I connected with today’s guest, Air Force Veteran Amanda Huffman, last fall after discovering her Women of the Military podcast.
At the time, Amanda was promoting her book Women of the Military: A Compilation of Stories from American Women Service Members and I offered to review it.
Amanda sent me a copy and not only did I review it…I bought several more copies and donated them to my local library.
I also dropped off a copy at my local Department of Veterans Affairs health care facility on my way to an appointment. By the time I was finished with the appointment, someone had already snagged the copy I’d left!
Really, though, that’s not surprising. Women veterans are hungering for their voices to be heard.
The Women Veteran Wave
When I wrote about “The Inconvenience of Being a Woman Veteran” for The Atlantic online in 2017, I just scratched the service of this need.
A woman from the Canadian military found me on LinkedIn to tell me that it was the first time anyone had ever articulated what she was feeling.
A fellow female veteran in Washington, D.C. (I was working for VFW when the article was published) approached me in tears to thank me for my article.
And even my best friend called me to tell me that, for the first time, she understood why she had never quite fit in at work.
While I’d only scratched the surface, with her Women of the Military podcast, Amanda Huffman has unleashed a tsunami of women veterans who are ready to be heard, seen, and recognized for their experiences and their service.
Amanda receives so many requests to be a guest on her podcast, she can’t accommodate them all!
Who is Amanda Huffman?
So, who is this woman whose podcast, which will reach it’s 100th episode next week and which was just named one of the Top 25 Podcasts Hosted By a Veteran by Podcast Magazine, is taking the women veteran community by storm?
If you ask me—and I’ve gotten to know Amanda over the past year—she’s a creative, genuine, earnest individual whose willingness to share her own experiences and to openly receive and promote the experiences of others makes her the perfect person to draw out the stories of women who’ve served.
In my own interview on her podcast—to be released in January—Amanda’s style even got me to talk about things I never thought I’d speak about publicly.
What’s more, Amanda is an incredibly hard worker.
We are both part of a group of women who meet once a week to share ideas and support each other and, through this, I’ve had a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the work she does.
It’s no wonder she’s
– Been a regular writer for We Are the Mighty, or
– That she recently penned a Military.com article at the editor’s request, or
– That she’s been featured on the When Sacrifice Calls and Military Veteran Dad podcasts, or
– That she was a finalist for the 2020 Melissa Washington Small Business Award
But that’s enough of my rambling. You can judge for yourself.
Here’s what Amanda had to say:
Interview with Airman to Mom’s Amanda Huffman
1. You’re an Air Force veteran. Tell me a little about your service – what made you decide to join, how long did you serve, highlights, etc.
I was served six years in the Air Force as a Civil Engineer.
I began ROTC my sophomore year of college. I was really lost in what I wanted to do with my life. A few of my friends were joining the military, so I started looking into enlisting into the Air National Guard.
Then a friend took me to lunch to tell me about ROTC. I went to the open house he invited me to and never looked back.
My husband and I met while we were in ROTC. He graduated and commissioned a year before me. When I graduated, I was able to be stationed with him.
I worked in the Civil Engineering Squadron at Holloman AFB. The F-117 stealth aircraft was retired and we worked on retrofitting the base for the F-22 fighter jets and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
In November of 2009, I began preparing for my deployment to Afghanistan. I deployed from February to November 2010.
When I deployed, I was attached to an Army infantry unit as part of a PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team). We were regularly off base as part of our duties.
On one of those missions, we were attacked. I have an Army Combat Action Badge and an Air Force Combat Action Medal from that deployment.
One plus from my deployment was that my husband and I were able to meet up in New Zealand for my mid-tour.
When I came home from my deployment, my husband had already PCS’d to Wright-Patterson AFB to earn his master’s at AFIT. He moved our household goods, but left a box of my stuff at a friend’s house for when I got home from Afghanistan.
I in-processed back into the base and then out-processed again about 2 months later. I joined my husband at Wright-Patterson in 2011 and worked at Air Force Materiel Command in the Energy Management section.
2. You left the Air Force in 2013. What made you decide to leave the service and how was your transition process?
When I became pregnant with my first son, I knew that I would likely deploy within a year after he was born.
With my husband still serving on active duty, I knew it would be demanding on our whole family for both of us to be in the military.
We’d already experienced the challenging dynamics of trying to get stationed together as a dual-military family.
We knew there would be a lot of sacrifice required for ourselves and our son if we wanted to make it to retirement.
And my first deployment had been challenging, even without having to leave my son behind. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that again, now that he was here.
But deploying is part of the military process. I decided, if I didn’t want to deploy, I needed to get out.
So, I left the Air Force in 2013, four months after my first son was born.
