Hey there, listener! Thank you for checking out our older seasons! We're adding this note on the top of the show notes to keep you up-to-date with the show. Connect with Jen Amos and get bonus content when you subscribe to our private podcast show, Inside the Fort by US VetWealth, at http://insidethefort.com/

Last Updated: September 2, 2024

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141: "Look for community and resources. The worst thing that you can do is isolate yourself when there's something you're struggling with." Food insecurity advocacy with Heather Campbell

From a civilian standpoint, one may assume that military families are "taken care of." But PCS moves, spouse unemployment (or under employment), growing families, and unexpected expenses are some of the main factors that can cause food insecurities for military families. Thanks to her background as a registered dietitian, Heather Campbell knew how to feed her family on a tight budget. She realized that other families were also experiencing financial difficulties. She shared her knowledge, which led her to volunteer more of her time, to now food insecurity advocacy. Heather discusses the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, unspoken burdens of military families, the importance of building community, and much more.

Connect with Heather Campbell

• https://www.instagram.com/glorynutrition/
• https://facebook.com/glorynutrition
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathersutphencampbell
• https://bossladybio.com/heathercampbell/ 

Resources

• National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4350
• National Military Spouse Network https://www.nationalmilitaryspousenetwork.org/ 

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RETURNING FALL 2023

The award-winning podcast, Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth, is returning for Season 7 in Fall 2023 to share inspiring stories of service and self-sufficiency from the military community! This show is a must-listen for military servicemembers and families interested in pursuing financial autonomy while serving our nation.

The show is very excited to announce its new partnership with The Rosie Network, which will include featuring the stories of Service2CEO Cohort Members. Read more about this exciting partnership at https://issuu.com/therosienetwork/docs/me_mag_2023/16

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In August 2022, Jen Amos' work on the podcast was recognized by Disney Institute and she was hand-selected as the only non-Disney employee to moderate the first Military Spouse Employment panel for the Veterans Institute Summit. March 2022, Jenny Lynne has voted the 2022 Naval Station Norfolk Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year. November 2020, Jen Amos was awarded “Media Professional of the Year” at The Rosie Network Entrepreneur Awards! The show continued to collect award nominations in the following years. In September 2021, the show made the Final Slate in the 16th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards for the Government & Organizations category. In November 2021, the show was an Award Finalist for the 5th Annual National Veteran & Military Spouse Entrepreneur Awards. December 2021, the show was a Golden Crane Podcast Awards Nominee. September 2022, the show was a Finalist for the 13th Annual Plutus Awards presented by Capital Group for “Best Military Personal Finance Content.”

Holding Down the Fort has also been featured in multiple media outlets including Military Entrepreneur (M.E.) Magazine, MOAA’s Never Stop Learning Podcast, The Leadership Void Podcast, Lessons Learned for Vets Podcast, Sisters in Service Podcast, Get 2 Vet, Blue Star Families of Dayton & Southwestern Ohio, Legacy Magazine, U.S. Veterans Magazine, The American MilSpouse, VeteranCrowd Network, It's a Military Life, VirtForce, Military Veteran Dad Podcast, and much more.

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Jen Amos 0:00

All right. Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode here at the award winning podcast show holding down the fort. I'm your creator and co host Jenn emos. And as always, I have my co host with me who is really busy with the boys for this season. I'm sure she'll tell us a little bit here. Gentlemen Stroup. Gentlemen. Welcome back to hold on the fort.

Unknown Speaker 0:15

Hey, glad to be here today.

Jen Amos 0:18

Yes, yes. I'm glad you're here. I'm always glad you're here. Actually.

