Supporting Servicewomen Through Moral Injury Care

Moral injury isn’t a buzzword or a rebrand of Post Traumatic Stress. It’s what happens when military service members face actions and events that violate their core values, or when the institutions and leaders they trusted fail them. We sit down with Air Force Reserve chaplain and Moral Injury Support Network for Servicewomen (MISNS) board member Lindsay Moser to unpack why women in uniform are uniquely vulnerable to moral injury, how military sexual trauma and institutional betrayal compound the harm, and what real, practical healing looks like when chaplains, clinicians, social workers, and commanders work together.

We walk through concrete distinctions between fear-based PTS and value-based moral injury, highlighting why standard PTS protocols often miss grief, shame, and the profound identity disruption that follows betrayal. Lindsay shares how the Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women—through the Harriet Tubman matching network, free leader guidebooks, continuing education, and research—connects women with tailored support that meets spiritual, psychological, and practical needs. From transfers that remove a member from a harmful command climate to food and utility assistance that stabilizes life, we explore how addressing root causes and basic needs unlocks deeper recovery.

We also tackle under-discussed realities, such as breastfeeding in the military, operational tempo, postpartum fitness standards, and the subtle ways culture can either uphold dignity or intensify distress. Along the way, we discuss creative healing modalities—such as writing, art, and music—that help service women process complex stories when words alone are insufficient. If you’re a leader, provider, or battle buddy, you’ll come away with language to recognize moral injury, steps to build an interdisciplinary web of care, and resources to share immediately.

Explore MISNS resources at msns.org, learn about the Tubman Network, and consider supporting this work for women who’ve borne the weight of service. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with a leader or teammate, and leave a review so more listeners can find it. Your voice helps move this from quiet pain to collective repair.

Chapters

• 0:29 Meet Lindsay Moser And MISNS
• 2:26 Moral Injury Versus PTSD
• 5:12 Who Moral Injury Affects Beyond Combat
• 6:54 Women’s Specific Needs And MST
• 11:08 Chaplains, Medicine, And An Interdisciplinary Model
• 14:49 Command Awareness And Institutional Betrayal
• 18:37 Root Causes And Practical Support
• 20:23 Breastfeeding, Identity, And Unit Culture
• 22:50 How To Access The Tubman Network
• 26:00 Donate, Resources, And Leader Education
• 27:28 The Next Five Years: Research And Regional Community
• 30:34 Closing And Listener Actions

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:15

Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run. This week, our guest is Lindsay Moser. She's on the board of directors of the Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women. We are very, very interested in any organization that is helping our veterans deal with moral injury. Many of them don't recognize that they have it, or it is what they have, but they're being treated uh for PTSD because it's the only thing treatment-wise that practitioners can think of. I was very intrigued when I saw that this was a support network dedicated to service women, because as we know, on all levels, women who have served in the military are underserved, not only by the VA, but pretty much every organization out there. And so I'm always very interested in in groups that are focusing in on delivering services that are needed to female service members. So uh Lindsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lindsey Moser: 1:19

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

Larry Zilliox: 1:21

If you would, uh are you prior service or um I am prior service as well as current service.

Lindsey Moser: 1:26

I'm in the Air Force Reserve. Okay.

Larry Zilliox: 1:28

All right. And what's your job in the Air Force Reserve? I'm a chaplain. Okay. Tell us a little bit about the organization and how it got started.

Lindsey Moser: 1:36

Yeah. So the organization really got its roots started in uh 2015, um, when Dr. Daniel Roberts, um, who's the president and CEO of our long name is the Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated. Just save a little bit of time, we say missions, um, because we believe that we are on a mission to provide critical support for women service members as well as their families and people that support them as they transition from the military into the next step in their life and also as they navigate the military if they're currently serving. So Dan identified a need for service women to have more targeted care in terms of dealing with moral injury. And, you know, as you've discussed on the podcast before, and, you know, as people kind of in the field are aware, uh, moral injury is similar to PTSD. It's sort of like those two circles on a Venn diagram. There are some definite areas of overlap, but treating it as the same as PTSD was leading to some gaps in care. And so missions kind of comes alongside service women through training, continuing education for practitioners and people in direct care to service women, as well as educational workshops and conferences. And then we also have um basically a matching network where service women can apply to be matched with a counselor, a social worker, chaplain who is able to provide more tailored support. So that's like one-on-one volunteer support. Um, but we are a nonprofit. Um I got involved with missions back at the end of 2019, and then I came on their board of directors in 2020. Have really enjoyed learning from really people that are kind of leading the charge in this area of not only moral injury support, but research as well. So we we've had a number of uh publications um as well as a recently released guidebook for military leaders to identify moral injury and provide support in a way that is um not only empathetic and emotionally intelligent, but effective.

