Marine Corps Combat Engineer to Wounded Warrior Project. Antonio Bonfiglio

Toughness, identity, and rebuilding life after years of drift

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Antonio Bonfiglio says the lie he's told himself: “I’m tough.”

Not as a flex. Not as a slogan.

As something he’s been repeating to himself for a long time, even while he’s not sure he believes it on the inside.

That’s where his story starts. Not with a uniform, a title, or a highlight reel. It starts with a kid who felt short, chubby, and overlooked. A kid with asthma and allergies who spent too much time sick, in hospitals, and trying to figure out how to not look weak. It starts with bullying, getting thrown into fights, and learning what it means to stand your ground, whether you’re ready or not.

Antonio grew up in South Florida, then got ripped out of it at 13 and moved back to New Jersey. Hockey was his life until it wasn’t. Without that anchor, things slid. He got in trouble. His grades tanked. He barely made it out of high school. He drifted through community college the same way, until the runway ran out and he headed to MEPS at Fort Dix, in June 2003 and then the Marine Corps.

From there, the story doesn’t turn into some clean hero arc. It gets complicated. There’s instability. There’s a dark stretch he doesn’t sugarcoat. And then there’s the pivot, when he takes a huge pay cut to work for the Wounded Warrior Project, becomes a physical health and wellness coach, and finds a kind of stability he didn’t have before.

It’s a story about toughness, but not the kind people perform. The kind you build when life keeps stripping the comfort away.

Give a listen to Episode 231 by pushing play below, while you keep reading,

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The Lie of Toughness: Childhood, Fights, and the Need to Prove It

Antonio says something early that doesn’t sound like a punchline.

It’s a confession.

He calls it “the lie,” and the lie is simple: I’m tough.

Not the way people say it when they’re trying to impress someone.

More like something he’s been repeating to himself for years, maybe decades, trying to make it stick. And when he says it, he’s honest enough to follow it up with the part that matters more.

He doesn’t know if he’s actually tough on the inside.

That’s what makes his story worth leaning into. Because right away, you can tell this isn’t going to be a clean, polished “I always knew who I was” kind of conversation.

It’s messier than that.

Antonio describes himself as the kid who always felt like he didn’t measure up, even before life started testing him in the obvious ways.

Short.

Chubby.

The kind of kid who felt like he couldn’t do things the way everyone else could.

He says he felt unnoticed, and that’s a specific kind of frustration. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s just this constant background noise that tells you you’re not enough, even when you’re standing right in front of people.

Even as an adult, he still references his height like it’s part of the file. He jokes that he’s “tall five four,” and even mentions he and his wife are the same height. That detail sticks because it shows how long this has lived with him.

For him, “tough” didn’t show up as a personality trait. It showed up as a survival plan.

And the physical stuff didn’t help.

Antonio talks about asthma and allergies. He was frequently the kid who was sick. The kid who ended up in the hospital. The kid who had something wrong with him when other kids seemed to just be… fine.

Even worse, some of his asthma attacks weren’t random. They came after he got beaten by his older brother.

His older brother was both the source of pain and the source of protection.

Antonio describes being bullied in fifth and sixth grade, and when it happened, his brother would step in and unleash hell on the kid doing it.

That’s loyalty.

That’s protection.

That’s also a kind of dependence. Because when you grow up needing someone else to save you, you don’t really learn how to save yourself.

And Antonio knew that.

He says that by middle school he realized he couldn’t keep running to his brother every time someone messed with him. He had to figure out how to stand up for himself.

But “standing up for yourself” in the environment he describes didn’t look like a calm conversation or an adult stepping in.

It looked like a circle.

Kids surrounding you.

A fight that you didn’t get to opt out of.

Antonio describes this moment where he gets into it with another kid in middle school, and his brother pushed him into that circle and tells him the line that probably burned itself into his system:

“You started it, you finish it.”

And whether Antonio wanted it or not, he learned something in that moment about identity. About reputation. About what happens when you lose. About what happens if you don’t swing back.

He talks about getting his ass handed to him.

And then, after the fight, he goes home with a black eye.

And when his dad asks what happened, Antonio tells him, “I tripped and fell.”

