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Mom Died of Cancer at 5. She Built I Will Survive. | Anisa Palmer

Anisa Palmer, Iraq combat Veteran, 82nd Airborne, founder of I Will Survive, tells their story to Vegas Veteran Voices, a Veteran-led nonprofit in Las Vegas.

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In this story: Anisa Palmer, Iraq combat Veteran, 82nd Airborne, founder of I Will Survive
Service branch: U.S. Army
Organization: I Will Survive Inc.
Resources: I Will Survive, Inc.: listed in our resource directory
Published: July 17, 2026
Running time: 59 minutes (59:58)
Production: Filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Veteran-led nonprofit in Las Vegas

“How am I supposed to help people until I can help myself?”

Anisa PalmerHear it at 54:05

About this story

Anisa Palmer grew up on 82 square miles of ocean in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Her mom, Puerto Rican, 38 years young, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Anisa was five. Life went chaotic. Her youngest sister was one year old when mom died. Her dad raised four girls and one boy. Alone.
She was the wild child. The black sheep. Did things her own way.
The only one who served.
At 21 she met a recruiter and shipped off. Boot camp in South Carolina in the winter, hypothermia and pneumonia at the same time. Platoon leader from a hospital bed with an IV in her arm. Seven months later she was going off to war.
Two combat tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division. Bronze Star. Combat Action Badge. Iron Warrior Award. First mission, she got pulled off. Everyone else died.
She got out. Three months in a tiny apartment. Alcohol. Insomnia. One question she couldn't stop asking herself: if I don't do this, what else am I going to do?
She built I Will Survive Inc. a nonprofit that doesn't point cameras at suffering. It pays rent. It fills fridges. It walks into homes where cancer has taken everything and shows up when nobody else does. Because awareness campaigns are great for awareness. But the bills still come.
In this episode Anisa talks about what it costs to be the only one in your family who goes. What it means to hold a dying patient's hand and realize it feels exactly like holding a dying soldier. Why she named her nonprofit something a survivor could say out loud and actually mean. What she told her sisters before she deployed to Iraq. Why she became Miss January for Pin-Ups for Vets. And what she's still working on because even the woman who shows up for everyone else is still learning to show up for herself.
Not a single tear or scar is ever going to be wasted. It's going to be used to bless the world.

Connect with Anisa Palmer:
I Will Survive Inc., iwillsurviveinc.org
Instagram: @OfficialAnisaPalmer
Book: Purpose: The Ultimate Climax, available on Amazon

Vegas Veteran Voices is a Veteran-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In their words

“Not a single tear or a single scar is ever going to be wasted. It’s going to be used to bless the world.”

Anisa PalmerHear it at 21:25

“It makes me sad that some people don’t have a little piece of joy, a little piece of purpose that they’re living every day.”

Anisa PalmerHear it at 36:37

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