Interview with Mindy Dougherty, author of A Resilient Warrior and Mindy's Fight

 Mindy Dougherty

Please tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Mindy Dougherty, and I am the author of Mindy’s Fight, and A Resilient Warrior. Which is an autobiography about my life and overcoming abuse to become resilient. I have created a program called Feed My City, which helps people learn how to garden to decrease anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder by learning how to plant the seeds and grow plants for both myself and to give to others such as food banks and child advocacy groups around the world. This program also teaches children nonattachment to material things by growing plants for themselves and giving to others so they also learn to give without expectation of return.

When did you start writing?

I have been writing since I was in kindergarten, but not seriously until 2014 when I had some unfortunate events happen to me while at the San Antonio, Texas VA Hospital that altered and changed my life as I knew it. This is what I write about in both Mindy’s Fight and A Resilient Warrior.

What projects have been published?

I have published Mindy’s Fight e-reader and A Resilient Warrior both an e-reader and my first paperback available on amazon.com and www.feedmycity.net for those who want autographed copies of A Resilient Warrior. I was also published in a medical journal for the C-Peptide studies I did with The Barbara Davis Center for research of Diabetes and Endocrine disorders.

I can be found at www.feedmycity.net which has a small video and my social media outlets available with podcasts of some of my poetry read out loud.

How did you select the title of your novel?

Throughout my life, I have encountered sexual abuse, incest, and being tortured by the individuals that were supposed to be treating me at the San Antonio, Texas VA Medical Hospital and Center. Since then I have had to relearn how to walk, speak, and swallow making my life completely different as I knew it before the events that occurred in 2014. I am recovering and with therapy getting better with time. I feel through perseverance and resiliency I have been able to inspire those who have wanted or needed some kind of hope to prevent more suicides from happening. I also was speaking to high school students before Covid hit and hope to resume this when changes are made and we are allowed to do public speaking events again.

 What was your inspiration?

My inspiration for writing my book came from my grandma who asked me to write a book twenty-one years ago. I am very glad I waited to write these as I have been in three comas, have had three transplants, and four organs taken out to include my appendix, gallbladder, duodenum, and pancreas making me a diabetic in 2004 once my pancreas was taken out. I have been doing research and was published in several magazines for diabetes prevention and awareness as well as studies to help others find a cure for it. I have also been published in Women’s Magazine and most recently Integrity Magazine in the UK, to help inspire and give hope to those who are in need. 

 What are you currently working on?

Currently, I am getting ready for the seasons to change to get back to gardening and helping expand Feed My City, as I hope to be able to spread awareness to local schools and possibly get into the jail system to decrease recidivism and teach inmates that by gardening they can help their communities flourish once they get out and hopefully become a better citizen within their community.

I have had A Resilient Warrior bought internationally and hope to keep spreading my knowledge and inspiration to as many as will listen.

What are you reading at the moment?

I am reading scripts for future films that I have been asked to consider producing and doing social media events for.

What do you like to do in your free time when you're not reading or writing?

I like to produce and act in movies as well as TV series. I am also the social media marketer for a few projects and will be walking in the canyon and gardening as well as meditating to keep me grounded.

Do you have any advice for other authors?

Writing will not make you rich so you may do this for the love of writing but make sure you keep a day job as well because it sincerely doesn’t pay much and a lot of time goes into it for not much return. For me, I have found an inner justice and peace that I would not have been able to find if I hadn’t written A Resilient Warrior. I also believe I am continuing to inspire people to make their dreams come true and really hope to decrease suicidal ideation amongst those who struggle on a daily basis.

And finally, can you tell us some fun facts about yourself, such as crossed skydiving off my bucket list.

I am a United States Army Veteran and served from 1995 to 1999 as a field combat medic. I became a trauma nurse after relearning how to read in my 20’s as I struggle with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and executive functioning disorder. I have had two stem cell transplants called mesenchymal and exosomal stem cell transplants which have taken the burning down to at least 50% and the swelling in my foot is never as bad as it was, so I remain humbled, grateful, ad thankful to have legs that work.

I am in a film called Bridge of the Doomed which comes out in October 2021 and will be working in the future to continue to build Feed My City in areas that want to help their communities.