Speaker 1 0:22

It feels like we haven't done this in for ever. It's true. This feels like the start of a brand new season, even though we've released an episode every week since like my first Yeah,

Jen Amos 0:31

yeah, no, it's actually pretty well. So for our listeners, we have been doing a lot of pre interviews to get to know our guests before we do an official recording like this. And then we scheduled them probably like weeks later. So there was a good time where we did interviewing, and then we did pre interviews. And now we're back into the interviewing phase. And so even though you can't tell, we know that it feels like it's been a while since we've actually, you know, brought someone on the show. So you're right, genuinely, it does feel a little like I was like, trying to kind of recall, like, how do I do interviews again? Like even right before this call, I was like, oh, yeah, it's been a while. But anyway, all that being said, we are really excited because we are talking about a topic on our show here at holding on the fourth that we never have talked about, which is food insecurity. And today, we are very fortunate to have our special guest today, Heather Kimball, who is a freelance dietitian, also registered dietitian, and a military advocate who has been openly talking about food insecurity for military families in the last handful of years. And so without further ado, Heather, welcome to hold down the fort.

Unknown Speaker 1:33

Thank you. I'm so glad to be here today. I'm excited for our conversation, this is going to be fun.

Jen Amos 1:38

Yeah, definitely. Especially because this is a new conversation that we're having on the show. Hi there. I thought I'd start by asking you the question. For people who don't know what food insecurity is, can you start by defining what food insecurity is?

Speaker 2 1:50

Yes, so food insecurity is an economic term. And it's kind of new. But it essentially means that a family or a person doesn't have reliable means to get the food that they need to live a healthy and active lifestyle. So oftentimes, when we think about people not having enough food, we think of hunger, right? We think of starving kids in Africa and other countries, these commercials that we see. And hunger is a physiological condition. So that is the result of not having enough food, but food insecurities and economic status, it's just not being sure that the food that you have is going to last till the next payday, or that the pay day is going to be able to get you enough of what you need.

Jen Amos 2:28

Speaker 2 3:41

Jen Amos 8:48

Yeah. And you know, in addition to that, I know we were talking about this, in our pre interview that maybe even part of why most families don't know about this is they don't want to talk about it, especially with our servicemembers and kind of lower lower ranks. And interestingly enough, I did find a stat from the National Military Family Association that had stated that 14% of families that rank between E one and E six, tell us that they visited a food bank in the last 12 months. So it's just really interesting that I mean, first there's the stoicism, and therefore maybe there's a general sense of shame to even talk about it. So it's like we're all silently struggling with this food insecurity. And so I think it's amazing and validating to have the stats to have this information and to know that you and your family are not alone in this.

Speaker 2 9:33

Absolutely. And that's that is one of the hard things especially for us as a young officer family, there was an expectation that above and beyond we were well taken care of and we should be able to a lot of times when you go to events as an officer family, you buy your own tickets to something and you're expected to buy a second set of tickets to sponsor maybe an enlisted member will here we were with a mortgage worth of student debt we were barely getting by, and we were expected to pay not only the top I'm taller than anything could be could cost, right? So a lot of times they tear pricing. So we're expected to pay the top dollar, but then to buy a second set, and so those conversations aren't happening, we didn't feel like we had anywhere that we could turn and say, Hey, we're not driving new cars. And we're not going on expensive vacations, but we're still really struggling because there was this and there still is this old school of thought of it must be financial mismanagement, it must be something that you're doing, we've provided you must have the mistake, you must be the problem. Well, for us specifically, the problem was student loans. Once those were finally paid off, life got a lot easier. But that was a decision of hours. That's something that not every military family had. And we expected me to be working with my loans and not, you know, at home in the dark Arctic. So I know that if those conversations were difficult for me to have, they're not happening at lower levels, especially when it comes to going to your first sergeant going to your commanders going to some of those command tied individuals. There's a lot of fear of retribution, fear of investigation for finances, and that can affect your security clearance, it can affect your job. So people are just suffering in silence.

Yeah. Real Talk genuine just wanted to check in with you see if you had any thoughts?

