In this interview, Dr. Jason Higgins speaks with Navy veteran Kristina Lynema. They discuss the intricacies of being a woman and a mother in the military. Lynema, despite her family’s expectations, enlisted in the Navy at 26 years old to create a better future for her and her daughter. She had her second child during her time in the Navy. Lynema discusses the difficult duality of being separated from her children but also loving her job. They also talk about the challenges she faced with her male peers and commanding officers. While in the military, Lynema consistently had to deal with unjust treatment, such as harassment, stalking, and medical neglect. Today she expresses her desire to advocate for reforms in the Navy to make it more inclusive to women. As a former FAP (Federal Advocacy Program) coordinator, Lynema recognizes the limits of the program’s protections and discusses necessary improvements. After experiencing domestic violence first hand, Lynema was discharged from the Navy after serving for nearly fifteen years. Now, in a period of rediscovering her purpose outside the military, Lynema is looking to join initiatives that fight for protections against domestic violence for women in the military.
“Yes, I’ll have stages where I miss them, I’m thinking about them, but it’s just like it all gets just pushed down, and I was able to really separate home and work. Which may not be overly healthy, but it worked out well for me, at least to perform and not be heartbroken every single minute of every day.”
dealing with a STalker
“It took me a long time to report it and make an official report, because it always blows back on the complainant. Everything was substantiated because, like I said, I had witnesses, because there were several people that tried to step in and stop it, and he just didn’t listen. It was non-stop. I was petrified to go to work. And I was petrified to go back home from work, because he was trying to get my address. He was trying to get my phone number, but thank goodness, the people who had access to that were like, you have no reason to have this information, so they didn’t give it to him. Then he would just follow me when I would leave work, trying to figure out where I live. When the report was done, everything was validated, but I was not allowed to talk about it. He was sent over to, at the time, the OIC did not have the authority to put somebody out of the military, and that’s exactly what, my chain of command, because of the severity of his behavior, wanted him to be discharged. There’s no place in the Navy for somebody that would go this far. Then when it went over to the other side, the captain was a good old boy captain, and said, “Well, he didn’t mean this. He said he was sorry that he didn’t mean this, that he wasn’t harassing you. He never followed you.” So all these witnesses, and it was a closed mass, so I didn’t get to hear what he said. I didn’t get to — how he got himself out of this whole mess, but nothing happened. Nothing. It was, “Well, I don’t want to punish them, his family, because they’re the ones that would actually be hurting if I took away any pay. If I restrict him, then he can’t help with his kids.” Nothing happened to him. I had to live with the fallout at my command because I was not allowed to say what had happened, and the report was not put out for everybody to read to say this has been substantiated. I had to deal with it, “Don’t talk to her because she’ll report you for sexual harassment.” It was a hellacious two years at that command. Not due to my chain of command, but it was so bad that between what the chiefs and the officers were saying that my OIC had to pull all of the khaki into a meeting, and he went was yelling. This was the most calm person ever yelling at them. This is substantiated. She did not report anything that was untrue. You need to treat her with respect, and you need to have it go down to your sailors. Of course, it didn’t fix most of it. Then when he was kept over on the other side of the water at the parent command for six months, his wife got pregnant. They sent him back to work, not with me at my command, but on the base. We would do PRT [physical readiness test], and he would stand there and try to trip me as I was running, for our command, physical fitness. Even when I ran my PRT, he stuck his foot out hoping to trip me, and all of his friends and co-workers were there laughing. People I worked with were laughing, because he was a popular guy, and they were laughing and giving me a hard time. The harassment just picked right back up. Even though it wasn’t sexual anymore, it was— I ruined his life. I ruined his career is what. Even when I had to go to PSD [Personal support detachment], they did not want to work with me. They were very rude when I was transferring, very rude to me. Not everybody, of course, but there was a complete difference in the way I was treated from before he got there to when he was there. There was a steep retaliation.”