 Connect with Mindy

Webpage   Linked-in   Facebook   Twitter   Instagram

 

Link for National Stem Cell Institute video after personal success with Mesenchymal Stem Cells

National Stem Cell Institute Video

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US Army Veteran Mindy Dougherty has a warrior spirit that will capture your attention. The resiliency and strength she embodies while overcoming childhood abuse, PTSD, and more medical adversities than one can imagine will inspire you. Navigating a lifetime of trauma could leave a person bitter and hateful, but Mindy takes a completely different approach. She uses comedy, gratitude, and gardening to influence healing for herself and others. Mindy’s garden, known as Feed My City, promotes healing, growth, and health for those who may be fighting their own battle for survival. Mindy Dougherty is the epitome of a resilient warrior, a fact that is showcased throughout this narrative of her life.

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Mindy's Fight is the story about one Army female combat medic's PTSD journey from childhood sexual violence to medical neglect at the hands of the VA to finding herself.

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Book Spotlight: A Resilient Warrior by Mindy Dougherty

 

US Army Veteran Mindy Dougherty has a warrior spirit that will capture your attention. The resiliency and strength she embodies while overcoming childhood abuse, PTSD, and more medical adversities than one can imagine will inspire you. Navigating a lifetime of trauma could leave a person bitter and hateful, but Mindy takes a completely different approach. She uses comedy, gratitude, and gardening to influence healing for herself and others. Mindy’s garden, known as Feed My City, promotes healing, growth, and health for those who may be fighting their own battle for survival. Mindy Dougherty is the epitome of a resilient warrior, a fact that is showcased throughout this narrative of her life.

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 Amazon US

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  About the Author

Mindy Dougherty

The magic of creativity exists in all types of people from all walks of life. Some know from a young age they want to be artists in the film industry, others realize it later on after significant life experiences. This is the case of Mindy Dougherty. Four days after graduating from Antioch High School, and shortly after she won Miss San Francisco Bay Teen USA, Mindy decided to join the United States Army and was stationed first in Germany. She served as a combat field medic. While serving in Germany, she was deployed to Tazar, Hungary, then Tuzla West, Bosnia. Mindy contracted a parasite while there and became sick with both appendicitis and pancreatitis at the same time and had to be evacuated back to Germany. She had her appendix taken out then her gallbladder later when she returned to her new duty station in the MEDDAC Unit at Fort Carson, CO, where she was appointed, elected, then re-elected by her peers to represent over 5,000 soldiers. She was sent to Washington DC, serving as their voice as she strove to make a difference for current and future soldiers.

 After receiving her honorable discharge and garnering a BSN from the University of Colorado at Anschutz in Denver, she was a trauma nurse and then an interventional radiology nurse who specialized in pain control, and post anesthesia care. She has since studied the ancient art of Watsu (water-based Shiatsu massage) which led to her nickname of “Water Gypsy,” shortened for wtrgpsy.” Having her work published in medical journals for the research she has done with diabetes to help veterans obtain better care in the VA Medical systems demonstrated a writing talent that would bear fruit when she wrote her memoir, Mindy's Fight, then A Resilient Warrior, which details her health issues as well as struggles with domestic violence, sexual abuse, incest, and medical abuse at the VA Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Her writing skills have also helped Dougherty with her burgeoning acting career (watch for her in Bridge of the Doomed: which is due out in October 2021) and also with her latest venture—a program called Feed My City (www.feedmycity.net) that has helped many other Veterans and others deal with trauma through the restorative and sustaining practice of gardening.

 Connect with Mindy

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Q&A: Where does the word ‘crack’, describing military units, originate?

History Extra

In both Britain and America, ‘crack’ could mean good or excellent – and to boast or even make a joke (wisecrack).

 While ‘crack unit’ or ‘crack regiment’ is a little archaic nowadays, we still talk of something as not being all it’s ‘cracked up’ to be.

In the martial sense, the word ‘crack’ dates to around the 1830s. William Makepeace Thackeray’s short story The Fatal Boots (1839) contains possibly the first printed use of the term ‘crack shot’. The onomatopoeic connections between shooting and cracking noises are obvious. It might be – and this is just my theory – that it became popular in the 1830s to 1840s due to the newfangled percussion caps on firearms, which would have made more of a cracking noise than flintlock weapons.