Larry Zilliox: 3:50

Well, our listeners will be familiar with the issue. We did a wonderful podcast with uh Captain Wooten, who was the chaplain for the Soldier Recovery Unit at Fort Belvoir. She's now um the chaplain up at uh West Point. And uh she uh had been bringing out uh active duty soldiers in the SRU for a week of counseling related to moral injury, and then came out with families, and then came out with cadre. So it is something that can affect uh people across a broad spectrum. It's not just only people who've been in combat. It can be command abandonment, it can be things that happen in their personal life. That's so I want our listeners to understand that this is not just a combat injury. Now, a lot of moral injury results from being in a combat theater, having to make decisions that go against your moral code. You can find moral injury across the entire spectrum, not only of service members that we see, but also in the private sector when it comes to law enforcement, EMS, frontline healthcare workers. You can find it, I mean, I think about COVID and I think about decisions that frontline healthcare workers needed to make in a hospital setting uh about who received what treatment and and that kind of thing. And clearly they many were probably plagued with moral injury. Listeners, I want to direct your attention to the uh webpage, which is misns.org, O-R-G. There's plenty of resources there. Want you to go and check it out. There's also a podcast by Dr. Dr. Daniel Roberts. He does a uh podcast and has fascinating guests. I I can I can't wait to start listening to them. What do you see is the number one issue for female service members that they come to you with as far as it doesn't even have to be moral injury, but but it almost always winds up with some aspect of it. But what are what are the issues that are really prevalent for female service members and veterans?

Lindsey Moser: 6:07

That's a great question. I think that with moral injury in general, what we see most often is this profound sense of grief and loss because with a morally injurious experience, the individual has been destabilized. And so the person that they knew themselves to be has somehow changed. This can either be because they witnessed something that transgressed their moral compass, or that they were complicit in that, or that they had to be the one to carry out the order or make the decision, um, or that something was done to them. Another layer that we see with specifically women and women identifying service members that come to our organization is um military sexual trauma, MST. So events of sexual violence that are gender-based are um definitely tied and wrapped up in moral injury. Because really at the core, and you know, Jonathan Jonathan Shade discusses this in his treatment of moral injury, sort of the classic kind of traditional treatment of, you know, what is moral injury and how do we sort of define it is that it's the sense of uh something happened that wasn't supposed to happen. There's something that that isn't right. And that sense of not rightness is something that occurs with MST and events of gender-based and sexual violence against women's service members. That we have this expectation, you know, in as a woman service member myself, like I expect for my fellows in arms to respect me, not only because of my, you know, rank or military identity, but as a person because we, you know, we preach this message of respect. And so when that is not upheld, it can be extremely destabilizing. It brings a sense of betrayal. I think that also something that is um maybe understudied, but definitely emerging within moral injury and definitely something that we've seen with the people that use our network or who attend our conferences is moral injury as it evolves in um institutional situations, like that institutional betrayal, that sense of I trusted the system and I got burned, I trusted my commander and I was betrayed. That's also something that um we're starting to talk a lot more about and raise awareness about because it is definitely um uh, you know, moral injury um that occurs not only in the military, but as you say, in other contexts as well.

Larry Zilliox: 8:49

You know, I see that it really is the chaplain corps that's at the forefront of identifying moral injury and trying to boost awareness uh within the commands and to look for an avenue of treatment. I wonder what you think about that as far as should it be in up to chaplains or or should there be a treatment, a medical treatment approach to this? I I know that the medical side is struggling to understand it and all they do is just put it off as PTSD and we'll deal with it like that. But as you said earlier, it's just not the answer. Do you think that the chaplain corps should be the the tip of the spear for dealing with this issue?