Oh, man, I mean, listening to Heather share, those like four main reasons for food insecurity reminds me so much of like those, I think there's like a top five list of like, top five stressors, you know, the first one being like death of a family member, the second one being a move, and I just listened to her share, you know, pcsa, lack of Spouse Employment, adding a family member unexpected expense thinking at some point or another in military life, we've experienced all of those in combination, or any number of them as a combination of one to four, you know, and how that impacted the decisions we made as a family, you know, much like Heather, we were a very young officer family when I stopped teaching, and we added another family member. And I remember, I don't know that I ever would have used the terms food insecurity. But when I think back and go, Yeah, but I was trying to budget for like $100 a week and find coupons and do the thing and like, making a game out of like stacking coupons and going to five grocery stores. And you know, and I lived in an area where that was possible, not an interior Alaska I lived where I could go to five different stores and do the thing. Like, it's phenomenal to me that, you know, more people don't talk about it. Because I'm sure I wasn't the only one playing that game. And also, I always couched it as a game, like I can see, you know, on Facebook, memories or whatever, you know, every now and again, a thing will pop up. It's like, I got all this for $55.60 or whatever. And so it was a game. But it was really like a game because it had to be because we were a single income family. And at that point, you know, Matthew was TDY, or TD or one of those temporary assigned duties. So we were essentially supporting two households, you know, it wasn't a PCS, but we were supporting to separate living costs. And that was really hard. And added to that.

It is you know, I think one thing in in full clarity is post pandemic, especially with a current economic situation. It's not just military that are pinching pennies, right? We're, I live 40 minutes from town, so I'm not going to town socially, right, I went last week for an appointment, a checkup. And I told my kids okay, guys, I've got to figure out the meal plan while we're in town because we're getting groceries because I drove 40 minutes, you know, it's between an eighth of a tank and a quarter of a tank of gas to drive 40 minutes and 40 minutes back, like you better believe we're going to the grocery store. While we're here. Sorry, y'all I know you got to sit through mom's appointment, I know you have to go to Costco and to the grocery store with me. But that's what we're doing. And so all families are feeling that pinch at the gas tank at the gas pump. We're feeling that pinch with groceries, we're seeing supply shortages. So to know that post pandemic numbers nationwide are one in seven families. So those are at an all time high. But to know that military is still even above and beyond that with one in five. It's like okay, now we can kind of have a conversation that everybody understands we all get it but to know that military families are still sort of up another level is is difficult to have those conversations of No, we thought we were well taken care of too. We don't understand why we're struggling either.

Yeah, I think in an odd way, it feels reassuring that this is a like a universal issue. And that, you know, we're not alone. Although in my opinion, I feel like military families shouldn't be taking care of anyone else. That's just me. You know, Heather, I'm learning a lot from This conversation and even just my own research, like offline to just recognize how real food insecurity is. And I didn't know so much and didn't even take the time to study until we have this conversation today. So I'm just really happy that you're here today to, you know, bring more awareness, not just to me, but to our community. And even on the show. Now, with everything that we know now, in regards to what we have mentioned, like the stats and everything. I think the next natural question is what is being done right now. And I know that right now we have something called the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. So tell us a little bit about that, Heather, and what that means for military families today.

So the National Defense Authorization Act, or the NDAA, is what the government is what Congress uses every year to determine spending, which includes military spending, and it renews every year, right. So when we hear about like, oh, people might get furloughed, or the military might not be funded, it's because they're still fighting over the things in this bill, right, and what they're going to include. So fiscal year turns over October 1, we usually have an approved plan by like January, so we kind of are just winging it for a couple months, typically, it's turned into a very political issue, which is frustrating, because you know that that means that things that are important are being left off because of political differences. Yeah, currently, the newest one, the one that we are operating on now in fiscal year 2022, does include a little bit of a pay raise. So every year, the military, and social security, all government entities that are getting pay, get a little bit of a raise, right. So it's I think this year was 2.6, or 2.7%, the military on January 1, got a little bit of a raise, which is awesome. Inflation in 2021 was 14.1. So far, in 2022, at the end of second quarter, we're up another six to 7%. So great, we got to 2.6% Raise inflation is up 20%. So it's definitely not keeping up with that. The NDAA also determines our bh. So our housing allowance, it determines our pay. And one thing they just included in fiscal year 2022 is called a basic needs allowance. And it's designed to sort of stand in that gap of hey, if you qualify for WIC, if you qualify for food stamps, if you qualify for some of these low income support services, we're going to give you supplemental money, the difficult part is there's no guidance to implement it. And the eligibility currently still includes your housing allowance. So where you might not qualify, or you might qualify somewhere like Alabama with a lower cost of living, so your housing allowance is lower, you move to say, Washington, DC. And now you don't qualify because you're getting more of a housing allowance. But housing allowance, if you think of you know, Dave Ramsey's a popular financial expert, and he talks about like an envelope method, you know, everything's in a different envelope. So if you think about the housing allowance being in the housing envelope that's not in the food, in food envelope, or the eating out envelope or that leisure envelope that's in the housing envelope. So my housing envelope changed, but that's not actually available for the rest of my household. And so that's one of the difficulties that we see currently in the NDAA. And we're still waiting on guidance for that for the Department of Defense is how to sort of step in financially and have this allowance while we wait for better pay while we wait for higher housing allowance while we wait for some of these other things. That that's sort of where we are in the NDAA right now.