From the same time you find the first widespread literary and newspaper references to ‘crack regiments’ of the army. Initially, this seems to have meant regiments officered by wealthy, fashionable young aristocrats – so ‘crack’ in the sense of boastful or swaggering. It was a little later that it was taken to mean an excellent fighting unit.

Answered by author and journalist Eugene Byrne.

Remembering our military - D-Day June 6, 1944

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learn more about D-Day U.S. Army

A brief history of camouflage

History Extra

Commandos take part in basic training exercises in an unspecified spot in England, 1940. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Camouflage is a pattern of paradox. Camouflage’s history encompasses both hiding but also being seen: confusing the eye, subverting reality and signalling both individuality and group affinities…

1) Camouflage in nature    

Any history of camouflage must properly start with ‘mother nature’. From wood ants to pufferfish and octopi to birds, a wide array of animals conceal themselves – sometimes amazingly, like this camouflaged octopus – from predators with camouflage.
Two British zoologists and an American painter played key roles in translating camouflage in nature into techniques humans could put to military use. One of those zoologists, Sir Edward Poulton, wrote the first book on camouflage in 1890 (The Colours of Animals). An early adherent of Darwinism, Poulton believed that animal mimicry (imitation) for concealment was proof of natural selection.
The American painter Abbott Thayer popularised two particular concepts of camouflage: countershading explains the lighter underbellies common to many animals – this cancels out shadowing from the overhead sun, giving the animal a flat, two-dimensional appearance. Disruptive coloration, meanwhile, refers to ‘splotchiness’ in an animal’s colouring; this visual effect helps to obscure the contours of its body.
Thayer suffered from bipolar disorder and panic attacks – conditions not helped by public criticism of his controversial theories, which gained prominence in the lead-up to the First World War. Thayer defended those theories stoutly until his death in 1921.
In 1940, zoologist Hugh Cott built on Poulton’s more scientific concepts with ideas of his own, including contour obliteration – basically, making it difficult to perceive a continuous form by blurring its defining edges - and shadow elimination – as the name suggests, reducing the appearance of telltale shadows.

 

2) Military khaki

Prior to the invention of the modern rifle in the mid-1800s (the earliest rifles were in use during the 15th century), militaries the world over clad their soldiers in bright shades of colour – consider, for example, British troops in their iconic madder red uniforms (red coats).

_{Soldiers of the 30th East Lancashire foot regiment in bright red jackets, c1850. Rischgitz Collection. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)}
But marksmen began wearing more inconspicuous garb to conceal themselves while picking off targets. Austrian Jägers (meaning ‘hunters’) wore light grey, while the British 95th Rifle Regiment wore dun green.
Military khaki (the term derives from the Urdu and Persian words for ‘dust’) arose in the mid-19th century, as soldiers in the British Indian Army began dyeing their white uniforms with tea and curry. Not only did khaki end the hopeless struggle to keep one’s uniform spanking white, it also reduced soldiers’ visibility from a distance.
Despite this, brighter military garb tended to dominate until the early 20th century. Why were militaries so reluctant to adopt darker uniforms? The answer lay in the evolving nature of warfare: in addition to practical considerations like durability and visibility, uniforms performed a psychological function of making soldiers feel battle-ready. Orderly lines of brightly clad soldiers marching in formation – a key feature of musket-driven warfare – gave way to guerrilla warfare. To fight and win in this new era, stealth was a core advantage.

3) The First World War

A new threat darkened the horizon in the run-up to the First World War: enemy aerial reconnaissance. (Aerial attack became possible somewhat later.) As such, militaries first used camouflage patterning and tactics to hide, not people, but locations and equipment.
The French organised the first units of camoufleurs – specialists in camouflage – in around 1914. Initial tactics were confined to painting vehicles and weaponry in disruptive patterns to blend into the surrounding landscape. Camoufleurs were both practitioners and teachers of their peculiar art. They taught other military units how to disguise their equipment with paint, to toss netting interwoven with fake leaves over a shed stocked with materiél (military equipment) and to erase any telltale truck tracks and cannon blast marks.