Lindsey Moser: 9:43

I think that chaplains and um, you know, in in the Air Force we call our enlisted, our enlisted um partners uh religious affairs airmen. Um I think that chaplains and religious affairs airmen can help provide some of that language so that we're all on the same page. But I think the approach has to be interdisciplinary. One thing that we're really proud about with missions is that our continuing education opportunities, conferences and workshops have started to attract a lot of people in the medical professional, um, the medical profession, um, as well as social workers and um psychologists and really, you know, people that are maybe seeing moral injury in in different contexts than the military chaplains are. And in our research and in conversations that we've had with these partners about what does moral injury look like in your practice and in your field, is that there are so many components that translate across disciplines. And because of that, and because of the complexity and the way that it presents, particularly compared to PTSD and related to PTSD, our approach to address it and facilitate spaces for sealing for healing, I think has have to also be interdisciplinary. So I think that the chaplain core can definitely provide a valuable voice in that fight against moral injury going unnoticed and untreated. I think that one thing too that's specific to moral injury is that it has a definite and often common spiritual component. And so for the chaplain core, that's also something that we focus on intensely is how can we care for you in your spiritual self? Like how can we support that spiritual component? Because we believe that, you know, the spiritual pillar is, you know, one of one of the essential pillars, just like your physical body needs care, your spiritual self also needs care. And moral injury impacts the spiritual self in a really profound way. And if we can address that and come alongside people to provide that spiritual care, then I think that that is definitely a part of facilitating healing. And at the end of the day, it's only one piece of the pie.

Larry Zilliox: 12:12

Do you think that from a command level that they're sort of giving this to the chaplain core to deal with? Or is there any associated funding? Are they recognizing that more research needs to be done, or this just can't be another thing that's offloaded on the chaplain core?

Lindsey Moser: 12:33

Yeah, that's such a good question. Because I have experienced different orientations to it depending on our MAGCOM in the Air Force, you know, there there might be more of an emphasis in one MADCOM versus another and even down to the base level. I think one of the things I will say, like I think that may be a shortfall that we can do more to address is that if moral injury is part of the conversation in care, and you know, if if the Chaplain Corps, for example, are the ones expected to be um targeting and and leading care and the only ones sort of dealing with it among the service members, I think that commanders, if they're aware, would do more. I think it's a matter of bringing that message very broadly so that commanders and and those, you know, senior enlisted um personnel, um, our civilian leaders, like there's making the message so broad and widely known that there's no excuse not to provide that care so that they can also have the question or at least begin the conversation. You know, one of the things that I experienced um in the Air Force was that we're the only confidential resource on the base. And so in a given day, I could hear everything from I'm stressing out because I can't manage my time, like I'm really stressed out with all these taskers, to I have really serious suicidal ideations and I basically need a best friend right now, or I'm not gonna go home tonight. So in a in the course of a given day, it was quite the diverse spectrum of issues that were presenting among the service members that I directly served. And I think that if someone, for example, had a great relationship with their first sergeant, had a great relationship with um, you know, their their battle buddy or like somebody in the shop with them, um, if someone was, or even a commander, like to go to whoever is above them and say, like, hey, I'm dealing with this set of things, for that person to not only be the confidant, but to say, like, hey, this sounds like moral injury, I think that that would be exponentially powerful because then we have this common language, we can start to identify it. And even at the end of the day, like the treatment needs to look like, oh, you go to mental health or you get connected with a VA or you get connected with a nonprofit in the community that you know is is doing work that you um can benefit from, no matter kind of what the outcome looks like, if we can at least start the ball rolling and start that conversation, I think that that can only help.

Larry Zilliox: 15:11

Well, listeners, I'm in the middle of reading the chaplain's handbook on moral injury, which is a really great uh book. It really lays out what moral injury is and and the different contexts that it it can materialize. And if you know a chaplain, ask them about moral injury and ask them about whether or not they've talked to their command about moral injury. And if you know anybody at the Pentagon, ask them about moral injury because it's great that a commander on a base is knowledgeable about it and willing to help, but they only ha can affect those individuals on that base. When we're talking about upper command, when we're talking about Pentagon level, we're talking about changes that could be made that could affect a large number of service members across the services. Think about that. Anytime you have a conversation that you know of with a colonel buddy, a major, a general, ask them about moral injury, what they know about moral injury and what they think should be done about moral injury. Because more than anything, the conversation just needs to be out there about it. And the more that people talk about it, I think the more interest will grow. And hopefully at some point there will be this synergy between the chaplain corps and the medical corps that says we both need to be involved. Right now I feel like it's more being pushed off on the chaplain corps than than uh medical uh commands, unfortunately. And I think that's they both need to be involved. I I just feel like our service members aren't being fully served when they're not getting the proper treatment or they're just getting the wrong treatment because they're being shuffled into a PTS program.

Lindsey Moser: 17:12

Yeah, and I mean that I think the best care is holistic. So again, thinking about that whole person concept or like, you know, we'll use the verbiage like the whole uh airmen concept um concept, we can't, I think, effectively address just one piece and kind of ignore all the rest. And so if a service member is surrounded by a network, I'll providing holistic support, I think so much the better. Like that would go that would go so far into facilitating healing that uh is effective and lasting and in actually addressing the needs that they have.