Yeah. And I was I was actually reading a little bit about this on the National Military Family Association. And it's really just what you said, like getting into the specifics like what areas will count as a high cost, but how long will it take from application to decision? How much is bh? So it just seems like yes, it's great that we kind of made a dent. But now how does that get implemented? So I'm really curious to hear how that plays out. And of course, whether if you happen to come across any updates on that, like articles, like feel free to send that to us, so we could put that in the show notes of this episode. Absolutely genuine. Just wanna check in with you see if you had any thoughts.

I mean, I was thinking about that inflation thing and everything being based on BH, you know, we were grateful to move from an area with extraordinarily high cost of living to a much lower cost of living. But as I continue to, like, watch the spouse pages from different groups, like BH isn't even making a dent these days and actual housing much less like being able to be used in a different envelope, as Heather put it, like it in many places isn't even covering the rent, much less the other actual housing needs like water and electricity that it's theoretically that it's technically supposed to cover like it's supposed to actually cover your basic housing needs not cable, not your telephone, but like to run a household it's supposed to cover those things. And it's in many places, not even touching the actual cost of living in a house like just renting or owning, you know, so to think that we have this like pot of money out there to be out access because they know it's a need and still have those stipulations like that is really hard. I mean, we've lived gosh, we moved from like, one super high cost of living area to another. And it was fascinating is when we were stationed in Manhattan, you know, the first thing everybody said was, oh, my gosh, your pH is great. Well, yeah, that BH covered 900 square feet of a walk of apartment in a shitty area town, like if you were going to actually live next to your duty station. So we lived an hour outside the like, you know, and then incurred travel costs, those aren't part of your BH, they're not reimbursable, you know, and then when we were leaving New York City to move to San Diego, people were like, Oh, man housing, and I was like, it can't be worse than New York, like, it really can't. And it wasn't accepted, because it's such a large, you know, military area, the BH didn't actually cover the rise out there. I mean, like Heather stated, you know, inflation is up 20%, like, our rbh didn't match what the cost of a house was, and there isn't enough housing to put people in. I mean, not even the housing wait was 18 months when we moved there on 10 month orders. So, you know, it's kind of all these things that play into that. And then, you know, in addition to those bills, like it's great that that covers DOD, but we also have the Coast Guard not covered under all the DoD stuff, who are, you know, affected in different ways? Like, when they didn't get funded for several weeks, you know, a couple pay periods? Was that in the beginning of 19? I think I think so. 18, or 19. And I remember just seeing all of this like vitriol online about, well, they should have planned for them, like nobody should have planned to, like, not get a paycheck when they're actually like, serving the country. And furthermore, like the four things, Heather stated PCs, lack of Spouse Employment, like, you know, the way that those rack and stack and people's lives goes completely unnoticed. And, you know, I took a look at it and like, went through, I think I use like II five, you know, I was like, okay, mid range, lower enlisted, like we're not the bottom, we're not like, and went through, like what it would cost if their spouse wasn't employed in San Diego, and I was like, your let leftover after you pay for your basic needs. You've got maybe 200 bucks. But let's say you have two kids, and they want to play baseball, or they want to do just those natural light,

or they need diapers or formula. Like there's Yeah, it's gone. Yeah,

like, and I was even like, they're like, they should do something with the extra. I'm like, it cost me $250 A kid to play baseball, like, so you're, you're you're then asking people like not to do those things. And it's like, those are hard choices. And then you add in an unexpected thing. You know, like, for us it was we had just PCs, we hadn't been reimbursed, and my husband's grandmother, dad, and he had to get on a plane back to Michigan. And the choice for us was, we didn't all go because we couldn't afford it. And if I just went and it's like, you're asking people to constantly make these like hard life decisions on whether or not you're going to pay your bills, or go to a funeral, or you know, move your stuff. I mean, this summer, gosh, we haven't even touched the summer in Pcs season about the people coming out of pocket because there aren't enough moving companies out there. And it's just that cycle.