_{French soldiers at a wooden building with military camouflage, Western Front, Soissons, Aisne, France, 1917. Colour photo (Autochrome Lumière) by Fernand Cuville (1887–1927). (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)}
The term ‘camouflage’ itself dates to a practical joke from 16th-century France. The prankster would fashion a camouflet – a hollow paper cone, lit to smoulder at one end – and stick it under an unfortunate sleeper’s nose. The sleeper would jolt rudely awake at the first lungful of smoke.
Camouflet later referred to a lethal powder charge that could entrap a tunnelling enemy troop underground – a more deadly trick. To complete this layered etymology, the French verb camoufler means, appropriately, ‘to make oneself up for the stage’.

4) Camouflage goes Baroque

Camouflage techniques grew increasingly detailed as the First World War progressed, and fascination with camouflage – in popular as well as military circles – grew. Factories cranked out pâpier-maché heads by the thousands; mounted on sticks – soldiers might poke these decoys above the trench line, tempting the enemy out of his safe foxhole to fire. False trees were equally popular: regiments would sneak onto the battlefield unseen at night, fell an actual tree, then replace it with a hollowed-out replica with a soldier hidden inside.
Camouflage spread to the seas, too. In 1917, British lieutenant Norman Wilkinson introduced the concept of ‘dazzle’-painting warships to curb losses: mostly black-and-white-zigzagged ‘dazzle’ paint was supposed to throw off the enemy’s calculations of a ship’s size, speed and distance, making an accurate hit more difficult. German U-boats sank 23 British ships weekly that year, 55 in one week of April 1917 alone. ‘Dazzle-mania’ subsequently spread among Allied navies, although its actual effectiveness was never proven.

_{A Royal Navy cruiser painted in dazzle camouflage in the Dardanelles, 1915. Original publication: The Illustrated War News, 26 May 1915. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

5) The Second World War

As mentioned above, evidence that camouflage actually worked was patchy. However, as the world marched towards the Second World War, the fresh threat of aerial attack prompted militaries on both sides to use camouflage more widely. With the exception of dazzle, all First World War-era camouflage tactics were revived and expanded. Military literature of the period is awash with camouflage training manuals aimed at every soldier, from callow privates to top brass.
Two Allied wins during the Second World War owed their success largely to camouflage: El Alamein in 1942, and D-Day in 1944. During the second battle of El Alamein, the Allies blocked the Germans from seizing the Suez Canal with a mind-bogglingly detailed camouflage-plan involving inflatable tanks, fake artillery blasts and – extraordinarily – hiding the entire Suez Canal from aerial view. This was the masterwork of British camoufleur and stage magician Jasper Maskelyne.

_{Home Guards smear on green paint and attach camouflage to each other during a camouflage training course at Fieldcraft School in South-Eastern Command, January 1942. (Photo by Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images)}
Prior to D-Day, the Allies staged a false build-up of troops in Scotland and Kent, while hiding their true efforts to amass troops to storm Normandy. The ruse continued once they landed in France with the ‘Ghost Army’ – a sham-army standing in for the actual US battalion rushing the Normandy beaches.

6) Post-Second World War

The Second World War saw the rise of mechanical printed patterns onto fabric, bringing the distinctive variations of pattern into sharper focus. Each nation had not one, but several unique camouflage patterns, with different versions matched to the battle landscape (snow, desert, jungle, forest). Who wore which camouflage pattern revealed colonial relationships, shifting alliances and other practical considerations (like how disastrously similar your army’s camouflage was to your latest enemy’s).
Camouflage infiltrated popular culture during both world wars – from ladies’ ‘slimming’ dress wear to the clever war paint of makeup. Consider these lyrics from the 1917 song ‘Camouflage Nut Song No. 2’ by L Wolfe Gilbert and Anatol Friedland:
Camouflage, Camouflage, that's the latest dodge,
Camouflage, Camouflage, it's not a cheese or lodge,
You buy a Ford that's second-hand,
You paint it red, it looks so grand.
And near a "Stutz" you let it stand –
that's Camouflage.

