For the past 12 years, I have tried to share moments beyond the dramatized images of battlefield action, emotional homecomings and veterans in crisis. I've photographed the often-overlooked everyday moments that make up this military life. The constant moves and goodbyes. Objects that make up this life that don't exist in civilian domestic spaces. The days after a deployment, when a service member "re-integrates" back into the family and into civilian society. John didn't start going to therapy until after he had turned in his retirement papers. He was concerned that it might jeopardize his career. I am on my computer when John leaves a notebook on my desk. He doesn't say anything. It is the journaling he has been doing with his therapist " her new strategy to get him to open up. He starts the journal with how many US soldiers and Afghan security forces were killed in each operation and what awards were given: Silver Stars, Bronze Stars with valor, Purple Hearts. I know the casualties are what weighs most heavily on him, but he is proud of the awards given to his soldiers. Then he goes into detail about a traumatic event he experienced in Afghanistan. As I read his vivid recollections of violence " which included body parts, trails of blood and the smell of burnt flesh " tears ran down my face. I am only beginning to understand what he has been through. John's career spanned the entirety of the 20-year "war on terror."