Dallas Knight was 17 years old when she decided to join the Army. She had seen the effects of drug abuse on her peers as a teenager and knew a career in the military could open the door to becoming a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent. So she joined the Military Police Corps and prepared for law enforcement work.
Then, terrorists attacked the Twin Towers.
“I remember the morning of 9/11,” she told IW Features, “calling my mom and telling her that I was going to go to war.”
Today, Knight is speaking out for female veterans, uplifting their stories, and creating a healing community for women who face PTSD and trauma after military service through her organization Operation Juliet.
Knight’s own story begins after just a few months of training when the United States launched Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and combat boots hit the desert ground. Military police like Knight supported combat missions, provided security, and guarded prisoner-of-war camps.
There, halfway across the world from everyone she knew, Knight spent most of the year living in brutal conditions.
“I’ve been rationed water,” she said. “I’ve slept on a cot for eight months. I’ve not taken a shower for more than 90 days. I’ve been up for 38 hours.”
As she recounted her time in Iraq to IW Features, she teared up, pausing to collect her thoughts.
“As hard as it is for me to share my story, it gets a little bit easier… each time,” she said, recalling the military sexual trauma she had experienced at the hands of prisoners of war.
“I have had really horrible sexual things [directed]… towards me,” she elaborated.
When she returned to civilian life, she said she “was just going to take all that baggage and stuff it into a black box and lock it up.” She explained that she worried seeking help could jeopardize her career and security clearance.
She became a mother and started a job as an analyst supporting the DEA. On the surface, her life was a professional and personal success story. But memories of the Iraqi desert cast long shadows over her life.
“I wasn’t sleeping well and was having recurring nightmares,” she said.
“I was just focused on being the best mom I could be and pursuing my career and being the best intelligence analyst that I could be,” she added.
She tried traditional talk therapy, but she went through a career change, divorce, and more than a decade of her life with this unprocessed trauma.
“I found myself in 2021 in a very dark space,” Knight said. “I was depressed, and when I wasn’t depressed, I was anxious. And when I wasn’t anxious, I was suicidal.”
She said she craved connection with other women and community. And when she finally had “a little bit of a breath” to jumpstart healing after a family member helped her focus on nutrition, she decided to attend a women’s networking event in the hopes of forming those connections.
Surrounded by a room of women, when it came time to introduce herself, the years of trauma and unprocessed memories all came crashing down.
“I just started bawling my eyes out,” Knight said. And then she began to tell the women pieces of her story.
The women welcomed her with open arms, and it was the introduction Knight needed to additional avenues for healing. With nothing to lose, she began reflecting on her time in the army. She opened her old journals and relived her army life page by page.
“A lot of times, I would put it back down, slam it back down, mad, upset, feeling things I wasn’t ready to feel, and then vow to myself that I’d never pick it up again,” she said. “It took me six months to get through 89 journal entries.”
The journey through her story as a 19-year-old female combat veteran became her book, Shattered Reflections—a war journal, and a path toward healing. Releasing the book was, Knight said, a “pivotal moment” where she finally could open up to her friends, family, and even strangers.
As she struggled down her own path of healing, she said she realized there must be other female veterans with similar battles. This led her to start the Not So Average Jane Podcast to share the stories of female combat veterans.
“My goal was to build an encyclopedia, a historical digital copy of these women’s stories,” she said.
Hearing these women’s accounts, Knight said her “analyst’s brain turned back on” to spot the patterns through the experiences. And the reality of these women’s stories was horrific.
“90% of the women… shared that they’d experienced military sexual trauma,” Knight said, noting the Department of Veterans Affairs reports that only one in three female veterans experience military sexual trauma.
Time after time, she heard the stories of female veterans who had been harassed, assaulted, and abused but were too afraid to speak up. In just one example, Knight recounted a female colonel who had been raped twice in her career but never reported the assaults—or had ever spoken about her experience. When women did report the sexual harassment and assaults, the perpetrators were often reassigned rather than held accountable, Knight said.
“The women want to be a part of the boys’ club, and they want to fit in,” she said. “Our threshold, our tolerance, our standards are lowered significantly so that we can just fit in.”
And when women return home from service, the Department of Veterans Affairs offers little more than pills and “Band-Aid solutions,” Knight said. “It makes you feel like they really just want you to fail so that they don’t have to pay for you to get any type of healthcare.”
But Knight is not a woman who sits idly by and waits for a solution. She is, as she described the other women she’s interviewed, a “badass combat veteran.”
She began to look for resources for the women she spoke to, but the programs she found were “centered around some type of masculine activity, hunting, fishing, gathering, pig hunts, archery.”
Meanwhile, the women Knight spoke with shared how they had lost their sense of femininity.
“The military trains it out of us,” she explained. “It trains [out] the nurturing, loving, kiss-the-boo-boos-better type of woman deep down to our DNA.”
As she launched a retreat for female combat veterans, she heard from female veterans of all stripes across the country, desperate for community and to reclaim their womanhood. And in October 2024, she launched Operation Juliet.
The nonprofit is “dedicated to empowering female veterans through holistic healing, leadership development, and community support, ensuring they thrive in every aspect of life,” according to the organization’s website.
At their first “(not so) Average Jane” retreat, Knight brought together a group of 10 female combat veterans from across America for holistic healing, community building, and activities like equine and art therapy.
“It’s really about the woman first,” Knight said.
And as the organization grows, Knight said they serve all female veterans with the goal of having chapters across the country, like the American Legion.
“If women out there, female veterans out there, want to bring Operation Juliet to their community, all they have to do is reach out,” she said.
For now, she is focused on growing the organization as quickly as funding allows, all while working a day job and raising her two sons. It’s this that makes her a true champion woman: she’s a mother, an advocate for women, and on a mission to serve those who have already sacrificed to serve America.
And if her story so far is any gauge, Knight will not stop until her mission is complete.