Believing women
“I had my son six months later, all of a sudden, I’m sick, sick sick, like never been in my entire life sick. It was “Well, you have postpartum depression.” For six months, I was absolutely fine. Now you’re telling me postpartum depression hidden, after all the hormones had settled down, and I had no depression. I was happy. I enjoyed my job. Loved my job, and then woke up one day and head pounding, throat swelled shut, body ache all the way down, joints, bones, muscles, everything ache. It took me a year-and-a-half for them to finally, because after keep going back, keep going back, there’s something wrong. There’s something really wrong, I am sick, and sending me to a psychiatrist and sending me to all these other things when I’m telling them, physically, there’s something very wrong. Finally, after a year, sent me to a neurologist and my different tests kept coming back just different every time. The blood tests and everything. After an internist was, an allergist and were we don’t know what’s happening. Referred me out to the University of Washington, because I was stationed in Everett, Washington, at the time. Finally sent me out. A year-and-a-half later, I finally got diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Why did it take a year-and-a-half? If I’d have been a male, would they have marked it off as just mental? Just emotional mental? No, they would not have.”
Fighting for change
“I stayed because I knew that there was other young sailors that needed me to be like my master chief who took care of me. There needed to be more of us out there who had lived the experience, knew what it was like to fight against nothing to be there to protect the junior sailors. I truly loved the Navy. I just did not love that this was happening. I wanted to be part of the chain change… I sure hope so. I’d like to think so because I know there were some that I worked really hard with to protect. But you never know what sticks and what doesn’t. But I did it for both males and females. I am an injustice warrior. Maybe because I was bullied so bad as a child. But I am there ready for war with people that are being treated unjustly or less than.”
medical mistreatment
“because when you’re on a ship, you have the doctors that are assigned to the ship. You can’t go to other places unless it’s an emergency room. You don’t get to just go and make an appointment at the naval hospital to go see somebody else because your doctor is telling you there’s nothing wrong while they’re handing you painkillers and opioids so you can get your butt up and go to work. My medical doctor on the ship was kind enough, after he gave me all these painkillers and all these other medications to get me up and able to go to work physically, pulled my entire chain of command in and from my department officer, my divisional officer, and I was a chief at the time. Imagine what would have happened if I’d have been a junior sailor. The CO [Command Officer] and the XO [Executive Officer] into a meeting and told them, there’s nothing wrong with me, that it’s psychological. While he’s giving me opioids. Never talked to me. Never had a conversation with me. Did this all over email. Never had a conversation with me, but felt emboldened enough to not refer me to where I needed to go, but to pull my entire chain of command in and demean me like that. They were harsh to me because I was a completely different person. Like I said, I’d be told you have a meeting and it was like an eraser went through my brain. I didn’t even remember speaking to the person. Things that were so easy for me before that night, all of a sudden became impossible. Writing awards, writing evals became impossible. Things I could do them in minutes were just impossible.”
mental health after retirement
“I was on too many medications that were all interacting with each other, so there was still a lot to work through in the last year with this new doctor for medication. With the pain clinic, I was taking a pharmacy’s worth, but taking me off of the medications to bring me down to what would work together and what is the minimum. For the first time since 2010, I feel like myself. I’m seeing glimpses of Kristina. But it’s taken all this time.”
women’s health on the aircraft carrier
“…most of our complaints got ignored or it got shuffled off as, “Oh, you just don’t want to work, you want to be SIQ [sick in quarters].” One time I had the flu, I could not even walk had the flu, after we had been in Spain, had the flu and throwing up, and I mean, it was horrible. Body aches and pains. The doctor, “You don’t have the flu.” How are you going to tell me? It’s like, I’m in here throwing up and “You don’t have the flu. We don’t have any cases of the flu.” Well, come to find out they had to shut down the port, because there was a stomach influenza going around. We were a hospital ship, and it was all full. I was just one of the first cases. The hospital beds were all completely full. They had us down in our berthings cause we were so sick. But that doctor had the audacity to tell me I did not have the flu. It was in my head. That happened with most everything. Our concerns were blown off, minimized.”
Being a veteran
“They should not be ashamed to get help. I had so many male and female sailors come to me and tell me about what was happening to them. It opened— me being beat up opened the door to others to get help. Even when you’re embarrassed, even when it seems like I can’t do this, you can because somebody else is going to benefit from you. You have to keep going.”