It's so crazy. And then you know, even with BH it's designed to cover 95% of the cost of an apartment. It's not even designed to cover 100% And it's not designed to cover a single family home. It is designed for you to live in an apartment so I hope you don't have dogs. I hope you don't have loud kids. I hope you like apartment living. Those things are all knows for me we the Campbells are allowed people I have I have a dog, and apartment living doesn't go well for us. So that means Oh, well. You want to live in a house on an apartment. Well, that's on you. And all of these financial stressors. Don't forget the new retirement system for the military requires you to pay in your own money. So out of all of the same money that's not paying for housing, it's not paying for diapers, it's not paying for food, by the way, fund your own retirement best of luck. And not only is it causing difficulty for our military families now, but it is keeping them from future financial stability for being able to do things like fun to retirement. Thankfully for us, we grandfathered into the old Blended Retirement System or not Blended Retirement System, the old system where it's the high three and and sort of the pension model, but all of that said because of student debt because of having children young we just arted retirement accounts, like I'm going to be 36 This summer, and we just started retirement accounts because we just didn't have the money and you hear from people, well, you should be funding it. And you should be doing this and like With what money, all of our money was, was for student debt or for diapers, and then you do want to have your children not miss out on things. So you do want them to play baseball and you try to do it maybe through your military installation where it's cheaper or you try one thing that happened, you know, talking about kids, we, we PCs from here, my kid had to be five when we lived here before had to be five for baseball on base. And you've been waiting. He was two when we moved here. He waited all three years are very last spring. He's five, he's stoked. Well, in Alaska, you have a gazillion feet of snow. So the baseball season doesn't really start until May. We left in April, we moved to Alabama. Well, in Alabama, the baseball season is done by me because you'll have a heat stroke. So we he missed baseball season, he had been asking for years, and we just, we left before one started, and we got to our new location after it ended. And those are typical things. So then you're trying to find ways to still keep stability still keep normalcy for your family, for your children. And then also shouldering all these burdens, deciding whether or not you can afford to go home. We on more than one occasion have flown family members to us and said, No Mom and Dad, can we please buy your two plane tickets? Will you guys come see us because buying two tickets is so much easier than five, please let me buy you a ticket, please come here. And these are just real things. When you're in the military community, you can have these conversations that everybody you talk to, they just get it right like oh my gosh, yes. And you can have these conversations and you go talk to a civilian counterpart. They're like, Wait, hang on, and you got to give all sorts of this backstory. So that's why I love that we're doing this in this episode and talking about food insecurity, talking about some of these unspoken, I guess burdens that military families are carrying, that aren't necessarily linked to a family member being deployed or a training accident, or any of those really visible newsworthy things, right? These are stuff burdens and stressors that are causing chronic stress in our lives.

Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate getting into these fine details of what military families go through. Because just like what you said, it's like, from a civilian standpoint, it's like, Well, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And it's like, Well, I do a lot ready, you know, like, there's so many layers to living this life that our civilian counterparts can't truly understand unless they really hear in detail. So I am really grateful for us to, you know, like I said, talk about this in detail, and really just bringing light to this. And there's a part of me, that's kind of like, you know, how do we end on a positive note, because there's still a lot I mean, I don't want to end on a positive note and dismiss, like everything we talked about, you know, but I do know that one of the main messages you want to share with our audience, Heather, is that, you know, the truth is that, you know, anything that we're going through, there are resources and ways to get help and support. And part of it is just acknowledging that there's a problem. So can you elaborate more on that? Yes. So

