In a hotel conference room in Arlington, Va., seated around an oval table with a large window view of the Potomac River, roughly 15 women had gathered for a training seminar to learn how to lead small networking groups of women like themselves. Coming from all over the country, these women, who ranged in age from their mid-30s to mid-50s, all shared one important characteristic: They had all served in the United States military, and now as civilians they were learning to adjust to life out of the uniform. During one session, a woman spoke up in a soft but clear voice about how difficult the years after leaving the service had been for her. She was homeless, often living in her car, and thought that her life would never get better. Even though she had since found housing, she said that until this point, talking with the other women in the room, she had not felt sisterhood and a sense of belonging since leaving the service.

Tara Galovski is co-founder of Women Veterans Network (WoVeN), the group that brought these women together; this was not the first time she had heard this kind of story. In her research and clinical work as director of the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at the Department of Veterans Affairs, she repeatedly heard from veterans how difficult it was to transition from military service to civilian life, especially for servicewomen. “There are unique challenges,” Galovski says, “like even just finding each other after service, because there are simply fewer women than men who serve.”