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Want to decompress?

A few days later, Jackson, 40, a U.S. Army truck driver, went on her first mission, hauling supplies to a distant base. Suddenly, her partner, who was driving at the time, slammed on the brakes, sending Jackson hurtling into the windshield. The move probably saved her life as a mortar round flew past the truck.

When she returned to her trailer, Jackson took down the photos from the walls.

“I said, ‘You can’t focus on your family.’ I couldn’t come and sit and see that every day. I had to focus on the mission,” she said. “You get so numb. You have to turn off your emotions.”

Jackson is part of a record number of women serving in the military – many of whom served as truck drivers, gunners and combat medics – who face unique challenges when they return home to their children from the war zone. She’s also part of a historic wave of women who are fundamentally changing the military and sparking a push to revolutionize the lumbering Veterans Affairs medical system that was set up for older, male veterans – not women in need of child care and changing tables.

More than 212,000 women have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 11 percent of the total deployed military force. Forty percent of active-duty women have children. And more than 30,000 single mothers have been deployed to the war zone, according to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Elwanda Hawthorne, a counselor at the VA-run Austin Veterans Center, says female veterans – and especially mothers – face a set of challenges when they come home that is different from those of their male counterparts.