Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

Deployment

Deployment Debates: Who Has it Harder?

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Deployment Debates: Who Has it Harder?

Oh, the deployment debates. Who truly does have it harder? Is it the spouse who went through a 15-month deployment? The one married to an over the road truck driver? The Guard spouse who is dealing with monthly drills?

Fun fact: I have been all three of these spouses.

We had four deployments while my husband was on active duty. The shortest was about 5.5 months, the longest 15. Then my husband got out of active duty, and a few months later he became an over the road truck driver. He did this for about 14 months while serving in the National Guard. After that, he worked another job with very long hours. Now he works a local job that has him home at a “normal” hour most nights and has his monthly drills. This summer he will go to his “two-week” training. Over the years he has had his share of CQ, week or month long trainings, and other times he has had to be away from us.

Some years felt like he was always gone.

Other years he was home more often. None of the time away was easy, but some of it was easier than others. But here is the thing. The 15-month deployment? That wasn’t our hardest deployment, and I would want to do almost anything else besides have him be an over the road truck driver again. If I was given a choice, 15-month deployment or truck driving? I would have to think about it and in the end, would probably choose the truck driving. Only because I could talk to him whenever I wanted to, saw him at least every few weeks, and he wouldn’t be in a war zone. But that choice wouldn’t be an easy one.

Go into any Facebook group for military spouses, and you are probably going to see people talking about this. Who does have it harder? Who misses their spouse the most? Who is having a more difficult time?

Even if their struggles seem smaller than yours, other people can still be struggling.

The truth is, we don’t know what everyone is going through. We see everyone’s highlight reel while we have the whole book on our own lives.

There is no reason to debate about who has it worse. Because we will never be able to measure that.

However, simply talking about our experiences can be a good thing. As military spouses, we each have our own stories about what we have been through. The brand new spouse can benefit from hearing about how a seasoned spouse got through her year-long deployment. We can ask each other questions and vent about issues we all experience. We can help one another through our stories as well as our frustrations.

If my husband keeps getting deployed over and over and you tell me you wish that yours would, that is going to be difficult to take.

I am not going to be in a place to be able to understand what you are going through at the moment. I am just hoping and praying my husband gets a break, and you are hoping and praying for the opposite. But later on, I can look back and understand why you felt that way. I can be compassionate and see that all you wanted was for your spouse to be able to go and do what he was trained for.

As we go through this military life, we are going to meet people that have had a harder time with deployments than we have. We are going to meet people who struggled a lot more than we did with having children. We are going to meet people who have more struggles in their marriages.

So when the deployment debates start, when people are trying to figure out who has it harder, remember, we are all on our own paths, dealing with our own struggles, just trying to figure out the best way to make it through this crazy military life. 

To the Military Spouse Worried About War

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To the Military Spouse Worried About War

I was in college on 9/11. I was dating my husband at the time and we pretty much already knew we would be getting married the next year. He was in IRR (Individual Ready Reserve) at the time.

When I heard that some IRR units were being activated, I started to freak out a bit. This was before we ever talked about him going back into the military, before I ever knew I would be a military spouse, before I ever thought about sending my husband off to war.

In the end, his unit did not get called up. It would be another five years before my husband would have to go to war. He started a deployment out of Germany in August of 2006.

That deployment was originally nine months, yet became 12 and then ended at about 15. That deployment was a difficult one for everyone. During this time we were right in the middle of the Iraq war.

So many people in the military were being deployed. So many men and women were going overseas.

Ever since then things have taken a tone towards “less war.” Yes, people are still getting deployed to very dangerous places. Yes, people are still going to war, but in the last few years, the tone has changed a bit.

This is to be expected. Things change over the years. Things change with different Presidents. Different decisions have to be made. The military ebbs and flows. If you have been a military spouse for more than a few years, you know this.

As tensions start to heat up again in places around the world, us military spouses can start to get a bit worried.

And rightly so. More war means more deployments. More war means more time away. More war means stepping up what it means to stand by someone serving in the military.

