When Deployments Don’t Get Any Easier
I couldn’t believe he was leaving again. Just two weeks before we had thought that he wasn’t going to go. Now he was and it was time to say goodbye…read more.
deployments
What to Expect When You Are A Military Spouse
What to Expect When You Are A Military Spouse
Each of us is on our own journey as a military spouse but at the same time, we all experience a lot of similar events and feelings to go with them. Although this “cycle” is not true for every military spouse out there, it is true for a lot of us. When you know what to expect during your time as a military spouse, the easier things are going to be.
Your Duty Station
As a new military spouse, your first introduction to military life is arriving at your first duty station. This could mean getting packed up after basic training and moving to your new home with your spouse or it could mean moving on post after your wedding even though you have lived in that area for a while. This could also mean having access to the post but living in an apartment or house off post. This will be the first time you see military life in action. You will start to understand how things work. You will learn about the Commissary, the PX, MWR, where the parks are, where your spouse will work and anything else to do being around the military. You will learn a lot at your first duty station. Everything will be new but you will figure things out.
Deployment News
Sometimes you will have a few months, others will have a few years but eventually, you will hear news of a deployment or other type of training your spouse will have to go to. For us, this happened right after we arrived at our first duty station. He deployed about five months later. It’s difficult to hear the news that your spouse is going to have to deploy. Preparing for the deployment is very emotional. Then you have to say goodbye and work hard to get through each and every day. You want to stay busy but you will still have that deployment ache, no matter how busy you are.
Homecoming
Whether they are gone for just two months or for over a year, homecoming is going to be a great day. You will spend time getting ready, you will get butterflies, you will get nervous, you will feel the sweet relief that only comes knowing they are no longer in a war zone. The time after deployment can be tricky but homecoming is the end of the separation and something to be celebrated.
“Normal” life
After they get home there will be a period of time where you try to get back to “normal” life. You will work hard to get through the reintegration period. This period can be very difficult for some couples and it is important to find help if you need it. The military does offer some help right after they get home but make sure to ask for more if you and your spouse need it. There should be no shame in that. “Normal” life won’t look the way it did before. You have changed and so has he. It will never be like it was before the deployment. You will be changed.
Time to PCS
Unless you stay at the same duty station for longer than 2-3 years you will probably end up pcsing before he would deploy again. This time, you might move overseas or to the other side of the country. Maybe you will be closer to home or going to a part of the country you have anyways wanted to explore. Be excited! Look forward to where you are going. You will have to wait for orders and then they might get changed. You might think you are headed to Germany, you will plot out all the day trips you are going to take once you get there and then the orders will get changed to Florida and you won’t know what is going on. Plans change, especially when it comes to PCSing. You have to just go with it and be patient. Hurry up and wait.
Bye to Friends
With every PCS comes having to say goodbye to your friends. Those people who stood by you during the deployment, your neighbors, your children’s friends. It’s hard to say goodbye. And if you are not the one pcsing at the moment, your friends will be the ones to move. Military life is a never ending cycle of meeting new people and then having to say goodbye after a time. You never get used to doing this, you just find ways to make things a little easier on yourself when it does happen and you find ways to stay in touch when you are no longer living in the same place.
Repeat
You are now at a new duty station and the process will start all over again. Only this time, when deployment orders come, you will know a little bit more about what to expect. You might have another child this time. You will be more seasoned and you will be able to offer advice to others. Right before our first deployment I was talking with my FRG leader and she explained a lot of what things would be like. At the time I had no idea. Now, ten years later I know a lot more then I did back then.
Military life is an adventure. Sometimes it is good and exciting, others times it disappoints and you are not sure how you are going to get through the next few months. Remember, things change. People change. Life changes. Where you are today will not be where you are next year or the year after. Make friends and work with your husband to get through any issues you are dealing with. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and be you as you navigate your military spouse journey.
Leave me a comment and let me know how long you have you been living the military spouse life?