wherever you are, you know, listeners, if you have an opportunity to serve, whether at a food bank, or whether to maybe you go to a church, or you're in different community organizations reach out, first of all, to those military members. And we were in a duty location for three years, but it was a training base. So lots of people came for 10 or 12 months at a time. And there was sort of this mindset that they were like a subculture and they stuck with each other. And all the people come for training, just hang out with each other and don't plug into the community, and we're not going to invest in them because they're not going to stay. And we were there for three years. So we made lots of civilian friends. And we have asked them as we left, I talked to one at the beginning of last fall. And she said, we've met this great, this great family, our sons are in the same class, but their military, they're moving in May. And I said love them anyway. Include them, bring them to dinner, include them in your your annual Christmas party, but find those military members within your community, find them within your church, within your boy scouts, within your sports teams, wherever it is that you're plugged in, find those military members and build community with them, whether it's for six months, or 10 months or six years, build that community and help them feel included. But that also for us as military families gives us resources when when you're stuck at the car shop and your car's supposed to be done. And it's not. And you've got to get your kid from school. And now I have someone I can call and say, Hey, Jenny Lynn, so I'm still stuck here. Can you pick up my boys or one time I called another spouse and said, Hey, I gotta go get my preschool kid. And I know that your kids are in elementary school and they're at school all day and your preschooler goes all day. Will you come get me at the car shop and take me to get my son at preschool and then just bring us all back here? And it was a military spouse? Of course, she got nothing. She's like, Yeah, I'm on my way. I'll be there in 10 minutes. And so finding those members and finding ways that you can build community so that we have an avenue to ask for help within your community, finding your food bank, finding different support services, every location is different. The bigger the city, the more support services. So lots of opportunities to give back and if you're in a small location, maybe remotely location like I am, find what is available and help amplify it, donate to your food bank, help connect them to families, go pack food boxes, help sort clothes at a clothing donation, find any way that you can help support your community. If you are in a military location, if you're not, there's lots of different organizations that you can donate to to help them fund the things that they're doing for the community. So a quick Google search will bring up I don't know probably 50 different nonprofits that you can make tax deductible donations to that align with the things that are important to you. We have nonprofits that address food insecurity that address widows that address lost family members that address LBG tq. community issues, we have some that advocate for voting, there's so many organizations available, finding a way to have that sort of pocket of people that believe the same thing you do that are working towards the same things and support them either locally or financially, is really the best way to kind of start making an impact and then get these issues to the Congress floor, get these issues into these bills, get these issues in front of Department of Defense. And I think Coast Guard is Homeland Security, but but getting it in front of these leaders to say, hey, here's issues that you're not seeing at the leadership level, but we need to find a solution for these. So the more that we talk about them and find ways to connect and support, the better we're going to be.

I like how you mentioned, like giving back because I think that in general, we all know to give and to donate. But I think what we did today was really humanize who were donating and giving to. So I do really appreciate all the tips to wrap up this conversation. I think

that was a great, of course, here on the show. We're big on community, and we're big on not just military to military, the military to civilian, like, chances are there more civilians in your town, even if you live in a big old Navy town like I do, there's still more civilians here than there are military and it is, you know, connecting with them and talking with them and hearing their story about how they've lived in that house their whole life as much as you've lived in 14 houses in the last five years. Like it's the sharing of those stories in the letting people know, you know, I think about the work that I do and outreach for mental health and people are constantly Oh, you know, like, the first reaction is, oh, and then they want to know more? How did you get involved with that? Why does this matter to you, and I think all of those things are super important to bringing a community together. And I'm glad that we have a space here on this show to not only let you know, our listeners who are largely military families, know about the resources available and the things that affect them. But you know, also bring in our civilian counterparts and go, Hey, these are some things we're facing, like, can you join us? Will you be part of our community?

