Homeland Magazine August 2021

Page 44

Arts & Healing Arts for Military Veterans By Amber Robinson

Veteran Artist Spotlight: Luz Helena Stacey Thompson

This month I wanted to continue our Veteran Artist Spotlight series with Marine veteran, artist, surfer, poet and vet advocate Luz Helena Stacey Thompson. Thompson lives in Oceanside as a single mother of three (four if you count her chocolate lab service dog, Reef) who has used the power of art and the ocean to help her heal from wounds she sustained while in service. Thompson joined the service in 1998 at the age of 17 as part of Traffic Management Operations. Originally shooting to join the Army, a Marine recruiter challenged her, asking “What? You don’t think you can be a Marine?”. Thompson decided to prove that she could step up to that challenge and signed herself over to the United States Marine Corps. After her basic training and individual schooling for her job, Thompson was stationed in Okinawa, Japan in 1999. She says she remembers the day she got there because she showed up to base in a skirt and pink tank top and felt proud to be a woman Marine when she arrived. “I was very proud to know I was a STRONG woman, I was a MARINE, yet know I was still feminine,” said Thompson. She soon found out what it could mean to be a woman in the Marines. As soon as she arrived to her unit, she started to face sexual harassment, where the ratio was one woman to 60 men. “I was blindsided,” said Thompson. The harassment progressed and Thompson eventually became the victim of Military Sexual Trauma. Although not one to usually go out, she made the decision to take a chance one night and have a little fun. That night she was drugged by her immediate supervisor and assaulted. Thompson tried to report the assault, but experienced a common occurrence after sexual assault is reported in the service, retaliation from her command and peers. “I reported it,” said Thompson. “But the more I pushed for things to be done, the more repercussions came to me professionally and personally. I was basically blacklisted.” 44

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Unfortunately, her perpetrator never had to stand trial. He was released from service and was able to return to the United States with no mark on his personal record of his crime. Thompson then called a Congressman to seek further justice. She received dramatic retaliation for that by being removed from service with an Other Than Honorable Discharge, which barred her from receiving any veterans’ benefits once separated from the Marines. Sixteen years later, after years of litigation with the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs, Thompson finally received 100% service-connected disability and can receive care from the VA and other veterans benefits. As part of her healing, Thompson has since poured herself into her art, creating pieces for herself, art buyers and her community. “I spent 16 years in silence about what happened to me in Okinawa,” said Thompson. “Art allowed me to go into the dark places of my mind and heal from the inside out without having to say a word.” Thompson started her art journey in 2011 after her grandmother died. My artwork began in 2011 after the passing of my grandmother, Irene, who was also an artist,” she said. “I could not express the depth of pain it caused losing her and I turned to artwork as a way to ease the pain and feel connected to her.”


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