Category: Military Family Members

The Turning Edge

Military Family Members, Military News, Museum News, Museum of the American Military Family

By Circe Olson Woessner, Director MAMF

The Turning Edge is an educational collaboration between the Museum of the American Military Family and Battlefield: Home, focusing on military families, traumatic legacies, and generational storytelling. 

The collaboration

Anita Sugimura Holsapple, filmmaker and founder of Battlefield: Home–Breaking the Silence and recipient of the SAMHSA Voice Award for Best Documentary Film, and I have launched The Turning Edge. This educational initiative honors and brings attention to the lived experiences of military families across generations. The museum’s commitment to preserving military family history complements Battlefield: Home’s focus on contemporary storytelling, fostering connection, and raising awareness. Anita and I see this partnership as a foundation for ongoing collaboration, based on shared values of preservation, dialogue, and service to military-connected communities. 

Why this matters

The Turning Edge explores the often-unspoken realities experienced by veterans, military families, caregivers, and communities affected by trauma, transition, and service. Few programs address military trauma from a familial and intergenerational perspective, and fewer recognize storytelling’s power to foster understanding and strengthen communities. Personal story is important. Storytelling can be curative.

The program

We have developed educational tools to encourage participation in challenging but necessary conversations. These include guided discussions, educational programming, community engagement, and cross-sector collaboration. For workshops, Anita has created a one-hour special edition of Battlefield: Home. This format examines identity, isolation, resilience, caregiving, moral injury, and the lasting human impact of war beyond the battlefield. Drawing from her background as the daughter of a Marine Corps veteran and a Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor, Anita connects personal experience with sociological analysis, emphasizing intergenerational and cross-cultural perspectives.

Who is the program for?

Even though it is based on military experience, our work goes beyond that by bringing individuals, families, and communities together to gain a better understanding of the way trauma affects people’s lives, their relationships, and their sense of belonging. Through film and guided discussion, The Turning Edge turns silence into conversations that promote understanding, compassion, and hope for military and veteran families, as well as those who support them.

​​Anita shares the program’s philosophy: “We facilitate conversations that transcend a single individual or community by sharing experiences that resonate across families, military organizations, education and healthcare institutions, as well as civilian communities. Our programs help audiences engage difficult realities with greater clarity, creating room for conversations around trauma, transition, caregiving, identity, military family systems, moral injury, PTSD, TBI, and human connection.”


Our logo explained 

In Zen art, the enso, or minimalist circle, is drawn with a single or double brushstroke representing enlightenment, strength, elegance, and the void.  The open center honors what’s left unsaid and creates space for dialogue, healing, and understanding.  

In storytelling, a “turning-edge” plot twist is a moment that shifts the reader’s perspective, making them rethink past events and revise their prior understanding. It can be symbolic, like a storm subsiding or doors bursting open. It can also be an identity change, when someone realizes they are not just one role, like hero, soldier, or victim. A turning edge can also reveal that people who seem like strangers actually have a deep connection.

The Turning Edge stands for what we do. The Turning Edge gives those conversations a continuing public platform. Through storytelling, we look at ourselves and our situations in new ways; silence turns into conversations that foster greater understanding, compassion, movement forward, and hope.

Our stories shape us; our choices change us. 

Connect with us

Join us in supporting veterans and military families by hosting a customized in-person or remote screening, workshop, or discussion in your community. For details or to schedule an event, please visit the Battlefield Home website and complete the contact form.

https://www.battlefield-home.com

 

 

 

 

YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Military Family Members, Museum News, Museum of the American Military Family

In April 2026, we launched a new exhibit called “Dear America, what military-connected children want you to know.”  A high school  senior in a Career Practicum program, whom we had been mentoring for the school year, created the exhibit. Teachers and students from all the local elementary and middle schools contributed essays, artwork, oral interviews, and more to the exhibit. While most of the exhibit consisted of student work, that doesn’t mean it didn’t cost anything to produce. Overall, the exhibit and the mid-point community-wide celebration cost about $6,000.

As a small museum in transition, our budget is very limited. Our WorkSpace isn’t open to the general public yet, so we don’t receive revenue from visitor donations. Because the exhibit is outside New Mexico and the continental United States, we are ineligible for state or most federal grants.

We are grateful for those who support the Museum of the American Military Family. Without sponsorship from individuals and organizations, we could not continue our work or maintain our organization. 

This year, we are especially grateful for the people who supported “Dear America”: the Stuttgart Community Spouse Club, Kirtland Spouse Club, the Albuquerque chapter of the Military Officers’ Association of America, and all the teachers  and community leaders who funded decorations, goody bags, and reception catering supplies out of their own pockets.

Additional sponsors to museum programs were the American Legion Post 117 in Clovis, New Mexico, the Belen, New Mexico, Moose Lodge 1680, and Moose Lodge 2088 in Deming, New Mexico. Our board members regularly donate “time, talent, and treasure” to keep MAMF producing relevant projects and to provide meaningful work-study and paid internships for University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico college students. (In 2026, we provided 4 students with paid work opportunities.)