Larry Zilliox: 17:45

I think the root causes sometimes need to be addressed. When you have a service member who has moral injury uh because of command abandonment, they need to be transferred. They're never going to trust the command again. They need a transfer to another base or another installation, or they can't be expected to function within a command or at a base where that you know they were a whistleblower that did not get protection. Those things, I mean, you you gotta look at the root cause too, and say, okay, are we making sure we're addressing that and correcting that because you can't have that ongoing while somebody is trying to treat or deal with moral injury, but we're not really separating them from the root cause.

Lindsey Moser: 18:37

Yeah. And even with, you know, our our veteran support, one of the things that um missions has done um to support veterans specifically is in the past three months, we've helped 180 women receive counseling through our Harriet Tubman network, where, you know, you're matched with someone who's able to provide tailored care. But it's not only counseling, we've been able to provide them with access to tangible goods and um as well as utility bill assistance. And that's something that I think about a lot, sort of thinking back to like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like you can't really reach that self-actualization realm if you're worried about what you're gonna eat and where you're gonna sleep and your safety. And so I think that even just resource sharing, I think is is gonna be really important in that conversation and that sort of trickle down that you're describing, I think would go such a long way if we just were aware of the resources to begin with. But then as you say, you know, another example that comes to mind in terms of what is the root cause, sometimes it's something that doesn't seem like it has a direct correlation on, for example, a military-specific experience like combat. And you said that kind of at the beginning, you know, although the research sort of promulgated from um combat veterans who are coming back and it's like, well, it's not quite PTSD, but it's similar. And so the research has kind of evolved from there. Um, but even something that's specific to women service members is breastfeeding. Um, this is something that I'm really passionate about. I'm a military lactation counselor through a program that provides inclusive breastfeeding education and also looks at some of the nuances that service women have to go through to successfully breastfeed or chest feed a baby. And so part of it is navigating the healthcare system while you're on active duty, even you know, if you're um in the guard or in the reserve, um, managing military insurance and then finding a good provider to help you, such as an IBCLC or an MLC to help you figure out, you know, your plan for breastfeeding and meet your goals. But then also pumping with the ops tempo in your shop or in your unit, if you're a flyer, if you get deployed, if you have training, um, either while you're pregnant and you're hoping to breastfeed, or um, while you're postpartum, sufficient postpartum leave. And, you know, do you um go TDY or do you deploy while you're postpartum? And then what does fitness look like after that? And can you meet your fitness goals while also meeting breastfeeding goals? And that's something that we don't, you know, probably think of like right off the top of our head, like, oh yeah. But I can say like sort of firsthand experience, the support that I received or the lack of support had a direct impact on my morale and like my sense of identity. And I think that that's something that uh is really important and also uh unique to service women is that, you know, the the lack of support that they might potentially receive in their unit or say from a commander or even from somebody that is supposed to be there and you know that hey, this is my battle buddy, like this is the person that I go to work with every day and I'm you know serving our country alongside. And if they don't understand the importance of this or they denigrate it somehow or they create a barrier where I can't meet this goal, then that can be really destabilizing for that sense of self, but also like this is my ability to provide for my child in a really unique and intimate way. And so that's something that, you know, hopefully on the horizon, like even with missions, we've talked a little bit about some projects, even if it's just a research project, if we publish a journal article that deals directly, you know, with that, I think that that's an example of something that, you know, it's not on the surface, or if it's not probably something that we're talking about in a lot of the the research meetings, but it it is definitely um a piece of that puzzle.

Larry Zilliox: 22:36

And what's the best way for uh a female service member to reach out to the organization to get counseling or help?