Yeah. And the reality is, you know, military families were embedded in civilian communities. And you know, a lot of civilians know, a service member, know, a veteran, know, a spouse, like, it's not like, we're just put in the base and like, left there. And so to be able to, like, you know, acknowledge that even like, it's actually it actually gets me to think about like my new church, and how there's like such a mix of like civilian and military people. And one thing I always appreciate about the pastor, when he starts, as he says, before he began, I just want to give a shout out to our military families who are watching this, you know, virtually, you know, give him a round of applause. And I just love how you can be in the same place, but understand that there are so many different types of people within that same space civilian and and our military, families and service members and veterans. And so just recognizing that when you help our military family, you help, it causes a ripple effect. I think it's just, it's not just one thing you're helping you're helping other things as well, I think is what I'm trying to wrap up here with Heather, before we talk a little bit more about ways for people to get a hold of you or any of the resources are there any final thoughts that you want to share to our listeners today,

I would just like to share that if there's anything that you have gone through listeners, whether your military family or not, whether you've struggled with food insecurity, one difficulty in my current location is mental health access. That's something Jenny Lynn and I have talked offline about, and she's been able to help point me towards resources for my own family, but also that I can share in my community. So any of those things don't necessarily mean weakness, they don't mean weakness for the person who needs to help. It doesn't mean weakness for the people who are advocating it doesn't mean any of that if you're struggling to make ends, meet with your bills, if you're struggling with your mental health, your physical health, all of those things are valid stressors and valid concerns. And it's nice to now start having a space specifically with food insecurity, what I work in where we do feel validated and we can speak about this because there's been so many of us, you know, even Jenny Lynn said when they were a young family, there's so many of us that have gone through it and felt very isolated and very alone. So if there is something that you are struggling with, find that community, find the people advocating for you find the people experiencing it, find the resources because the worst thing that you can do is isolate yourself and try to weather and He kind of storm alone. That's where you're going to be pray for really, really negative spirals. I have been there, I have been in a difficult mental state through this season that I went through. So I would just say if there's something that you're going through, look for those resources, look for community and just know that it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it alone or that it's any fault of your own. Yeah,

I love that. There was this one movie I was watching, I think it was concussion with Will Smith, there was a line in there that stood out to me, I had to write it down. And he said, a need is a need, like a need is not weak. It's just a need. And if you need something, it's okay to ask for it. Like there's no reason to be ashamed or to you know, be stoic about it like a need as a need. Heather, it was an absolute pleasure speaking with you today, let us know how our listeners can get a hold of you or any other resources you want to share. In case people want to learn more about this.

Yes, the easiest way to find me is going to be on Instagram, my public page is glory nutrition. So if you just type it all, one word glory nutrition, picture of my face pops up, which is kind of weird, because I am in the business of helping people. So it's weird to see, you know, like my own face. But my face will pop up glory nutrition, you can also find me under that same handle on Facebook. So those are my two public pages. There's the links on both of those to be able to email me direct message me. And in some emergency situations, I've had people track down my phone number just this past couple of days, I've had a handful of families reach out to me for connection with the Food Bank and how to get food in the immediate to feed their families and how they got my number. I don't really care, but they track it down. So my information is definitely out there. But starting on this public pages are the best way to find me.

Perfect. Well, I'm Heather, it's been an absolute pleasure having you I'm genuine. Any final thoughts from you?

Oh, no, thanks so much for coming out. I'm so glad you brought up that the people reaching out. I saw that on LinkedIn just this morning. It was like Oh, yay. And I'm sure they totally went through the military spouse network. Because let's be honest, where do we get our

information? It's true. It's for those of you who are military spouses who are listening, the military spouse network, any active duty member who has been married to an involved spouse for any length of time can vouch for it. It is where things happen. And I one time my husband texted me and said I need so and so's number. He's not at his office. He was doing important things and had people visiting the base and was doing stuff and I needed this person's number. And the timestamps between when he asked me for this person's number, and when I texted the wife got the number texted my husband back was three minutes. You guys it was three minutes. So Wow. Yeah, the spouse network is very active, that can be good and can be bad, but mostly I see it used for good.

Same. I love it. With that said, Heather, it's been such a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for joining us and I know our listeners will get a lot of value from our conversation. If you want to get a hold of Heather. We'll provide her contact information in the show notes. And other than that, thank you all so much for joining us. We'll chat with you in the next episode. Tune in next time.