It’s not just a kid lying to avoid a lecture. It’s a kid trying to control the consequences. A kid who’s learned that losing doesn’t end with the fight. Losing can follow you home.

Antonio even says there was fear there. That if he lost a fight, he could end up getting beaten again at home.

So when people talk about toughness, and they talk about “hard childhood” like it’s a badge, this is where it gets real.

Toughness wasn’t a hobby.

It was a way to stop being prey.

And it wasn’t only the fights. It was the family dynamics, too.

Antonio was born in New Jersey, but moved to South Florida around age three. Coral Springs. And his family situation was complicated from the start.

He talks about being one of seven siblings. He has half-siblings. His father was thirty years older than his mother. His parents got married in 1981 and had four kids together, but the half-siblings were his mother’s age or even older.

He describes those older half-siblings less like siblings and more like uncles.

He also talks about why they moved to Florida. His father retired. Florida meant retirement life. More house for the money. A new chapter.

But after moving to Florida, neither his mom or dad enjoyed being there.

They missed New Jersey. They missed their family.

And then there’s this small detail that shows what their home life looked like.

South Florida, for Antonio, wasn’t just where he lived. It was where his life felt normal.

He had friends from preschool and elementary school. He loved it there. He played sports. Football and basketball early. Later roller hockey and ice hockey.

He also talks about neighborhood culture. Kids running around playing games like manhunt. It’s one of those details that sounds innocent, and then it starts to bleed into something else.

Because Antonio wasn’t just playing sports and hanging with friends. He was also watching his older brother.

He wanted to be like him.

Antonio says he had “nice” friends, but he wanted to run with the misfits his brother hung out with. He wanted to prove he could be part of that group. He wanted the status that came with being seen as tough, or at least being seen as somebody.

Because it shows the motivation underneath everything.

When you don’t feel noticed, you start chasing anything that makes you feel like you matter.

He also describes his older brother as someone who had been crossing the line “since the beginning of time.” Cops coming to the house. Trouble that didn’t just belong to him, it belonged to the whole family.

There’s another story from when Antonio was young, an elementary school moment, where he and his brother broke a girl’s purse at the bus stop. His dad gets called to the school. And Antonio remembers his dad showing up and smacking them before even asking what happened.

That’s an environment where consequences hit fast, questions come later, and you learn early that you’d better figure things out quick.

And all of that is the foundation for what happens next.

Because Antonio’s life in Florida didn’t end because he chose to leave.

It ended because his parents decided to sell the house and move back to New Jersey.

The move happened in 1998.

Antonio was 13, about to turn 14.

And he was pissed.

He was sad, upset, disappointed. He loved Florida. He loved his friends. He loved his life there. And suddenly, it’s gone.

He gets moved back to New Jersey, and it hits like betrayal.

And he didn’t adapt overnight.

He says it took about two years, before he could finally say, “I love it here.”

But around that same time, another major piece of his identity starts fading.

Hockey.

Antonio says, hockey was his life.

He went to hockey camp in Canada twice. He was all in. It wasn’t just a sport. It was his identity, his structure, his place.

But then his actions had consequences.

He got in trouble for having marijuana before they left Florida, and his parents stopped him from playing hockey. They told him, “we don’t reward bad behavior.”

And once that anchor starts slipping, Antonio starts slipping with it.

Back in New Jersey, he talks about getting into trouble more.

Not getting good grades.

Looking for the “bad kids.”

Like he was trying to replace the structure he lost with a different kind of belonging.

And his time in high school, Antonio describes as terrible.

He barely makes it out.

He talks about senior year, dropping his younger sister off at school, then sleeping in his car in the parking lot and would just choose to go to class later.

He talks about intentionally causing disruptions in class so he could get kicked out and suspended.

And the thing that makes it more complicated is this: he also worked.

When he got suspended, he’d call his job and go make money.

So you can’t even label him as lazy. He wasn’t just sitting around doing nothing.

He was showing up to something.

Just not school.

After high school, he enrolled in community college, but it’s the same pattern. He’d drive there, walk in, then leave. He wasn’t locked in. He wasn’t committed. He was physically present but mentally gone.

But with pressure building, options shrinking, and a young man who knows he needs a next chapter, even if he doesn’t fully know what it is yet.