Paris, War and the Military Spouse
Paris, War and the Military Spouse
Paris was attacked on Friday. This was big news. I found out on social media which is where I find out about most worldly events, I am not a big tv news watcher. I started seeing people posting photos of visits to Paris and that we should pray for them. I didn’t really understand why until I saw what had happened.
Paris was attacked by terrorists. About 130 people were killed that night. Such a tragedy.
I have had a few days to think about all this. I have read a few blog posts about it and seen so many social media posts about it as well. Everyone seems to have an option about what happened, about how the US is acting, about what we should be doing to support Paris and about why we didn’t do anything about other attacks in the last week, attacks in places like Beirut, Syria and Kenya. There is a lot going on in this world right now.
Is it fair to blame people who are supporting Paris but were silent on the other places? I don’t know. I for one didn’t know much about them until after Paris happened. I will admit I probably did see news articles about those things happening. And I am sure my thought was, “That is so very sad, yet another tragedy in that part of the world.” I didn’t do much else. I didn’t share photos praying for those places, I didn’t change my Facebook profile to their flags. I just went along in my day.
Paris gets hit and it affects me differently. Paris is close to Germany, where we used to live. People in Paris are more like me then people in those other places. Still, I can’t help but feel guilty about not really acknowledging what is happening in other parts of the world. I think focusing on Paris makes sense because we feel like Paris is like us. We feel connections to Paris that we don’t to other places. Is this the way it should be? Probably not but it is what happens. If you tell me that your friend’s sister’s neighbor’s house burned down, I am going to feel sad about that. If you tell me someone in my neighborhood’s house burned down, it would affect me much more. I would look into more tangible ways of helping them. I would feel more connected to it. This is just reality.
So what can we learn from this? That maybe we should look at what is going on everywhere. We should be aware of the World, not just the Western part of it. All of it matters.
There is another part of what happened in Paris that worries me. War. More war. More fighting. More deployments. I don’t know of very many Military Spouses that heard about Paris and didn’t think about what it could mean for their own spouse. If feels like the wars we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are never going to end, regardless of what any politician says.
When you live in a community where people are still deploying, you know that things are not over, they are still happening and people are still going off to war.
I am not sure what the solution to ISIS is. It’s a scary thing to think that people would hate other people so much that they could go in and kill them. The thought of that makes me want to burst into tears. But what do we do about that? What should America do? Keep sending people to the same places over and over? Back in 2003 I thought that was the solution. That we should send our troops in to do what was needed. It is now the end of 2015 and I just don’t know anymore.
What can America do when we have been at war for so long? When the Military is tired?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. I don’t know what would be right or moral or what should happen? I don’t know if what we are doing is going to help or make things worse. I have to trust in those that have the power to make those decisions but it is a difficult thing to do. Especially when my husband could be dirrectly affect by the choices those people make.
I know so many people who have been affected by war because I have been a Military Spouse for 10 years now. I know how some don’t come home and some come home broken. I see how marriages can break up and things are never the same after time over there.
I think of all of these things when I see that more war might be needed and all I can do is pray.
Pray for those areas, all of them, in Europe and Asia and the rest of the world. Pray for the innocent people who might die because of everything that is going on. Pray for the Military families that will see more war than any other generation. And hope that the US and our allies can make the right decisions that in the end will lead to a more peaceful world.
Deployments and The Effect on Children
Deployments and The Effect on Children
After four deployments, our family knows what it is like to go long periods of time without Dad in the home. It can be so challenging for the parent at home to have to be mom and dad. It can also be really hard on the children who might not truly understand why their mom or dad has to be away from them.
Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, more than 2 million American children have had a deployed parent. Many of them have seen multiple deployments. This tells me that we are not alone and that all these children have gone through or are going through what my own boys have.
Our last deployment ended in 2013 and my boys were 9, 7 and 3. At those ages they only kind of understand what Dad was doing. It was a hard time for all of us as I helped them work through the time apart while trying to deal with the deployment myself. It can be difficult to know what will help them and what they are really dealing with.
