It took three decades, but Sherry Knuston, 57, a master’s degree student at the University of Texas at Arlington, has found a way to deal with her post-traumatic stress disorder from her time in the military.
“It was 30 years after I had been sexually molested in the military that I actually found out that it really wasn’t my fault and through the art therapy I was able to come to grips with that. Art therapy, actually, from the very beginning in ’09 enabled me to get through the things that I was allowing to keep myself held back or I was allowing to still be forefront,” Knuston said. “By being able to actually put it out there in art, it enabled me to believe in myself enough to start going back to school and getting back into life again.”
When most people hear the term post-traumatic stress disorder in reference to the military they probably picture a war zone, but for Knutson it recalls both terrorism-related experiences and military sexual trauma (MST).
Knutson’s journey began when she joined the U.S. Air Force just after turning 18. She served for two years, six months and 27 days as an aerospace ground equipment repair technician. She received an honorable discharge in October 1981, when her career ended early due to injury, PTSD and MST.
Knutson was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois, Fort Riley in Kansas, and Hahn Air Base in Germany.
She fractured her ankle while in basic training in 1979 at Lackland and under pressure from her technical instructor kept training on it. Knuston went two years and 10 casts before the military finally did reconstruction surgery on her ankle while she was in Germany.
During this time, Knuston moved on to tech school at Chanute, where after going out for drinks and dancing with fellow service members she experienced what is now referred to as date-rape.
“I had gone to Pit & Ping [airmen’s club] and I had danced and drank with this guy that I knew from basic training and on the way home, he basically assaulted me and then acted like it was nothing,” she recalls. “The next day, I went to our first sergeant and it became a ‘he said, she said.’ ”
As the sergeant questioned her account of events, it came up that the two had been drinking, the man was 21 and Knuston was 18, under the legal drinking age.
“And so it was told to me that I could press charges but to know that I would also have charges pressed against me for drinking underage,” Knuston said. “So they let things go.”
Later in her service, while stationed at Hahn, Knuston would experience this trauma again.
“I hitchhiked from the town that I lived in to base and I was picked up by another military person, somebody I didn’t know. And he basically let me know as we were coming from the valley to up on the hill that he was going to rape me,” Knuston recalled. “He was going to have me and if I gave him any trouble, he would make sure that I died a very painful death.”
“He goes and in between these two towns, he starts turning into the woods and I opened the door,” she remembered. “I just knew in my heart that if I let him get me in there that I wasn’t coming out. So I jumped out of the car.”
Her attacker followed her and tackled her, but a German national driving by on a motorcycle helped her to the next town, where she reported the incident to a police officer who insisted that she return to base to be examined.
“As it turned out, they never really took [me] very seriously and they tried to say that could it be a person that I knew, and why was I protecting him,” she said, explaining that she didn’t know the man’s name.
It was also while she was stationed in Germany that terrorists bombed Oktoberfest in Munich on Sept. 26, 1980, severely injuring seven people from her base.
After her discharge, she waitressed and tended bar before earning a bachelor’s degree in metrology and calibration and going to work for the auto industry in Detroit. She’s married in 2000 and now lives with her husband in far southwest Fort Worth.
It wasn’t until her ankle tore apart once more, 30 years after the initial injury, that Knuston was sent on the path to physical and emotional therapy for all that she endured during her service.
In 2009 the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Fort Worth Outpatient Clinic, then located at 300 W. Rosedale St., hosted a veterans roundup offering shots and medical information, as well as information about veterans benefits and services in North Texas. She had never gotten professional assistance or therapeutic services for both her physical and mental trauma at that point, Knuston said, so she “went down by myself, and again, at this point, I’m thinking everything was my own fault. I don’t deserve anything.”
At the clinic, a female staff member was handing out information to the veterans, and when the brochure on MST hit Knuston’s hand she could no longer hold in her feelings.
“I just started crying because I realized then that they, being the military, knew. They knew. They knew this shit was going on and they let it be on me for all that time,” Knuston said.
The clinic is where she learned not only that she could get care from Veteran Affairs through benefits she earned from her service, but that they could put her in touch with a medical professional to work through her traumas. And from there Knuston was able to see a psychiatrist, attend group and one-on-one therapy, and finally try art therapy.
She got involved in art therapy with Jane Avila, founder of the Fort Worth nonprofit The Art Station, through a program Avila was running through the clinic.
It was later, through vocational rehab within the VA, that she started attending UT Arlington and spoke with Alexander about the art therapy program, which fits in with her studies as she is working toward a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in fine arts.
Artopia actually brought Knuston full circle – her first project under Avila in 2009 had been to make a collage representing who she was, and the first project in Artopia was the same. Knuston says she can see the difference in herself in ‘09 and now when she compares the collages side by side.
“When I did the first one, what I could see in it is I was somewhat justifying who I was. I have this one picture on it where it was a camel swimming upstream because I persevere, I strive. Next to that over in the corner, actually, was this picture of a ship that had just been built. All together in a group are these workmen and they’re all smiling with each other and then about a hundred feet away is one person. It’s like yeah, I know I belong in there, but I always feel like I’m out here,” she described.
“So fast forward to the Artopia project and I found a picture where there’s a waterfall coming down and someone leaping. I incorporated a map and it said ‘University of Texas Arlington’ with our maverick [logo]. So it was much more about where I was and how I was moving forward as opposed to the first one that was just about, well, this is who I am,” Knuston said. “It went from justifying to conveying. First I justified who I was and now I’m conveying that I can go anywhere. I can do these things that I put in front of me and jump in and enjoy the plunge.”
Although Knuston isn’t currently in any art therapy classes, she has taken her lessons and incorporated them in her own life, keeping a small journal to create art about how she’s feeling. She explains that putting her thoughts and feelings out there in picture or in abstract can sometimes be more descriptive and more therapeutic than using words.
“Through my experience now I realize that as Americans, we don’t really prep ourselves or our children to deal with traumatic incidents,” Knuston said. “I believe that everyone at some time in their lives could benefit from art therapy … there’s just so much that goes on that if you can at least capture and be able to put a space on it or a feel to it, a look to it, it’s a hell of a lot better than holding it all in.”
Knowing that one day a month she was going to be able to go in and deal with things going on in her life now or in the past in a healthy way was not only something to look forward to but something for her to enjoy.
“I would say this, and I truly mean it, that art therapy allowed me to get back into life fully as opposed to living in just a shell of who I was,” she said. “I just wonder what life would have been like if, when I did get out [of the military], it had been available then.”
To read the main story on Artopia, click here.