In the fall of 2000, I was a low-income, high school senior, itching to get out of my small town. Strong-willed, independent and a know-it-all, I impulsively signed a six-year contract with the National Guard to pay for college. My escape route was paved.

At first, I was excited and proud to wear the uniform. But as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq unfolded, I became anxious, depressed, and furious with myself for signing that contract. I became increasingly conflicted about my role in war. Eventually, I found out there was a name for what I'd become. I was a conscientious objector. 

In this inaugural episode of Breaking Cadence: Insights from a Modern-Day Conscientious Objector, we time travel. We go back to the fall of 2000 and I ask my mom and my two sisters what they thought when I announced I was joining the Montana Army National Guard. Later, I ask them what they thought when I admitted I was seeking a discharge on the grounds I was a conscientious objector. 

Many of us have moments like this. Big decisions that shape our lives in unexpected ways. Regrets that haunt us, that inform what kind of adults we turn out to be, that perhaps never sit well because they're just too fraught. 

Woven between these interviews are themes of youth, naïveté, choice, morality, and judgement.

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