The best thing to do is to keep the line of communication open with your children. Let them know it is okay to share with you how they are feeling or what they are experiencing. Encourge them to reach out to you if it becomes too hard. Sometimes young kids will act out when they are feeling frustrated about the deployment. It is important to keep firm boundaries in your home but be aware that some behavior could be because of missing one of their parents.
One idea is to have a recordable device that the deployed parent can set up to give to the child. Recordable teddy bears, along with other battery-powered devices such as recordable story books provide reliable comfort no matter when or where their parent is deployed.
Duracell has a great out all about how a Teddy Bear can help a child through a deployment. This video made me cry because it shows us how hard it can be for a child to be without their dad. It is nice that we live in a time where technology can help that divide and allow the child to hear their parent’s voice whenever they want. The film was inspired by a real Military child who was showed Duracell a Teddy Bear she had during her father’s deployment.
Duracell would like to raise $100,000 for USO’s Comfort Crew for Military Kids. Share the film and find out how you donate to the cause through the USO at http://www.uso.org/donate.
You can also find Duracell on Facebook and Twitter.
This review was made possible by iConnect and Duracell. I was provided compensation to facilitate this post, but all opinions are 100% mine.
5 Reasons Why Summer Gets Difficult When You Are Solo Parenting
I have spent many summers without my husband. I was thinking this morning of the different ways not having your husband home during the summer can make life more difficult than it normally would be. Since my husband is going to be home for a few days during the summer, I am reminded of what I am able to do just because here is here and what I have to do when he isn’t. I am reminded of deployment years and those summers and how difficult they became because I was solo parenting. I have learned to make the summer work as best I can but it still can get pretty hard when you are the only parent in the home during the months your children are out of school.
1) Grocery shopping. Normally I go grocery shopping when at least two of my kids if not all three are in school. No one is asking for extra foods. No one thinks we need to buy every little item of food that they like, no one is freaking out because they don’t want to be there. I can just go in with my list and be done with it. During the summer, I have to take at least two kids with me, if not all three. We always end up with extra stuff, it is always a little chaotic and I always miss those child-free shopping trips.
2) Appointments. Dentist appointments, doctor appointments, etc. I try not to schedule any during the summer but sometimes you have to go. So I have to either find a babysitter or take all the kids with me. This gets a little crazy sometimes. Doctors appointments mean waiting and even if you come prepared, if you have to wait a long time the kids just hit a point and it is pretty frustrating.
3) No time Off. During the school year I have a lot of time to myself. I can get work done, clean in peace or even go to lunch with my friends. During the summer I always have at least one kid with me. My alone time has to just get pushed aside which can get to you sometimes. Luckily, a lot of Military locations do have some sort of childcare for deployments. Here they have Super Saturdays where you can leave your kids with childcare workers from 9-5 on certain Saturdays. I tried to take advantage of this during our last deployment.
4) Later hours. My kids stay up later during the summer. It gets darker later, no need for them to get up as early. It just happens that way. I could stay up later too, after they go to bed. I could give myself more alone time but I get tired too. I usually go to sleep just an hour after they do. During the school year I have a little more time to myself after the boys’ bedtime.
5) No family trips. This is the hardest thing for me sometimes. When your husband is gone all summer long, you won’t be going on any family vacations together. You can take the kids and go on your own vacations but that isn’t always an option for everyone. You just have to wait the summer out and plan to take a vacation once your spouse gets home or has time off. If you are lucky, you might be able to plan R&R during the summer and get away somewhere nice.
What about you? Are you going through a deployment this summer? Does your husband work so much during the summer you never see him? What is the hardest thing about it for you?
What To Do When Faced With A Really Bad Deployment
The Deployment That Never Goes Away
The Deployment That Never Goes Away
It’s been almost 7 years since that awful 15-month deployment ended. It still touches me in different ways. You hear about those in the military never forgetting about the deployments. And this is true. But the spouse, she or he never forgets either.
A Military spouse is never going to forget how hard it was to let their spouse go, how lonely the nights were or how happy they were when they finally came home.
We’ve been through several other deployments since then. However, the 15-month deployment was the one that sticks with me the most. It was a hard deployment and not just because it was so long. We lost a lot of men, especially compared to the rest of our deployments. It seemed like every week we heard the news that another soldier had lost his life. Three of my friends lost their husbands during that deployment.
