced. Because I was a younger veteran, I wasn't ready to come out of the military when I did. So I've really had to-- I struggled a lot, because I wasn't prepared for when I was leaving.

I started a family very young, and that also causes, you know, financial hardships at times when you're just not prepared. And I really had to learn on my own.

Now I've been with Prudential for eight years now, and they totally embrace the veteran culture. And what I do now with, you know, the Prudential Pathways Program and the Military Pathways Program is that marriage of, you know, teaching the military member to be financially healthy.

Pathways also-- and Prudential is very big on virtual employment. So it does help the military family who does all-- a lot of transitioning to different posts and bases. So you essentially don't lose your job because you're leaving another post duty. You carry your job with you.

I think people don't realize, historically, the value of the woman veteran. We have an opportunity to teach our children what women have done in the military, and it's a really great history.

JANNA HERRON: What is it about the veteran community that-- it seems like very tight knit?

LUCY DEL GAUDIO: We don't like to ask for help. We really don't. It's very difficult for a veteran to say, I need help. We try to tell you it's OK to ask for help. It's not going to make you weaker. It's actually going to make you stronger. I know that a lot of people think of me as a woman veteran advocate. But I advocate for every veteran, because it's just we need a better community for our veterans.

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