So to the military spouse worried about war, I get you. I know how scary this worry is, especially if you have never had to experience a deployment before. I think there is a good reason to be a bit worried when we hear about what is going on in the news.

Even though our head knows that going to war is exactly what our spouse has been trained for, even if we understand that on a logical level, our heart doesn’t quite get it.

Coming to peace with all this is a difficult thing to do. Coming to peace that our spouse, the mother or father of our children, the one we laugh with, make dinner with and enjoy life with will have to go somewhere scary is a difficult thing to do. Coming to peace with the realities of war, especially a long war, is a difficult thing to do.

So as you worry, know that so many of us are worried too. Know that we come from a long line of strong military spouses who have also sent their spouses off to war. That no matter what happens you will always have the sisterhood of other military spouses behind you.

There is nothing anyone can say that can totally take away the worry we military spouses face when we know the love our life is in a war zone.

We just have to figure out ways to get through, to try not to dwell on that part of the job, to move forward and make the best of the time away. This the reality of being married to a service member.

There are so many reasons why a deployment can be so challenging and having a spouse in a war zone is one of them. Let’s all remember that we can get through this, even if the days get hard, even if the nights get lonely and even if we get so scared that we are not sure what to do.

How do you make peace with this part of military life?

Finding Hope During Deployment

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Finding hope during deployment

Finding Hope During Deployment

Easter of 2007, I had two children, 2.5 years old and about four months. I decided to take them to church Easter Sunday. I couldn’t imagine missing that. I might miss church sometimes, but you don’t miss on Easter Sunday. I dressed us all in our beautiful Easter outfits and headed to the on post chapel.

As I sat there in my Easter best, holding my baby, tears started to come. My husband, the one who I had spent every Easter with for the last few years was in Iraq. He wasn’t there with us like he should have been. I remembered other Easters. One where he was home with us and we could spend the holiday together.

As I sat there, trying not to completely lose it, I decided to look to the future. Next year, he would be with us, right? Next year, when our kids were a year older, we would all go to church together, the four of us. We would make family memories together again.

The truth is, during the middle of your deployment day, you can get stuck in “deployment” thinking.

You start thinking that you will always feel that lonely, that you will always feel that sad, that your spouse will miss everything and that there is nothing you can do about it.

But if you can look past that, if you can remind yourself that this deployment, no matter how long the separation might be, is only temporary, you can gain the strength you need to press through.

During military life, there will be seasons when they are away and seasons when they are home.

There are years when Easter Sunday will be the loneliest of days and years when Easter Sunday will be filled with family fun. There will be weeks when you aren’t sure you can make it to the next day and weeks when you will feel like you are rocking military life.

If you are in the middle of a deployment, if you are feeling pretty hopeless about the whole thing, remember, this too shall pass. It will. Time will go by, days will go by, and one day you will wake up, put your cute dress on and head down to the gym or airfield to pick up your spouse. Time will go by, and you will be spending your weekends at Lowe’s, going on date nights and making memories together again.

There is hope during a deployment.

Hope that you will get through it. Hope that you will grow stronger during the months they are away. Hope that you can do this and you can, in fact, do it more than once, more than twice or however many times you need to get through a deployment.

There is hope that through the months apart, you and your spouse can grow stronger. That you can learn more about yourself and even each other. That you can find that inner strength that you didn’t even know you had.

There is hope that although you might be alone this Easter, they will be there the next Easter and maybe even the one after that. That someday you will look back on your “deployment years” as a struggle you were able to get through, even though it was some of the hardest years of your marriage. That one day, you will be able to take what you learned during the months apart and use that for the future, for your struggles and to help others.

So yes, there is hope during a deployment. Even if you can’t see it right away. Even if it takes you a while to understand it.

How do you find hope during a deployment?

Debunking Myths About Deployment

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Debunking Myths About Deployment

Waiting for a deployment to start can be a bit scary. There is a lot of advice, and you might be feeling a little unsure about what a deployment will be like. Will the deployment be too hard for you? Will you struggle every day or be able to find a way to get through? Will you thrive or just simply survive?