MEPS, Open Contract, and Stepping Into the Unknown Without a Plan

By the time Antonio starts moving toward the military, it doesn’t feel like some slow, careful build.

It feels like a door he needs to get through.

However, living in New Jersey and experiencing 9/11 so “close to home,” it inspired patriotism in him, but he felt it was someone else’s job to go do.

So he didn’t go to the recruiter by his own choice. His friend “Baldy” had wanted to join, and asked Antonio if he wanted to take a ride with him. Having nothing going that day, he agreed.

He gets persuaded to take the ASVAB. He walks out of the recruiter’s office having signed an enlistment contract. Baldy didn’t sign up that day.

He goes to MEPS in June 2003.

If you’ve been through it, or you’ve got friends who’ve been through it, you know the weight that place carries. The paperwork, the waiting, the medical checks, the feeling that you’re stepping out of your old life and into something you don’t fully control anymore.

Antonio’s story doesn’t turn MEPS into a heroic scene.

And for him, it was also the first hard reminder that things don’t always go according to plan, even when you think you have one.

Because Antonio had an intended job lined up.

He calls it “logistics air support delivery.”

That’s what he was going in for.

Except when he gets there, that job isn’t “available” anymore.

Whatever the reason, the outcome is simple. Antonio isn’t getting the job he thought he was going to get.

So instead, he gets convinced to go “open contract.”

If you’ve been in the military, you already know what that means.

And if you’re not, it’s still pretty easy to understand. It means you’re going in without a guaranteed job locked in. You’re going to boot camp, and you’re going to pick or volentold from what’s available.

Antonio describes it in plain language.

That’s a huge moment in his story, even though he doesn’t treat it like a big dramatic twist.

Because when you listen to everything that came before it, it fits his pattern almost too well.

The drifting.

The not fully committing.

The moving forward without asking all the questions.

The running off instinct and momentum instead of preparation.

And then suddenly, he’s at MEPS, and he’s getting told, “Here’s what it’s going to be.”

No comfort.

No second chance to go home and rethink it.

Just forward.

Antonio even acknowledges that part of it. That he was there without a plan.

That he didn’t think through the details. He didn’t ask all the questions. He just went.

That’s not something everyone will admit.

A lot of people rewrite that part later.

They tell the story like they always had a clear roadmap and they were locked in from the start.

Antonio doesn’t do that.

He leaves the mess in the story.

He leaves the uncertainty in it.

And honestly, for the people who respect military and first responder careers, that kind of honesty lands harder than any chest-thumping.

Because the truth is, this happens to many. They’re just young. They’re restless. They’re trying to get out of one life and into another.

And they’re hoping the structure will do what they haven’t been able to do on their own.

For Antonio, the military entry point isn’t told as some clean breakthrough where all the pieces finally click.

It’s more like stepping into a fog.

He knows he has to keep moving.

He knows he can’t stay where he is.

But the details of where he’s headed are still blurry.

There’s also a quick cultural touchpoint that pops up in the conversation that matters if you’re part of the world.

Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island.

He’s walking into it with something to prove.

To himself.

Maybe to his family.

Maybe to that kid he used to be who felt weak, unnoticed, sick, and small.

And there’s another important part here that doesn’t get enough attention in most transition stories.

Antonio doesn’t talk like the military saved him on day one.

He doesn’t jump straight into “and then everything got better.”

Boot camp ends with a Drill Instructor telling him his MOS, of course Antonio has no idea what it is. So the D.I. demonstrates with each of his index fingers plugging his ears and stomping at the ground with his foot. He told Antonio, Combat Engineer, “you’re going to be a human mine detector.”

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Fallujah, Haditha, and the Moment He Realized He Was Getting Out

After boot camp, Antonio’s life stops being theoretical.

It stops being about what he might do.

It becomes about where he lands, what he’s assigned to, and what the job actually demands.

From there, he goes to Marine Combat Training.

Then he goes to combat engineer school, where he learned how to use explosives

And by November of 2003, he’s at his first unit.

Second Combat Engineer Battalion.

Second Marine Division.

That right there is the point where things get real. Because a combat engineer isn’t a job you can fake your way through. It’s not just a title. It’s skills, responsibility, and trust. And when you’re attached to infantry units, you don’t get to hide.

