(car cranks) - Sheep dogs and wolves.

Sheep dogs and wolves, you know what I mean?

Wolves are obviously the bad guys.

Sheep are the general population, and then the sheep dogs are the people that take care of them.

So every Marine, every soldier, every seaman, every airman, they all sign the dotted line saying that they want to be the sheep dog and take care of people.

So having the ability taken away from you to protect someone as you would like to is obviously a, it's a battle.

(solemn music) (solemn music continues) (solemn music continues) - I initially moved to the desert with my partner, Ana, to be part of this great art community that's up here, but it's a really bifurcated community.

We have a big art community here in Twentynine Palms, but we also have the biggest Marine base in the United States.

When I started interacting with the military personnel out here, I realized that a lot of them were still dealing with trauma from injuries or things that had happened to them overseas.

And I thought, "I think we could work together."

- The reason I wanted to be a Marine in the first place, like my wife said, we both grew up military brats.

My dad did 26 years.

My mom did 10.

Her dad did.

- 21.

- 21.

My dad's dad was a corpsman at Normandy.

So it's kind of like the family business.

- Joined the Marine Corps right out of high school when I was 18 years old.

Funny story about that.

People ask me like, "Why did you join the Marine Corps?"

And it's like, "Well, the short, funny story is I was a rebellious teenager and my mother told me not to."

- Being a part of the military was being a part of the country.

- My parents divorced when I was three years old.

At a very, very, very early age, I knew I was different, that I was more drawn towards the female aspect of life and not the male aspect.

Joining the military served two purposes.

One, it got me away from everybody and everything, and two, it helped me show my masculinity to my family.

(soft music) - I had signed up to be a crew chief in the Marine Corps, which is what my dad did when he was in the Air Force, and that's taking care of the in-flight mechanics and loading of an aircraft.

But when I was going through Marine combat training after bootcamp, which every Marine goes through, regardless of what job you pick, I found out that I have altered depth perception.

So you can't even be a crew chief with altered depth perception.

So I had to pick a new job and I made my list.

I gave it to them.

They looked at it and they said, "Okay, well, we have a new field in communications.

That's going to be you."

My first deployment, the timeline was, it was an anomaly.

So I finished communication school in mid-January.

A month later, I was in Camp Coyote Kuwait preparing for what would be the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

So my next deployment was to Fallujah in 2004.

And I was back in Iraq in March, even though I hadn't been in the Marine Corps all that long.

This was my second combat deployment.

We had done a convoy earlier, and we came back from the convoy back in the base, which you would think was the safest place to be.

However, during Fallujah in 2004, there really wasn't such a place.

Came back from the convoy, and convoys, even if nothing occurred combat-wise in the convoy, it's insanely stressful because you're expecting it.

Every foot along the drive, you're expecting something to happen.

You're on alert for it and it may be hours and you come back, and if nothing happened, you've got all this pent up adrenaline you don't know what to do with.

So for me, I went out and had a cigarette, had a couple cigarettes.

While I was having a cigarette, there was a mortar attack on the base.

You don't really know where they're coming from or where they're going to land.

You just try and find cover.

Before I knew what was happening, there was an explosion, a flash of gray and red, and I remember being on the ground.

I got up to run away, and as soon as I stood up and I took a step forward, I realized that something had happened because it wasn't pain in that moment, but my body wasn't listening to what my brain was telling it.

And then I could hear sounds start coming back and people were yelling at me to get down.

And no problem.

I just fell right back down because of what later became the pain, and that's when I knew I'd been hit.

- My job is a supply clerk.

My MOS, my military occupational specialty, is a supply administration clerk.

I spent a couple of years initially in the Marine Corps on active duty.

When I got out of the Marine Corps when I was pregnant with my son and was in the civilian community.

Then at some point when I decided I wanted to come back into the Marine Corps, I joined as a reservist, because that was the opportunity that was available to me at the time.

I deployed with them for Desert Storm.

I went, you know, to Saudi Arabia during a war.

My son stayed home with his dad at the time.

That's probably the first time I really thought about what it meant to be a Marine and what it meant to really serve my country.

I did remember I wrote my son a letter because he was young, he was very young at the time, five years old, trying to explain to him where I was going and why I was going without frightening him.

I think I wrote one letter back home to him that was specific, like if I didn't come home.

And I didn't read, I wrote it to him but sent it to somebody else like, "If something happens to me, this is for Forrest."

I think that's probably really the only time I thought about what if, because you just don't want to think about the what ifs.

You want to get through the day.

You want to get through what's going on right now today so that you're here tomorrow.

February of 2006, I was diagnosed with breast cancer while I was on active duty.

That did have an impact on, I think, how I viewed myself as a Marine and how others viewed me as a Marine.

(soft music) - I was very fortunate that my three deployments that I went on none of them were combat related.

I was very fortunate that I never had to take a life.

I was very fortunate that no one was trying to take my life.

