When You Can’t Find Your Milspouse Tribe

With a deployment looming, I was starting to freak out. I didn’t know anyone here. I was feeling a sense of dread as it was. He was going over to Afghanistan this time. And I didn’t have any military friends to go through this with. I didn’t have my tribe. Not like I did before.

That deployment was hard in ways my other deployments were not. I didn’t have my people. 

One of the best ways to get through a deployment is to have your own set of battle buddies. The people you can connect with, vent to, and commiserate with.

 

The people who get what it is like to not talk to your spouse for a week a time. The people who understand why you have to make cereal again for dinner. The people who understand the deployment ache and what that means.

With the military moving military families every 2-4 years, finding your military tribe can be hard. Sure, you can be friendly with people but finding others who you can connect with is a lot more difficult.

There is loneliness associated with not being able to find your people.

You might want a best friend more than anything, but you just haven’t found that person yet. You haven’t connected in the ways you want to connect with other people at your duty station.

In some ways, this part of military life is a given. You PCS somewhere new, your husband deploys within a few months, and you are left feeling empty. You have a new baby right around the time your best friend moves away and it’s months before you can see getting out there and try to make new friends.

Not having any close friends nearby is scary!

What do you do when you need to put someone on your emergency contact form?

What do you do when you are at your wit’s end and just need a friend to drink a glass of wine with?

What do you do when you need that battle buddy, and none can be found?

I can give you all the advice in finding friends. Some of it will work for you and some of it won’t. I can tell you to keep trying, to put yourself out there, not to give up.

But at the end of the day, when nothing seems to be working, your loneliness can kick in, and that can be overwhelming.

There have been times when I have been surrounded by my people. We would meet up regularly, have fun with our kids, go out on ladies nights. We were truly there for one another.

There have been other times when I didn’t know very many people in my city. For fun, I would leave my kids with my husband and head out to the movies by myself. I had no one to call.

In those moments I would miss the times when I did have my milspouse tribe, and I would tell myself that those times would come again.

Friends will come and go. You will connect will all types of people in military life. Some will stay acquaintances, others will become best friends, ones we will always cherish over the years.

Sometimes you will have these sweet friends in your everyday life, other times they will just be people on your Facebook feed.

I can’t say I will ever get used to friends moving away all the time. Living in a military community as I do, this happens all the time. I hate when people move away because even if we were super close, we might not be able to stay that way living in different zip codes.

I miss the almost daily interactions that we had. I miss them being close and being able to plan things together. I miss knowing they were just a short drive away.

But I know life moves on and that times change. There will be new friends to meet, more memories to make.

In the end, those who mean the most will always be in my life and no amount of distance can change that.

---

Do you have a milspouse tribe? Where did you meet them?

Here are some other posts about military spouse friendship:

13 Memes About Military Spouse Friendship

What To Do When You Can’t Make Friends At Your New Duty Station

10 Of The Best Places To Make Friends When You Are A Military Spouse

To The Friends I Don’t Talk To Anymore

 

The Military Spouse Who Has Lost So Much

Monday is Memorial Day, and as a blogger in the Milspouse world, it is always hard to know what to say. Should we get emotional about the day? What if we are too emotional? Are we allowed to talk about what we are doing that weekend? Is there any room for having fun when our others have lost so much?

Memorial Day wasn’t always called that. Back in 1868, Decoration Day was started, three years after the Civil War ended. This day was a day to decorate the graves of those who died in the war. The date was May 30th as on that day; flowers would be in bloom across the country.

In World War I, the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars. In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress and changed to the last Monday in May.

Ever since our country has observed the day in different ways. There are ceremonies to honor those who have lost their lives and concerts to honor the fallen. There are blog posts and magazines articles, all sharing different opinions and information about the day.

As I hear the words, “Memorial Day” my heart immediately goes to the friends I have met during my time as a military spouse who has lost someone.

Those who received that knock on the door. Those that didn’t get to be happy on homecoming. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

I can’t help but think about them. I always think about them. Always. It doesn’t have to be Memorial Day to do so,  but there is something about this day that brings them front and center to my mind.

I can say I am thinking of them. I can say I am praying for them. But I will never really be able to tell them the right words that will make things better. I will never be able to say the right things that will make everything okay. I will never be able to thank them enough and let them know how much we care.

So to these spouses, the ones who have lost so much, I still mourn with you.

I remember when we all stood around a few weeks after they deployed. We talked about getting home in time for phone calls. Not having any idea of what was to come.

I remember when I heard the news that your husband was gone. I wanted to hug you, but I didn’t know you very well. I wanted to tell you everything was going to be okay, but I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

I remember when we got the message and I had to read your last name several times. I couldn’t believe he was gone. I couldn’t understand why you had to go through this.

I remember when my husband talked about how much your husband meant to him. How they learned from each other and how when he died, it just didn’t seem fair.

The truth us, none of this is fair. War isn’t fair. It’s messy, and when we go to war, some people don’t come home.

When that happens, the military community comes together. We support them, with whatever they choose to do once they get settled. We can be a listening ear when things get too hard. We can remember what they have been through and remember those they have lost.

I don’t believe there is one perfect way to be on this holiday. People have BBQs on Memorial Day with toasts to the brothers they have lost. People go shopping because that is when the sales are, and they need to save some money. Civilians thank us because they recognize our service, even if it is the wrong holiday to do so.

In a perfect world, the entire country would understand what Memorial Day is all about. There wouldn’t have to be any question about it. And you know, I think most people do understand.

When you are in the military community, those that we honor on Memorial Day were our friends, the spouse of our friends, and our own spouse’s battle buddies. These are people we knew and saw on a regular basis, not just photos in our news feed.

As I look to Monday, I want to remember those who have given their lives for our beautiful country. I love America, and it hurts to know that we have had to lose so many along the way.

But I know I am forever grateful for their sacrifice, even if I can’t find the words to truly express how I feel.