I built my home as a refuge, a place of my own after years of following orders and living out of a seabag. Every nail I hammered and every wall I painted represented a piece of the stability I craved. Returning from a six-month deployment, I dreamed of nothing more than walking through my own front door. That dream was destroyed by my own family. My father and brother stood on my porch as if they owned it, which they falsely believed they now did. Their first words to me were a declaration that I was homeless. They had sold my house.
The reason was a familiar story: my brother, Chad, had gotten himself into serious financial trouble, and my father, once again, bailed him out at my expense. They had twisted the power of attorney I left for managing bills into a weapon to liquidate my biggest asset. They thought their plan was clever, and they mocked my disheveled appearance, not realizing the greatest threat to their scheme was the person they were laughing at. My military training had taught me to assess threats and gather intelligence, and I had done just that from thousands of miles away.
I calmly informed them that their sale was invalid. A VA-backed home cannot be sold without the service member’s explicit consent, a federal protection they had blatantly violated. The innocent family that had purchased the home was now entangled in our mess. The legal process that followed was long and draining, but it resulted in me regaining my home and my father facing the consequences of his crime. The betrayal cut deeper than any enemy fire ever could. I saved my house, but the cost was the realization that my own family saw me not as a daughter and sister, but as a fund for my brother’s failures.
