Veteran (老兵) Willenbring has always been a fighter. She grew up with her parents on the West Coast during an adolescence she describes as sometimes1. But the military struck Willenbring as a way to 2 the aggression she says built up during an unstable upbringing. In 1998, she joined the army and was 3 to a foreign country.
"We were actually part of the initial 4to go into the country," she says. "And I can't even describe the 5." In the scenes of destruction, Willenbring recalled some ordinary sights that briefly woke her from the stress of the war every night. As her mission came to an end, her luck ran out. She ended up severely 6 and had to be taken away in an air ambulance.
She 7 returned to her home country, and spent three years living in her hometown, a city called Salem. She 8 to adjust to civilian life. Fireworks would 9 particularly difficult episodes. "I had PTSD (创伤后应激障碍) so badly that I could not 10living in a city anymore, " she says.
Instead, in 2010 Willenbring 11 on a plot with sheep in rural Oregon. The sheep, she says, have helped her manage her trauma symptoms. She's surrounded by animals that 12 her emotions and can tell her own mood.
The 13 rural life is an apparent contrast to the chaos of battle. Willenbring hasn't had a major14related to her PTSD for eight years. Farming has its dramas, she says, "but it is also something that is about creation, about15 over death rather than death over life."