Lindsey Moser: 22:44

Yeah, that's a great question. So, like I mentioned, our Harriet Tubman network is our network run by chaplain Colonel Care and Meeker. If you're interested in serving, for example, as a volunteer for that network and your your provider, so a social worker, a counselor, a chaplain, we would love to hear from you. If you're somebody who is looking to get care, then you can get connected just through our main website. We also are on all the social media platforms, and it's just called um the Tubman Network. We also have um moral injury guidebooks that we distribute for free. I think we gave out um about 280 since last May. And this is specifically for military leaders, again, to kind of help them um just continue that conversation and be familiar with the language and what moral injury looks like as it presents in their service members. Um, but I think it's also a really great resource just for anybody who doesn't really know much about moral injury to learn more. And then we also provide continuing education and we've worked with over 600 licensed counselors in the last couple of months. We do a lot of work with um grants and also hosting, holding an annual conference and then some regional um sort of mini conferences and workshops. We work a lot with veteran support groups and other nonprofits who are also on the front line doing the work of support. Really, the the easiest way, though, to get in touch is we have um Dr. Roberts' email address. We also have like a support, you know, get in touch form at the bottom of our website. If you fill that out, then a real person will turn around and get in touch with you in uh a very short amount of time. We we really pride ourselves in having excellent sort of customer service. You know, all of our all of our efforts are, you know, volunteer. Again, we're a nonprofit. We want to be able to provide these things completely free, sort of no barrier to to the people that come to us. Um, if you're interested in attending a conference, for example, and you're not able to um pay the conference fee, then we have scholarships available. So pretty much with any situation, we take it very case by case. Um and if if you're looking for something, even if it's like one of us can come and sit down and have coffee and like talk with you and say, okay, what is the need that is presenting? Like, how can we support you? Can we match you with somebody in your area? Maybe you just need somebody to kind of talk through your um your stressors in in real time, like somebody literally sitting across a table from you. Like we can make that happen. When is the conference? Um, so check our website for the um the most up-to-date details on that. I remember when I first got involved with missions, that was right as we were going into COVID. And so we were it was a really interesting experience having to pivot and basically hold hold that virtually. We do have a lot of um sort of mini conferences and and workshop opportunities that are virtual though. So if travel is not doable for somebody, we do have um several virtual opportunities throughout the year. Okay. Um, and we also um have a newsletter that comes out that you can sign up for to uh stay up to date with those dates.

Larry Zilliox: 25:45

Okay, great. Well, listeners, the uh webpage again is msns.org. I want everybody to go and take a look at it. If you know a female service member, please shoot them the URL, shoot them the link to this webpage, tell them to take a look at it, and our regular listeners will know what I'm gonna say. Right up there in that right-hand corner, you know what it is. It's the donate button. So donate, please. This is a a really worthy cause. I mean, there aren't many organizations out there that are specifically geared towards providing resources and services for female service members. They are underserved across the board, and this is a way for you to donate and help this organization help other uh female service members. So please give what you can, uh, make sure you donate, visit the webpage and check on uh uh Dr. Roberts uh podcast and give it a listen. I saw some very interesting guests that he had, and uh I know I'm gonna add it to my list of podcasts, but uh Lindsay, where do you see the organization say in five years?

Lindsey Moser: 27:10

I know that we've talked about continuing our partnerships with other um organizations that are supporting military members and their families. I would love to see that continue to grow. I would love to see um partnerships with um really interesting creative organizations that use the arts specifically. That's kind of my background, is like English and creative spirituality. I think that would be fascinating to continue research on moral injury and how the art modalities are able to facilitate healing and self-exploration. I think that would be fabulous. I would love to see more regional conferences. That's definitely a direction that we're hoping to go in the next few years, is um smaller regional conferences so that people don't have to travel very far, but they get a sense of there's a community locally that they can plug into so that they're not alone. Because I think that's a big part of this is when you've experienced moral injury, you feel very isolated and you feel like you're the only one. And part of understanding not only the injury, but how to move forward in a way that brings the self-dignity is bearing witness with other people. So you have a sense of community. And for military members and and for our service women, this is also something that will already be familiar to them is that sense of community that kind of automatically comes with a military um tribe. Yeah, exactly. And and that's part of what makes it so hard is you know, when when you've experienced betrayal by that community or you've run up against something that violates the moral compass in the community that you've, you know, really written your whole self over to that that can be that can be really significant. And so replicating community in a really positive way with people that understand a little bit maybe of what you've gone through or in some cases have had the same type of experience and and bear that same moral injury and want to walk with you through that experience, I think that is key. And so focusing our efforts regionally, I think will will continue to help propel us in a new direction. And I think other than that, just continuing our research. I'm really proud to serve with missions because I think our research is really groundbreaking. We focus on different aspects of moral injury as it presents for families, spouses, as it relates to MST. So just a lot of really great research that I think will continue, make the continue to make the information more accessible.

Larry Zilliox: 29:53

Wow. Well, uh, we wish you all the luck. I mean, you guys are doing phenomenal work. Again, listeners, the webpage is MISNS.org. Check it out, make a donation, help them out as much as you can. Uh, Lindsay, I can't thank you enough for stopping by and sitting down with us and Telling us all about the wonderful organization.

Lindsey Moser: 30:17

Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure.

Larry Zilliox: 30:20

Well, listeners, we'll have another episode next Monday morning at 0500. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriors.org. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms. We're on YouTube and Wreaths Across America Radio. Until then, thanks for listening.