Because we are a small organization, our all-volunteer board is hands-on, handling editing, social media, mentoring, content creation, displays, accounts, and official reports. This keeps expenses low. We are a very “lean” organization!

Donations from individuals not specifically earmarked  for an exhibit or program can be used for general operating costs, to keep a roof over our head, the lights on, and friendly students employed. We are grateful for every contribution: checks, Facebook or PayPal donations, Facebook birthday fundraisers, anthology purchases, or new members through our “Friends of the Museum” program. Each gift supports salaries, rent, internet, insurance, display cases, and conservation supplies.  

Support MAMF by taking action—explore the many ways you can help:

To donate via mail, simply send a check to MAMF at PO Box 5651, Albuquerque, NM 87185.

Donate now via this PayPal link: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/QF2CUTEPFNHWN.

Every dollar matters.

Join as a member by clicking here, or sponsor a day through our ‘Today is brought to you’ program—your commitment helps.

A fifty-dollar sponsorship pays 2 ½ hours of one of our UNM student workers’ salaries, our trademark renewal fee, or 6% of our monthly rent. A $250 sponsorship pays for our podcast platform for a year, our library space rental for a month, or 35% of our annual liability insurance. To sponsor MAMF please pay through our PayPal. 

Make your tax-deductible gift today—every contribution is appreciated. We carefully steward all donations to maximize impact. Thank you for your support.

 Your support for the only museum solely dedicated to the history and accomplishments of US military families is not only a show of appreciation for those who serve alongside their service member, but also a guarantee that their legacies and stories will be preserved and shared with future generations. 

Please consider a donation to MAMF

Brats, Events, Military Family Members, Military News, Museum News, Museum of the American Military Family

The Museum of the American Military Family, relies on grants and the support of individuals and groups to do its work of preserving history and providing programming to the public. We are an all-volunteer-run organization that provides paid internships to students. As we prepare for the opening of our Workspace in May, we kindly ask you to support our work by making a donation of any amount to honor a “brat” or two in your family! If you’re unable to donate, please consider sharing this fundraiser on your social media. MAMF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your donation is tax-deductible. Thank you very much in advance for your support!

You can mail in a check, donate directly through our Facebook page DONATE BUTTON, or via Pay Pal or Venmo at this link.

E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE UNDER PRESSURE

Military Family Members, Military News, Museum News, Museum of the American Military Family, Museum Press, News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“The motto, E Pluribus Unum, means ‘out of many, one.’ The museum’s latest project E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE Under Pressure — gives title and substance to a newly-released multi-faceted study exploring if the many do indeed become one,” Dr. Circe Olson Woessner, Executive Director of the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF) explains. “E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE under Pressure curates, in one volume, stories from hundreds of military-connected individuals based on their service experience seen through the lenses of GRAICE (Gender; Religion; rAce; Identity; Culture; and Ethnicity.).”

The 276-page book results from MAMF’s most ambitious undertaking to date. The museum team and the museum’s Veteran•Family•Community Collaborative used an anonymous survey and written essays to answer a series of questions based on a simple theme: How do MANY become ONE without losing ONESELF. “How,” Woessner asks, “do we unite in service and still keep our personhood?”

The “GRAICE Project” involved hundreds of people, including a team of university anthropologists who analyzed the data and sorted it into specific categories in line with topics in the book. In addition to the book, the museum will present a series of podcasts and social media stories.

The book contains art by Brandon Palma, a military brat artist, and compositions by the museum’s two Writers-in-Residence, Valerie Bonham Moon and Connie Kinsey, who wrote essays on single-word prompts. Woessner adds that “almost two dozen other military-connected authors aged 9 to 91 also wrote essays on the same topics –almost like chapter bookends– different generations and perspectives, and these varied voices tell their stories, the good, the bad, the in-between, and the truly awful!”

“During the first 14 years of my life,” Connie Kinsey says, “I had 24 home addresses and experienced things much different from my civilian counterparts. This project is a serious look at life in a military environment as experienced by Brats like me. The stories are heartwarming, thought-provoking, and insightful. This book should be read in small doses, picked up, set down, digested, and revisited.”  Valerie Bonham Moon adds, “It’s also a professional analysis of contemporaneous social pressure that affects the people affiliated with the services.”

The project was grant-funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New Mexico Humanities Council, and the McCune Foundation.

Woessner says that proceeds from this book and other MAMF publications help support the museum’s literary projects and residency programs. To buy a copy of E Pluribus Unum, please click the link:  

 

MAMF’s New Projects

Events, Military Family Members, Military News, Museum News, Museum of the American Military Family, Museum Press

The museum will be releasing E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE Under Pressure in late July 2022. This is part of a multimedia project exploring Gender, Religion, Race, Identity, Culture and Ethnicity in the military/family. In October 2022, look for the companion anthology to Schooling with Uncle Sam to be published. Host Nation Hospitality explores relationships and memories of life overseas. Additionally, the museum will launch its exhibit by the same name in late fall 2022. 

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