It probably didn’t help that we were overseas away from family. I was one of the lucky ones and my mom was able to come visit for two months and my dad for about three weeks. My brother was even able to visit for a week. Not everyone was so lucky. A lot of extra loneliness that deployment.
The day before Thanksgiving 2007, I went to pick up my husband. Finally, the deployment was over. Peace. At least temporarily. It was over. The deployment that would never end was finally over.
That deployment shaped me into who I am today. Who I became as a parent. Who I became as a wife. Who I am as a person.
I went 11 months without seeing my husband. My little boy was three weeks old when daddy said goodbye during R&R, he didn’t see his daddy again until he was 11 months old. I can hardly talk about this without breaking into tears. It is something that seems so unreal and seems so impossible. How did we even get through that? How did we go that long without seeing each other? How did we make it through…?
I don’t really know.
We just kept going. We just didn’t give up. We couldn’t give up. We had no choice but to stay and get through it.
I don’t think I will ever forget what that was like. I don’t think anything could ever be exactly like that. I think that we will always be affected by that in some way. I had friends that lost their husband during the deployment. I have friends that lost their husband since that deployment. I think it changed everyone.
When I hear that the Military is going “back” to Iraq, I think of that deployment. I think of the families and the men and women that will have to go back over there. I think of everything that happened and I hope and pray that deployments will not be like that again.
I know that the Military will go to war. It’s expected. I just wish there was some way to make it a little bit easier. Someway to make it so that it wasn’t so gut-wrenching. Little things that would make it a little bit easier. Such as giving people plenty of time to regroup and spend time with family. To get back to some kind of normal before they have to deploy again, before they even have to think about deploying again.
Because you never forget the deployments.
Whether you were the one deployed or the one who stayed home. You never forget them. They stay with you forever. The smallest thing can remind you of them. Can take you right back.
So even though our 15-month deployment was in 2007. Even though it was years ago. Even though my husband deployed since then. It is the one that I always think about. It is the one that will stay with me forever.
Is there a deployment that hit you harder than the others?
On Coffee Cups, Puppy Dogs and Wars
I am sure most of you have seen the video going around about President Obama saluting a Marine with a coffee cup in his hand. You might have seen the response to that of a photo of President Bush saluting with a dog in his hand. You have probably read a lot of the comments going around about how he shouldn’t have done that, how rude it was and how we can really tell what one President thinks based on what they do with something in their hand.
I could go on and on about what I think about all that.
However, I just think it boils down to if you like President or not. You know how when you don’t like someone, everything they do annoys you? That happens with political figures too. They can’t do anything right, ever. Even if they do something a previous President did, doesn’t matter, it is worse when they did it.
The thing is, we are all human and we all make mistakes. When you are in the public eye, every mistake can be blown up and turned into a story. Remember when Dan Quayle misspelled potato?
Sigh…The fact is our country is STILL AT WAR!
Yes we are. People are still deploying. Military families are still having to say goodbye to their loved ones. It’s not over yet and probably won’t be for a while.
I would never want to be in a political office. Never. I would never want to have that over me. To have to be in charge of something that important. I can’t even imagine. I can’t even imagine what would it be like to have to make decisions about war, terrorists and what the best thing to do is. To have that on your mind 24/7? I can’t even imagine.
As a Military spouse, I am not sure what the future holds for us. Will my husband have to deploy again? I just don’t know. It is always in the back of my mind as is the case with other Military families. It is always something we think about. When we watch the news, we are reminded. There is no getting away from it.
So we can sit and debate saluting with coffee cups vs dogs but at the end of the day, that really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we do live in a country where people are willing to stand up for what is right. That we do have a Military that will go where they need to go and do what they need to do. That there are families out there that live this each and every day.
It is also important to remember that Military spouses make up a range of different types of beliefs. From political to religious to if we even want to have children or not. We are not all the same but what we do have in common is the love for our spouse and our country and the freedom we all hold so dear.