I've had a bunch of different injuries in my military career.

Thankfully, none of them were combat related, or, you know, close to fatal.

The worst injury I had happened not military related at all.

(motorcycle buzzes) My wife's up here in Twentynine, says, "Go enjoy, you know, overnight trip, a day or two with your boys.

You've earned it.

You need it."

So we go down to San Diego.

One of us suggested a drag race.

I don't know who it was.

Obviously, we both agreed.

We take off and there's a drainage run for like the rain.

We hit that.

I'm slightly in front of him, so he says he sees my bike take air and he feels his take air.

When we come back down, we're both squirrely, and we didn't want to run into each other because that's kind of like another bond you build in the Marine Corps, you don't want to hurt your guys.

So he goes wide left to not hit me and I go wide right to not hit him.

There were no cars in the parking spots he went through, but there was a car in the parking spot I went through.

My bike went through the trunk of the first car, totaling it, hit the next car, and then ping ponged down the road and it started to slide.

So I take off.

The bike by the grace of God slides under me and I land head first 158 feet down the road.

(soft music) - I was in counter terrorism for almost 23 years.

In that job, we did a lot of traveling and we saw a lot of.

And.

Sadly, you end up seeing the worst of humanity and stuff, you know, to this day I wish I could unsee.

I was shot seven times.

One of the times the bullet barely bounced off the top of my helmet, and then I took three to the back and it shattered my ceramic plate that was in my vest.

And then I took two to the chest and then I took the one in the side.

And your vest, Velcro's right there, so it's open and that's where the round went.

We were convoying through town when we were met with an ambush of heavy gunfire.

All I remembered was at that moment, I was trying to use the vehicle as cover and I was shooting up at a building.

There was guys on a rooftop that were shooting at us, but they were on both sides of the road.

So as I'm, I have a line of sight up onto the roof, trying to take these guys out, somebody from this direction, is had to be where it came from.

Somebody found an empty spot into a building that they got into to try to take cover, but before I could get in there is when I was hit.

I think at first when I realized that I was in a little bit of a denial, then I think I kind of went into a little bit of a stage of shock.

It's like nothing was stopping.

It wasn't over.

And I knew that these guys were in the fight of their life, and I'm not going to let them be in the fight of their life without me.

I'm going to be out there with them.

I'm going to do my part, but at the same time, I've got this wound.

But I had grabbed some sand and I threw it in my wound to try to keep it from bleeding too much, packed it with some dirt.

I did the best I could to try to stitch it up myself just to keep it from bleeding and to stay in the fight.

(soft music) - No two people have the same story.

Even if their scar is from the exact same injury, the emotional impact on each of them is different.

So I have each person pick the color ink they want to use.

I roll ink on them and I pull a print, and it's kind of a vulnerable and emotional experience for a lot of people.

Everybody reacts differently.

Welcome to the studio.

The first thing, what color?

- Well, I guess purple.

- Okay.

You've got a new scar, so what do you think?

Is this like a completely different scar with a different meaning than your?

- Well, it's just, for me, I guess the meaning is kind of the end of me carrying that day around.

- Delissa's situation is unique because she had cosmetic surgery.

Her scar was a little jagged and she had it cleaned up and now it's a nice straight line.

Looking from the outside, it seems sort of interesting, because it's still a scar.

It's still related to the other scar, but it's got a whole different meaning for you now.

- Yeah, I think it's just kind of closed that chapter from that day.

You know, obviously, not all scars are visible, you know?

A lot of them are still in here and I'll carry those around probably forever.

I just got to the point where I felt like I want to enjoy life the best that I can.

I want to be as mentally sound as possible and anything I can do to help myself project that in a forward direction, I'll do.

And so having that removed was one of them.

(soft music) - [Ted] Is it cold?

- It's okay.

(soft music) When I see the scar, I think about resilience, and that's something that a lot of people try to put into my mind, put it into my head is that I'm very resilient.

Sometimes I do struggle with it in my own mind of, am I really?

You know, I mean, it's like I still take 147 pills a week.

I still have nightmares.

Am I really that resilient?

But I know that at that moment and in that very minute of time, I know I had decisions to make and I know I could have made a different decision, but I think the resilience part of me just said, "Keep fighting.

It's what you do."

- I am nervous.

I mean, it's not every day somebody is going to lather you up and paint and then make an imprint of your body.

And, you know, I'm a little nervous about that.

Even though I didn't feel like I needed this healing process, I feel like this is added to that.

I think this is just another step in that moving forward.

- Still a little bit nervous just about the scar, because it's having it transformed into a piece of art, it's very different.

I think it's going to be very powerful.

It took a couple of years for me to, I guess, put the proper weight behind physical scars and the emotional scars and that they're two very distinct separate things.

Took a lot of years, and unlike my physical scars, which aren't that easy to see from a distance now, while they were healing, the emotional scars, they were digging some pretty deep valleys in me.