You either do the work or you get in the way.

Later, when Antonio talks about Iraq, he gives enough detail that you can feel what the job looked like on the ground.

His first deployment to Iraq was January of 2005 to Fallujah.

If you know what Fallujah means to Marines, you already understand the weight of that word. Antonio talks about flying into TQ, then boarding seven ton trucks and driving straight through Fallujah.

And he says this was right after Operation Phantom Fury. The second battle of Fallujah.

He also describes the kind of briefings that stick with you.

He says they’re driving a route where they’re told there are usually five or six IEDs a day.

Five or six.

A day.

And he remembers someone saying they hadn’t found any IEDs that day.

That’s the kind of line that doesn’t make you feel better. It makes you more alert. Because it doesn’t mean the route is safe. It means the route is waiting.

Antonio says that on that first deployment, he primarily operated around Al Karma.

He says they were in support of 3/8.

And he describes how combat engineers were used. Squads and fire teams were placed with different companies within 3/8 to support their missions.

So one moment, they’re going house to house and blowing down doors.

Next moment, they’re out looking for IEDs on the sides of roads.

That’s a specific kind of job, because it forces you to be both tactical and technical. You’re not just moving. You’re looking. You’re scanning. You’re trying to see details that are meant to be hidden.

And Antonio brings up the kinds of details people only talk about if they’ve actually been there doing it.

He mentions searching for copper wire.

He mentions det cord and time fuse.

He mentions being out in the Iraqi sun and the colors fading so badly that you can’t tell the difference anymore. Oh wait, he also tells you he’s color blind.

That’s not a movie detail. That’s a small, practical problem that gets dangerous fast if you make the wrong call.

He also mentions leadership inside that environment.

He references having a really great platoon commander, Lieutenant Aiken.

Because in those environments, leadership isn’t a title. It’s the difference between a crew that functions and a crew that breaks.

Antonio says they got back in August of 2005.

And what comes next is another part of military life that doesn’t get talked about enough unless you’ve lived it.

The turnaround.

He says that within about two months, they were already tracking toward going back out. He took thirty days of leave and went home, but it wasn’t some long reset. It was brief.

The next deployment was coming.

And when he’s asked about Iraq versus Afghanistan, Antonio’s answer tells you a lot about how he saw the world at that point.

He says, “I’ll take the devil I know. Send me back to Iraq.”

He says he would not have been equipped to go to Afghanistan. The terrain was hellish.

He’d take the Iraqi desert.

That’s not him trying to be dramatic. It’s him making a practical assessment. People who’ve done real work in real places talk like that. They don’t need to oversell it. They know what they can handle, and they know what would’ve broken them.

Antonio’s second deployment, he says, was March of 2006.

Back to Iraq again.

This time to Haditha.

Now here’s where Antonio’s Marine Corps story starts to turn in a way that isn’t about combat or training.

It’s about life decisions.

He talks about what he thought his plan was.

He says at one point he figured he might as well do twenty years.

That’s the mindset a lot of young Marines lock into once they’ve been through enough. You get used to the system. You know the game. You figure you’re already in, so you might as well stay in.

But that’s not what happened for Antonio.

Antonio says he only did his four and got out for a girl.

That’s the line.

No dressing it up.

No pretending it was some strategic career move.

He says it directly.

He got out for a girl.

He describes being on his second tour, watching guys reenlist and get bonuses.

And at the same time, his girlfriend, who was now his fiance, was pushing him with pressure that felt like a threat. He says she’d already sent him a “Dear John” letter.

And the message was clear.

She wanted him home.

She didn’t want him to stay in.

So Antonio makes the decision. He says it like it’s the only decision he felt he could make in that moment.

He needed to get out and get home because she wanted him home.

And then there’s another moment that shows how this wasn’t even a clean, confident decision for him.

He talks about working with the career liaison, and he jokes about them asking him to give a reason why he should get out.

He says, “show me a good deli.”

But right after the joke, he brings it back to the real reason.

He was getting out for a girl.

That’s the moment Antonio’s Marine Corps chapter closes, at least in the way he tells it here.

Not with a dramatic ceremony.