7) Modern camouflage

Camouflage today permeates civilian culture: it features in designs for women’s clothing from the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier, Prabal Gurung and Patrik Ervell (among many others), and musicians wearing camouflage can signal their commitment to some form of political activism – from black power (Public Enemy) to African rights (U2).
Visual artists have taken to camouflage with zeal, too. Andy Warhol’s Camouflage Self-Portrait (1986) hit the art scene at the height of the Cold War, a time of near-constant warfare that, confusingly, rarely officially declared itself as such.

_{A woman walks past the painting 'Camouflage Self-Portrait' by US artist Andy Warhol during a preview of Sotheby's autumn sales of contemporary art in New York, 2 November 2007. (Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)}
Like all technology, camouflage evolves. High-tech camouflage can now conceal body heat from enemy sensors or harness fibre-optics to match a fabric dynamically to its surroundings. Technologists are progressing towards a camouflage that bends light waves to render objects – or even people – invisible, just like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

Jude Stewart is the author of two books, Patternalia: An Unconventional History of Polka Dots, Stripes, Plaid, Camouflage, & Other Graphic Patterns (Bloomsbury USA, 2015) and ROY G. BIV: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color (Bloomsbury USA, 2013).
Jude writes about design and culture for Slate, Fast Company, and The Believer, among others, and blogs about design for Print. You can follow her on Twitter @joodstew.

Happy 240th Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
of United States Marine.

Our flag's unfurled to every breeze
From dawn to setting sun;
We have fought in ev'ry clime and place
Where we could take a gun;
In the snow of far-off Northern lands
And in sunny tropic scenes;
You will find us always on the job--
The United States Marines. Here's health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve
In many a strife we've fought for life
And never lost our nerve;
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven's scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.

Did Roman men dodge their military service?

History Extra

Praetorian officers, 2nd century AD. (Photo By DEA / G DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

Although by no means common in the early Empire, some men attempted to escape service by cutting off their thumbs so they couldn’t wield a sword.

Draft-dodging, however, was dealt with severely. Emperor Augustus once punished an aristocrat who removed the thumbs of his two sons, by selling him into slavery and auctioning off his property.

In AD 368 – when barbarian tribes were migrating in ever-larger numbers into the Empire – conscription avoidance was so endemic, stiffer penalties were imposed, including public burnings.

By the end of the fourth century, Emperor Theodosius passed a law that forced the thumb-less to serve and made any parent or landowner presenting a mutilated individual find a second to make good the loss.

Eventually, a lack of new recruits, combined with losses in battle, meant Rome became reliant on barbarian migrants to fill staff shortages.

Answered by one of our Q&A experts, Miles Russell. For more fascinating question by Miles, and the rest of our panel, pick up a copy of History Revealed! Available in print and for digital devices. 

U.S. National POW/MIA Recognition Day

There are 1,741 American personnel listed by the Defense Department's POW/MIA Office as missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, as of April 2009. The number of United States personnel accounted for since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 is 841. About 90 percent of the 1,741 people still missing were lost in Vietnam or areas of Laos and Cambodia under Vietnam's wartime control, according to the National League of Families website (cited in the United States Army website).
The United States Congress passed a resolution authorizing National POW/MIA Recognition Day to be observed on July 18, 1979. It was observed on the same date in 1980 and was held on July 17 in 1981 and 1982. It was then observed on April 9 in 1983 and July 20 in 1984. The event was observed on July 19 in 1985, and then from 1986 onwards the date moved to the third Friday of September. The United States president each year proclaims National POW/MIA Recognition Day. Many states in the USA also proclaim POW/MIA Recognition Day together with the national effort.

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Happy 240th Birthday to the U.S. Army!

"Two hundred forty years ago, our nation's leaders established the Continental Army. Today, the Army is the strategic landpower of the joint force; called upon to prevent, shape, and win against our adversaries.

"This year, we celebrate 240 years of selfless service to the nation. Selfless service is at the core of what it means to be a Soldier - putting the welfare of others ahead of oneself. The willingness of our Soldiers - to place themselves in harm's way and to protect our nation's freedoms - is what makes us the premier all-volunteer force. The Army has served proudly, faithfully, and selflessly for 240 years, and we remain steadfast in our commitment."

Much more at Army.mil.

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