I think my biggest struggle was how lonely I was. I lost my identity and my community when I left the military.
Amanda Huffman
3. What was the one thing you found most difficult about your transition?
I transitioned from military member to military spouse and mom. It was very difficult for me emotionally.
I felt like I lost the identity the military had helped me form over the 10 years of ROTC and military service. And then without realizing what was happening that identity was gone.
Like a lot of women veterans, I didn’t feel seen as a veteran.
I also felt like I was giving up my career for my son.
My husband was scheduled to move less than a year after I separated so it made it hard to want to find a career, but being a stay-at-home mom was lonely and harder than I ever expected.
I think my biggest struggle was how lonely I was. I lost my identity and my community when I left the military.
I started blogging in the first year I stayed home with my son. And I thought it was a business, but really then it was just my personal journey of motherhood.
I needed that place to sort through my feelings. Eventually, though, it did turn into a business, which now includes a podcast, two books, freelance writing, and more to come.
4. What was one thing you found helpful during your transition?
In 2017, I decided to participate in a 31-Day Challenge for my blog, Airman to Mom, and I interviewed military members about their experiences being deployed.
I expected to collect stories from men. But I found women lining up to share their experience and the men I reached out to never responded.
Through this experience, I realized as a woman veteran I had the unique ability to reach a group often forgotten.
I had planned to repeat the 31 Day series in 2018, but instead of focusing on deployment, I was going to focus on military women.
But we moved from California to Virginia in the summer and I had too much going on to finish the 31-day challenge. Also, at that time, the idea of a podcast focused on military women started to form.
In the end, I decided take the stories I had already collected and turned them into a book Women of the Military. Then I launched the Women of the Military Podcast.
Sharing the stories of military women has brought me back to the military community and I don’t feel so alone anymore.
5. You are now founder of the Women of the Military podcast, an author or contributor to two books, speaker, and freelance writer. Can you tell us a little more about what you do, how the military helped you in your new career field, and what new projects you’re working on?
I am a stay at home mom of two boys (ages 7 and 4). It’s great because I am able to stay home with my boys and work on my business.
The Women of the Military Podcast launched in 2019. Since then, I have interviewed over 100 women and shared their stories through the book and podcast. It’s exciting each week to release a new episode and help another military woman tell her story.
When I started, I didn’t know anything about marketing. I had a degree in engineering, not business! Luckily, since I had planned to stay home, making money wasn’t a top priority and that gave me the freedom to just try things. It took years before I was able to make any money off my projects.
One thing that my military experience really helped me with was teaching me to never give up and always being willing to try something new.
A friend asked me once how I did stuff even when I was unsure of what I was doing. I told her about the quote my commander told me before I deployed:
“When you come to a great chasm in life—jump, it isn’t that far.”
Joseph Campbell
I have used that quote so many times in my entrepreneur journey. I’ve made mistakes, but I learn from them and course correct. It has been a great experience.
I have a number of new projects I am working on. I am launching a YouTube channel to help young women looking to join the military. Girls Guide to the Military, an expansion of the guide I created, will be a place to help answer questions women experience in their military journey.
I’m also working on a new book. I wrote letters home to family and friends via email while deployed and one of my friends, the same one who encouraged me to start my blog, encouraged me to turn those letters into a book.
6. What’s one thing you miss about the military?
It is hard to miss anything, since I still feel so attached to the military with my husband still serving. I guess I miss being part of a unit.
7. What’s one thing you like better about being a civilian?
I like the work I do today. Engineering was fun, but I really enjoy talking to people and making a difference.
I think the military helped me become who I am, but I am so happy that I am doing what I am doing now.
8. What’s your top tip for service members who are transitioning or considering leaving the service?
Think about what you want to do. The career field you were in isn’t what you have to do.
I walked away from having my Professional Engineering license to try something I was passionate about. I was good at engineering, but I thought it was boring most of the time.
Find something you love to do. And start testing it out while you are active duty, if possible. It took a lot of pivoting to figure out what I wanted to do.
Want more of Amanda Huffman? You can find her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can can connect with her on her podcast and read her blog. Or read her Women of the Military or Brave Women Strong Faith books. And stay tuned for her Girls Guide to the Military YouTube Channel!
Amanda Huffman is a military spouse and veteran who served in the Air Force for six years as a Civil Engineer, including a deployment to Afghanistan. She traded in her combat boots for a diaper bag to stay home with her two boys and follow her husband’s military career. She published her first book in 2019 titled Women of the Military, sharing the stories of 28 military women. In 2019 she also launched her podcast also titled Women of the Military. On the podcast, there has been representation from all five military branches and featured stories from the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force, the Women Air Force Service Pilots, to present day.
© 2020, Sarah Maples LLC. All rights reserved.
No Comments