There are some ideas about deployment that I just don’t think are true, at least not for me. Here are some myths about deployment and the truth behind them.

Debunking Myths About Deployment

 

Never countdown the days

I love counting down the days when my husband is gone. I love waking up in the morning and crossing a day off the calendar. It’s what gets me through. Not everyone likes countdowns, but they are a part of how I deal with deployments. If you like countdowns too, use them, just remember to never make them public on social media.

Keeping busy will be enough

Although the number one piece of advice during a deployment is to keep busy and doing so will help, keeping busy isn’t everything. Sometimes being too busy can make your flustered. You might need that downtime, just not too much of it. Filling up my calendar with a lot of activities but also leaving room for chill days is how I make things work during a deployment.

Going home will solve your problem

Going back home for a deployment can be a very good idea, especially if you have a supportive family. However, you are still going to have stressful deployment days. You will still really miss your spouse, and there could be other issues that come up if you are home. You could be the only one in your friend circle without a spouse around, you could feel too much pressure to see all the people you used to hang out with, you might not get along with your family as much as you thought you would. Really reflect on the decision to go home during a deployment and know that it could come with its own set of challenges too.

Deployments will get easier the more of them you do

If only we could get a degree in deployments. If only the more of them we go through, the easier they would become. The truth is, you will have hard deployments and more difficult deployments. The details of what is going on in your life during each deployment can be so different. One deployment you could be pregnant, the next you might have a two-year-old. Try to take what you learned from each deployment to help you through the next one.

You can’t have fun without them

There is this idea that you shouldn’t have any fun when your spouse is deployed. This isn’t true. While you will miss them when you are making plans, you need to be able to have fun without them, especially when you have kids. You have to be able to take them places, make memories together and enjoy your life, even when your spouse is deployed.

Shorter deployments will be easier

I once thought that the shorter the deployment, the easier the deployment would be. Not true. One of my hardest deployments was just six months long, one of our shorter deployments. Although I would always take a six-month deployment over a 15-month deployment, shorter doesn’t always mean easier.

Once they get home, all will be perfect

When your spouse is away, it is easy to focus on all the good things about your relationship and ignore any issues you were having or anything that needs to be worked out. Even if things were going well for you when they deployed, know that reintegration can come with struggles. As they come home and you get back to everyday life, you will have to get back to the daily challenges that come with raising a family, being married and having a spouse who just returned from a war zone. Getting excited about the homecoming is a good thing but always be aware that there could be a lot of work to do once the ceremony is over.

So, Your Spouse Just Deployed? What Should You Do Now?

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So, Your Spouse Just Deployed? What Should You Do Now?

So, Your Spouse Just Deployed? What Should You Do Now?

The day has come and you had to say goodbye. Day one. Day one of who knows how many days. Day one of this deployment. Whether this is your first deployment or your last, you are going to need some support to get through all of these days. Whether they are gone for four months or fourteen, you are going to need to figure out a way to get through the time apart.

That is where this post comes in handy! First of all, sign up for my free guide for the first 30 days of a deployment! This will help you figure out a game plan and encourage you as you get started down this deployment journey.

You can also take a look at my deployment posts. After going through 4 deployments myself, I have a lot of blog posts all about surviving deployments.

If you didn’t know this already, there is a great community of military spouse bloggers out there. We come from different branches, live in different places but we all have stories and tips to share with our readers. Our hope as milspouse bloggers is to help you and let you know you are not alone in your military journey.