Not with a triumphant transition plan.

But with a decision made under pressure, while watching other Marines reenlist, and realizing he was going a different direction.

Because this is the part of life people don’t always admit.

The part where personal relationships, timing, and pressure make the decision, even when the original plan was something else.

Even when you thought you were going to stay in.

Antonio’s story doesn’t pretend that leaving was clean.

It just tells you the truth as he lived it.

EASing, Building a Family, and Finding the Wounded Warrior Project

Antonio doesn’t talk about leaving the Marine Corps like it was some clean, confident transition.

He talks about it like something that happened the way a lot of exits happen.

There’s the plan you thought you had.

And then there’s the reason you actually leave.

Antonio says he thought he might just do 20 years.

That was the mindset. Stay in, make it a career, keep going.

But that’s not what he did.

He was getting out for a girl.

And that’s where his Marine Corps chapter closes. Not with a neat plan. Not with a structured exit strategy. Just a decision made under pressure, watching two different futures play out side by side.

Then Antonio’s post-service life starts. And it doesn’t start with stability either.

He talks about returning to New York, living with his fiancé, and working menial jobs, but then he eventually decides to go out to California, to San Diego, but still only with a “idea” not a plan.

He says part of his plan when he got out there was to stay a few months, enjoy San Diego, and then hit up a recruiter and try to reenlist from the West Coast.

Even after leaving, the Marine Corps was still in him.

He wasn’t fully done.

He wasn’t fully settled in the idea that he was out for good. But it was also driven by no other viable options showing themselves.

He’d tried to get back in on the East Coast but wasn’t successful. He talks about how the system was split, and with paperwork sitting on someone’s desk on the East Coast. Like the process was stalled in bureaucracy, and he was stuck waiting on the machine to move, maybe he could finagle the system from the West Coast.

Antonio says he was trying to get back in around 2009.

He ties that to the economy too. People weren’t getting out. Spots weren’t opening up. He was trying to get in during a time where the doors weren’t swinging open.

He also mentions he had this thought at the time like, “maybe I’ll become a Navy SEAL,” but he admits he didn’t really mean it. He had worked around some of them in Iraq, saw the gear, saw how they operated, and in his mind they were the guys who made things happen.

But he didn’t have a real plan behind it. More like a restless thought. A directionless hunger for something harder, something cleaner, something that would force him to become who he thought he was supposed to be.

He even mentions the reserves idea. Like he could go reserves and activate again.

But he says it still wasn’t happening.

And in the middle of all that, there’s another thing he admits that a lot of guys don’t like to say out loud.

He wasn’t plugged into the VA.

He barely had a disability rating.

He didn’t know enough about it.

He wasn’t interested at the time.

He didn’t have that support system built.

So now he’s out, trying to get back in, and he’s also not really using the resources that could’ve helped him navigate the outside.

That’s a rough combination.

Then life starts stacking responsibilities.

Antonio talks about how he meets a woman in San Diego, who later becomes his wife.

Then they buy a house.

Then they have children.

And he says something changes in him personally when the kids show up.

He draws a line between wife and kids that’s brutally honest.

His wife had an option. She chose to be with him.

His kids don’t have an option.

That’s how he sees it. That’s what flips the switch.

Now he has to provide.

And he takes that seriously enough that when his wife offers solutions, he shuts them down.

She talks about getting babysitters, her going to work, helping out that way.

Antonio says no.

He’s going to do this. He’s going to make sure he makes enough money.

That’s not a motivational moment. It’s a pressure moment.

Because that decision doesn’t just create pride. It creates weight.

And then he talks about what happens next.

He starts trying to climb the corporate ladder in the fitness industry, after getting a degree in kinesiology.

He moved into management.

Bigger roles. Personnel responsibility.

On paper, it sounds like progress.

But in real life, the cost shows up fast.

Antonio describes working off commission while trying to provide for his family.

Six days a week.

Ten to twelve hour days.

And he says during this period he’s also starting to understand and experience what PTSD is.

But he can’t let it affect him.

He can’t show anyone else that it’s affecting him.

That’s one of the most familiar pressures in the veteran and first responder world. You’re carrying something, you know you’re carrying it, but you don’t feel like you can admit it. Not with kids at home, bills on the table, and the sense that you’re supposed to be the one holding it all together.

