03/09/2022
Fellow veteran Summer Thatcher is speaking this Saturday. Register for FREE today: https://bit.ly/3sD27NA
Week two of the Women's History Month Speaker Series is here! We are excited to hear from Summer Anderson Thatcher this Saturday, March 12 at 3 p.m.
Register for free to join us virtually: https://bit.ly/3sD27NA
Summer Anderson Thatcher built her identity, career and lifestyle by getting “real tough.” Thatcher was “full on, all in, all the time” in attitude and practice.
She enlisted in the Navy in 2000 and was assigned to an aircraft carrier as a photographer. She was accepted into the Department of Defense’s program for advanced broadcast journalism and documentary arts and became a top-flight videographer. Stationed at Combat Camera Pacific in California, she wasn’t on a ship anymore. She became what is affectionately called a “desert sailor.”
A series of incidents interrupted her deployment plans: sickness forced her to pull out of one to Iraq; a second to Africa also was scrapped. Feelings of failure for not being combat-ready and watching someone else do her job, were hard to accept. “Survivor’s guilt” crept in.
Eventually, Thatcher made it to the sandbox as a combat cameraman. She had to battle just to do her job. Women weren’t allowed on the front lines at the time, but to earn trust she accepted “fluffy” assignments; faced harassment for being Navy embedded with an Army unit; and literally, carried more weight with her fi****ms, personal armor plus camera gear. But true to form, she fought to find the right stories, develop relationships, and invest in soldiers to the point where they became authentic with her. Infantry learned to trust her to be thoughtful and compassionate about the stories she told about them. Soon they were asking her to go out on front-line missions. It was here she stumbled upon the close-up, hard-hitting stories that earned her Navy Videographer of the Year for 2007, taking first place in both field production and combat documentary. It also brought her face-to-face with demons that she denied and buried deep down. For the next 15 years, Thatcher applied her “balls to the wall” approach to fight the scars it left.
Returning to Utah, she immersed herself in the su***de prevention community advocating for awareness; supporting her husband, State Senator Thatcher in in his work to pass legislation to provide mental health resources for first responders and veterans; all while filming nearly 300 hours for a personal documentary.
When it came time to edit the film, Thatcher said something snapped. She knew enough about mental health to realize she wasn’t okay. She was terrified to be alone. “Things got real personal, real fast,” she said. The hard-charging attitude that worked as a teenager, throughout the military and her life wasn’t working anymore. In fact, it was working against her. “I found I couldn’t edit. My mind was as blank as the screen. I began asking who am I without my art, without film?”
To find peace and to live, Thatcher needed another approach to life. For two years now, she has attended a therapy program where she is learning how to “feel my feels, slow down, radically accept things I cannot change and recognize my identity is not wrapped up in what I do.” She says she’s learning new skills to function in life and accepts that she can’t do it alone.
During COVID, Thatcher had a surprise come into her life — a son, she named Angus. “I don’t know if I was saved to bring him into the world, or if he came to save me,” she said.
Thatcher says, “my healing is ongoing, it’s fluid.”
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With support from Fort Douglas Military Museum, Utah National Guard, Utah Honor Flight, Forge Forward Project, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System.