- I have several scars since my breast cancer journey.

I have been able to probably add four scars.

I had chemotherapy, they took the tumor out, and then they did radiation in case there were any rogue cells.

Then I had reconstructive surgery.

There are often times where I've thought about what could have caused my cancer, is there something I did or didn't do in my own health?

Think about the different experiences, the different places that I've been throughout the Marine Corps, especially as there's a lot of news and information out there that the Veterans Administration is putting out about different experiences or different locations where service members have served that might be cancer causing areas.

In the early 80s, 1983, specifically, I was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and during, I think it was 1991, '90, '91, I was in Saudi Arabia in support of Desert Storm.

I don't know that those environments caused my cancer.

I don't know that.

I don't know they didn't either.

- I became an alcoholic.

You can put whatever adjective you want in front of it, raging, hopeless, they all apply.

It became, I don't want to fall asleep because I know what I'm going to go through if I fall asleep.

So if I drink enough of this, I won't have to think about it as much while I'm awake, and maybe just maybe I can pass out, and I can not have to think about it in my sleep when I'm defenseless.

But where I'm at in my life now that the people that are in my life, it's, it's worth it.

(soft music) (soft music continues) - Here's your scar, so what do you see?

What do you think?

- Yeah.

Okay, so foot scar.

It changed so much, huh?

- Yeah.

- All these goals, toss those in the can, you know what I mean?

From a 12-inch scar.

(soft music) - So you're coming to terms with the fact that this is making you leave the service?

- Nah, I'm not ready to open that chest yet.

I'll open that box when I'm ready.

(soft music) - The reason I do this goes back to my childhood.

I was a sick kid.

I did artwork about the fact that I was sick, and it made me feel better about myself.

It made it easier for other people to understand what was going on with me.

And then I got healthy, and I thought, maybe I can use this way of dealing with illness to help other people.

I don't do this for money.

I don't do this to get them in galleries.

It's really just a matter of helping people with art, helping them with their emotions, and maybe giving them something beautiful.

They can look on the wall and think, "That was a section of my life that happened, then now I'm onto something else."

(soft music) - I'm not healed.

I'm not sure I ever will be.

I'm not sure what even that would look like.

- Not every human experience is beautiful, but it is important.

It is important to share it.

- I know that what's going to be on there will be able to speak to somebody, and hopefully, in some way positively affect them, or let them know it's not just me who's affected by it and it's powerful.

When people see my finished painting, I hope they're able to get an immediate acknowledgement that they're not alone.

- I used to facilitate these workshops for the American Cancer Society for our fundraiser groups, and one of the icebreakers was name an animal, your spirit animal that you identify yourself with and why.

And I always used to pick the desert tortoise because they have an outer shell, but they're very, still very fragile.

They have this outer core that protects them, but inside, the wrong move could be very detrimental to them.

And I feel like that's me in some sense that I put this big wall up or I guard myself.

I don't always let everybody in, but I still have these vulnerabilities.

(soft music) - I don't know if I'll ever look at myself differently.

I think that's going to take a whole lot more.

- I hope Delissa cries the first time she sees the painting of her scar because she does not cry a lot.

She holds a lot in.

And in that crying, I hope she feels relief that it's all beautiful.

What she's doing is beautiful, what she's gone through is beautiful, because it's made her who she is today, and she's a beautiful person.

- The potential is extreme here as far as like mentally accepting what you look like, accepting your scars.

This is a huge step for, you know, feeling comfortable in your skin again, especially after you've had something that injured you and changed your physical appearance drastically.

But it's definitely a true honor to be here with people that, you know, are going through the same thing and to be a part of helping each other.

- When I give Delissa and Adam and Diane and Danny their prints, I hope they look at them and they realize that their sacrifice was valued by me and everybody else in the country.

I hope they look at them and they think that was something I've been through and look at my strength that I've made it through and I've gotten past it.

I'd just like them to have something beautiful that they can look at and think how strong they are and that their stories matter, matters to everybody.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - That is great.

- That's beautiful.

I love that.

Let me give you a hug.

It's a little emotional.

Much more than I thought it would be.

(upbeat music) I love the fact that he did incorporate the horses in the painting, because what I do now is give a home to horses who have gone through abusive situations, neglect, almost being slaughtered.

So, I'm now a nonprofit horse rescue sanctuary.

- It was really cool the way you captured the turning of a page.

That's the end of my Marine Corps career.

That's the final page of my Marine Corps chapter.

It's kind of like the end page.

- Oh, the one's like a quilt.

It's really cool.

Quilting is a big part of what I do now.

My quilting over the last several years has kind of evolved into doing quilts, quilts of valor, and those quilts get presented and given to veterans as a way of thanking them for their service and welcoming them home, or, you know, whatever, just wrapping them in warmth and love.

- We all went to the beach.

We all end up getting sunburned, and none of us really planned on it, but yet, here we all are.

(upbeat music)