Here are some great posts on deployment by some of my favorite military spouse bloggers:

5 Ways to Keep the Interest Alive When You Are Not Together Enough by Adventures of a Young Wife

7 Deployment Confessions from the Spouse Left Behind by 1200 Miles Away

surviving deployment

Dear Civilians: What Every Military Wife Wants You to Know by Singing Through the Rain

Solo Parenting: Alone But Not Alone by InDependent

Deployment ABCs: Advice for a First Deployment by Countdowns and Cupcakes

End of Deployment is the Worst by the Seasoned Spouse

My Husband Helped Me Through My Run by Wandering Malia

3 Ways Deployments Can Bring You Closer as a Couple by Spouse Buzz

surviving deployments

10 creative ways to help children cope with deployment by Military One Click

10 Relationship-Saving Tips to Use During Deployment by the Military Wife and Mom

The Very Real Truth About Experiencing Deployment for the First Time by Jo, My Gosh

Through the pre-deployment period to the long days of the deployment to the end and getting ready for homecoming, sharing our deployment stories can be a great way to connect and help others who are dealing with a deployment. Although each of our experiences can look a little different, knowing we are not the only ones to go through them is helpful.

We are not able to get through deployments because we are strong, we become strong through the deployments as we stand by the person we have committed to stand by through all life throws at us. 

To the Military Spouse on Valentine’s Day

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To the Military Spouse on Valentine’s Day!

The day is coming. You know the one. The holiday that you would just rather skip. You know your friends are getting flowers and chocolate. And a date night. You are getting more dirty diapers and possibly a Skype call from Iraq. But that might not even happen.

You try to tell yourself that you don’t care. That Valentine’s Day is just a “Hallmark” holiday made for dating couples and those who have time and energy to pull something together. But deep down, you are hurting. Your husband is deployed this year. He was in training last year and the year before? You were waiting to join him overseas at your new duty station.

Military Spouses on Valentine's Day

 

You know the military comes first, but does the military always have to take away Valentine’s Day? Probably. Most likely he will be gone the next year too. And even if he is home. Does that matter? Will you even do anything? The only babysitters you have are your friends who would probably like to go out with their own husbands too. Your family just lives too far away to help and your budget can’t afford the $30 or $40 it would take to hire a babysitter.

So military spouse, it’s okay. Being without your love on Valentine’s Day doesn’t make much sense but being a military spouse you know this is all apart of the lifestyle. So this year, you are not going to worry as much. You are going to buy your kids a heart shaped pizza and some candy hearts. You will let them show you their valentine’s cards from school and then put them to bed early. You are going to pour a glass of wine, eat your favorite type of food and binge watch a fun show you have been meaning to catch up on.

You got this. Even if your Valentine’s Day is different than you thought it would be after being married to the love of your life. You got this because someday your spouse will always be home for Valentine’s Day. You got this because you are not alone and so many other military spouses are not spending this day with their loved one either. You got this because you are strong and you can make it through!

 

10 TV Shows You Should Binge Watch During Deployment

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10 TV Shows You Should Binge Watch During Deployment10 TV Shows You Should Binge Watch During Deployment

During deployments or even during drill weekends I have found that binge-watching a television show can really make things a lot easier. I can get lost in the show, lost in the characters and that can take away those lonely nights missing my husband. Focusing on something else always works and watching a good tv show is a great way to do it.

With Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, binge watching couldn’t be easier. Back during our 2007 deployment I either had to get DVDs from the library or watch shows on YouTube, 10 minutes at a time. Not ideal I know. I much prefer Netflix these days.

So…if you want to get lost in a story, check out these binge-worthy television shows:

One Tree Hill

One Tree Hill is about a fictional town in North Carolina. It’s the story of two brothers, both raised in very different families and small town life. Basically, normal teenagers, trying to figure out life, love, and relationships. This show has 9 seasons and a lot of fans like to rewatch over and over again.

Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl takes place in New York City and is narrated by the “Gossip Girl.” Another show about teenagers but this time they are from the Upper East Side. They have money, a lot of money and all the problems that go with money. Gossip Girl has 6 seasons and will keep you guessing about who the “Gossip Girl” is the whole time.

Gilmore Girls

Gilmore Girls is a fun show about a mother and daughter living in a small town in Connecticut. This is a quirky show with a ton of fun supporting characters. There are 7 seasons and Netflix just came out with Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life that you must watch once you finish with the regular seasons.

