Axe ’Em, Jacks!
NACOGDOCHES, Texas –– Stesha Colby-Lynch, director of Stephen F. Austin State University’s Veterans Services, recently authored and published the book, “No One Leaves Unscathed: A Woman in the Marine Corps,” which recounts her journey beginning as a Marine dependent in her childhood to her own service, as well as her struggles as a student veteran.
“My life has always been the military,” Colby-Lynch said. “I was born into the Marines and traveled the world with my military family. I grew up in poverty in a religiously restrictive household. I then joined the Marines and experienced trials and trauma during my own service. Then when I left the Marines, I struggled to find a foothold in civilian life. I struggled with serious undiagnosed mental health issues and substance abuse. The book is told in three parts.”
Colby-Lynch joined the Marine Corps in September 2006. From February 2007 to January 2009, she studied Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Later, she went to the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth as active-duty support for Marine Air Group 41.
While with the Marine Air Group, she worked as a legal clerk for the staff judge advocate and as an adjutant clerk for the commanding officer. In August 2010, she went on terminal leave to attend college and officially left active duty in September 2010 as a lance corporal.
While the official process of compiling the book, which was published by Blue Ear Books June 17, took Colby-Lynch approximately three years, she said she’s been writing her story for much longer in the form of classroom assignments, social media posts, and oral stories shared over beers with fellow veterans.
According to Blue Ear Books’ website, Colby-Lynch’s book offers insight before, during and after her military service. She tells funny but heartbreaking stories of life in poverty in the religious South in the 1980s and 1990s and reflects on the people she met and the lessons learned as a non-combat Marine in the late 2000s. She offers readers a glimpse into the mind of a mentally ill veteran as her struggle with alcohol affected her studies and early career.
“Even through the trauma, there is light,” Colby-Lynch said. “The book is heavy on mental health, but it is also funny. I write about the crazy shenanigans Marines get into and my adventures traveling the world. I write about my successes as much as the darkness.”
Colby-Lynch was one of hundreds inspired to tell their own story following the 2020 murder of Vanessa Guillén, a soldier stationed at Fort Hood who was murdered by another soldier after being sexually harassed. The event sparked a series of protests, discussions and a social media campaign #IAmVanessaGuillen.
According to Colby-Lynch, veterans who survived military sexual assault started telling their stories and discovered they had a lot of the same abusers.
“I had always wanted to write my own book but was not certain how to do it,” Colby-Lynch said. “After Vanessa’s murder, I realized it was time — not just to add to the growing conversation of sexual abuse in the military and civilian world but to show what day-to-day life was like for a woman serving in the Marines.”
Guillén’s murder, combined with the stress of the pandemic, sent Colby-Lynch down an 18-month-long mental health spiral that led to hospitalization in 2021.
She said the hospitalization saved her life, however, as it initiated her use of the U.S. Veterans Affairs’ health care system. It allowed her to heal, which not only led to the book but also employment at SFA.
Colby-Lynch hopes readers gain empathy for those suffering while also giving themselves grace.
“No one suffers alone, and no one heals alone,” Colby-Lynch said. “Veterans do not have a monopoly on trauma, and that is sometimes forgotten. I can’t count how many times I’ve had a person compare their trauma to mine and say, ‘But I didn’t experience half of what you did.’ I always stop that person and remind them they are allowed to have different life experiences and that does not make one of us better or worse than the other. No one wins in the ‘trauma Olympics.’”
Colby-Lynch also hopes the book will provide insight into regular military life, which differs from what is portrayed in video games and movies.
Colby-Lynch credits her mother, Stephanie Moreno; husband, Sean Lynch; and best friend, Brandy Lemieux, for supporting her writing endeavor and helping her construct the book’s narrative. She also credits her editor, Ethan Casey.
Though this her first stand-alone publication, parts of Colby-Lynch’s story are in two other books: “Voices of America,” co-edited by April Brown and Ethan Casey; and “Stories from the Front: Pain, Betrayal, and Resilience on the MST Battlefield” by Col. Lisa Carrington Firmin.
For more information about SFA’s VRC, visit sfasu.edu/vrc. For more information about the book or to purchase, visit the Blue Ear Books website or Amazon.