Hello friends welcome back so glad you could join me for this episode I am

delighted to be chatting with author Diana Ostrike you are going to want to listen to

her message if you have ever wondered how do we put aside our differences

and move forward as a community as a nation even heck as a family this is going to be

useful for you. So let's just dive right in. Let's hear from

Combat medic, nurse, mother, professional peacemaker, Diana Ostrike.

I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Sayso

Podcast. It's always nice to chat with the fellow Minnesotan.

I'd tell people we're half Canadian because we're just so culturally close to the border.

I'm like, we're real quiet. don't want to ruffle the feathers no no

and never I want my listeners to know a little bit more about you and your experiences as a combat medic in Iraq, what led you to

want to even join the military? And I just want to even join the military and I just want to hear a little bit more about your experiences

deploying to Iraq for over a year. Well let's start with the first part since we already talked about how we're Minnesotans.

I grew up in a rural town even farther north of where we are today and culturally I didn't really know anybody who had gone to college but

everybody in my family had signed up to serve in the military that was what

most people knew how to do after high school.

And so I signed up when I was 17 because I wanted to go to college and this was how my people and my culture,

this is how we knew how to do it is very familiar at that time. Fast forward I was at the

tail end of my enlistment I graduated as a nurse I just started my first job and then 9-11 happens.

And I knew I was sitting in my nursing classroom

and I knew when they wheeled in the TV back when we had TVs in classrooms and they were showing it.

I just knew in my bones that my life was going to change forever in the military.

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