The West Wing

I am a HUGE fan of The West Wing. This show is all about President Bartlet and his staff. They take on real issues and each character has their own situations they are going through. I have already watched this show twice and would love to start a third round. There are 7 seasons.

Vampire Diaries

Vampire Diaries is an exciting show about a town in Virginia, Mystic Falls with Vampires and other supernatural creatures. Elena is a regular old high school student who loses her parents in a car crash. Then she meets Stefen and Damon, vampire brothers. And everything changes. There are 8 seasons and a spin-off, the Originals.

Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars takes place in Rosewood, Pennsylvania. Four friends try to figure out what to do after their friend Alison is allegedly murdered. This show will keep you hooked because you just want to find out what is going on. There are 7 seasons of PLL.

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time takes place in the fictional seaside town of Storybrooke, Maine. But who lives in this town? All your favorite fairytale characters, only they are under a spell and don’t remember where they came from. Emma, a bail bonds person comes to the town and learns she is the only one who can save it. This show has 6 seasons and is still going on with new characters added all the time.

Grey’s Anatomy

If you are looking for a mix of medicine and drama, Grey’s Anatomy is going to be your show. This show is on season 13 with more to come. Meredith Grey is the main character and as the show starts she is starting the residency program at Seattle Grace Hospital. You might think that it isn’t possible for one hospital to have this much drama but you don’t care because the show is keeping you entertained.

Doctor Who

If you love science fiction, time travel, British tv, you will probably like Doctor Who. I will fully admit this show is not for everyone but those that watch and fall in love with it can’t get enough. This show could be your deployment show as there are a ton of episodes to watch. You can go all the way back and watch some of the original show but I suggest starting with the newer episodes. There are 9 seasons of that, the 10th should start sometime in the near future.

The Office

The Office is such a great show to binge watch. This show is a Mockumentary about an office in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Some of these characters will drive you nuts, others will make you roll your eyes but you won’t be able to get enough of this silly show. There are 9 seasons to enjoy.

 

What shows do you love to watch during a deployment?

 

 

There is Nothing Quite Like a Holiday Homecoming

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There is Nothing Quite Like a Holiday HomecomingThere is Nothing Quite Like a Holiday Homecoming

The morning was cold but being December in Tennessee, that wasn’t a surprise. When we arrived at the hanger, I knew this would be different than our last deployment, which ended on a hot day in July. Our deployment was over and I only had to wait a few more hours until my husband would be in my arms again. This 4th deployment had been one of the hardest. I was so glad that the deployment was going to end. What made things even better was that my husband was coming home about a week before Christmas. For us, that year would be magical.

That year, we had the best Christmas ever. That year we didn’t have to miss him. We didn’t have to worry anymore. We weren’t lonely and we were together, the way we were supposed to be. We didn’t have to experience the deployment ache over Christmas and we fully enjoyed the holidays together again.

military homecomingImage from DVIDSHUB on Flickr!

There is something so beautiful about a holiday homecoming. Knowing that the deployment will end and that you will be celebrating the holidays together instead of apart. Knowing that you won’t have to wake up Christmas morning or start Hanukkah alone. Knowing that they will be there to wish you Happy New Year and that you won’t have to videotape your children opening presents just so that your spouse can see them do so from afar.

military homecomingImage from DVIDSHUB on Flickr!

There is nothing quite like a holiday homecoming. To be together again during the time of year you want to be with your family the most.

As I stood out watching the runaway on that December Day, I was so cold. But that didn’t matter. All that did was watching that plane land, watching my husband get off the plane and running into his arms, knowing he was home, that the deployment was over and that we would be back to the way things were meant to be.

military homecoming

For those getting ready for holiday homecoming, know that you will be in for a treat. All homecomings are amazing but you will always look back on this homecoming as such a special one. Whether there is snow on the ground in upstate New York or the sun on your back in Hawaii, there is nothing quite like a holiday homecoming.

Have you ever had a holiday homecoming?