Antonio describes the feeling of it chokes him up every time he brings it up.

And what he’s describing isn’t “I had no life.”

It’s more specific than that.

He says he wasn’t seeing his family.

And he describes these calls to his wife.

Calling her at 4:00 PM saying he has to stay until 6:00.

Then calling again at 6:00 PM saying it looks like he has to stay until 8:00.

That’s not just long hours. That’s the slow erosion of family life. The repeated message that work is always going to take what it wants, no matter what you planned.

And somewhere inside that season, Antonio hits what he calls a super dark period.

But then his mom recommends a job she saw advertised, one that he’d already seen previously as well.

He says he applied because there were no other options, and the interview process lasted about three months. And his mindset was basically, “shit can’t get any worse, I’m just going to charge at it.”

That job was at Wounded Warrior Project.

Physical health and wellness coach.

And he says something that matters here.

He didn’t think he was qualified.

But apparently he was.

And he connects it back to what he’d been doing, working his way into management roles, dealing with bigger responsibilities. It added up.

WWP took a chance on him and an offer finally comes through. Ironically, his start date was on his anniversary.

So now his work anniversary and his marriage anniversary are the same day. Every year, it’s both.

He says he started that job because he wanted to help his fellow veterans.

He also wanted a job he wasn’t going to hate going to.

He needed to change his career.

And he took a huge pay cut to do it.

But he says the pay cut became irrelevant, because what he got was worth so much more than money.

He got weekends.

He got eight days.

He got to leave work and go home and spend time with his family.

And he says something else that’s important too.

He learned there was so much out there for veterans. Support. Resources. Opportunities.

But you’ve got to be willing to apply. You’ve got to look at what the qualifications are.

That’s the advice embedded in his own experience. He didn’t think he qualified, but he applied anyway. And it changed his life.

Antonio also finds other things through veteran circles once he’s in that world more deeply.

Other veterans pointing him toward organizations that provide this, provide that.

That’s how he found Warrior Sailing.

He’d never sailed a day in his life.

He assumed sailing was for rich people.

But he tried it, and it’s become therapeutic.

He talks about being out on the water. Manipulating the sails and the rudder. The silence. The feeling of getting out of his head and being in the moment.

Then he finds jiu-jitsu.

He connects to that through the We Defy Foundation, which provides 12 months of jiu-jitsu to combat veterans who meet a disability rating requirement, and they give you two free gis.

He says he’d heard Jocko talk about jiu-jitsu, so he knew some of the terminology.

He started his son in jiu-jitsu first, about a year earlier, and he was the dad on the sidelines.

Before he started jiu-jitsu, he says he was running marathons.

Then he takes his first jiu-jitsu class and thinks, “I’d rather go run 15 miles.”

Because that was easier.

That line tells you everything you need to know about jiu-jitsu and about humility.

And it tells you something about Antonio too.

Even after everything, he’s still searching for the thing that makes him feel grounded. Present. Challenged. Calm.

In the end, Antonio’s post-Marine Corps story isn’t about immediately finding success.

It’s about drifting.

Pressure.

Family responsibility.

Work that took everything from him.

PTSD showing up while he tried to act like nothing was happening.

And then finally finding a job that gave him meaning and stability.

Finding a mission that mattered.

Finding a life where he could actually go home.

And if there’s advice embedded in his story for other veterans, it’s not complicated.

Apply anyway.

Don’t assume you don’t qualify.

Don’t stay trapped in a life that isn’t healthy just because you’re used to it.

And if you want stability, you’ve got to build it on purpose.

Closing

Antonio Bonfiglio’s story isn’t built on a straight line. It’s built on pressure, disruption, and the kind of personal drift that can quietly ruin you if it goes unchecked. He grew up feeling physically behind the curve, learned early how fast life can turn into conflict, and carried a need to prove himself long before he ever stepped into a military recruiting pipeline. Even his path into service didn’t come with certainty. It came with urgency and an open contract. Later, after years of instability and a dark stretch he doesn’t sugarcoat, he finds something that finally holds. A job with structure. A mission that matters. A schedule that gives him his life back. And in his own words, work that saved his life.

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