Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

military spouses

Do Military Spouses Have To Be SAHMs?

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Visit any military community and you are going to find plenty of SAHMs. From women that have always wanted to be one to those that simply can’t find a job in their field or can’t find a job that would pay enough for child care. With the busy schedule that comes with the career of someone in the military, it only makes sense to be a stay at home mom, right? If you marry someone in the military, you need to give up your own career to stay home with your children, right?

Wrong.

Do Military Spouses Have To Be SAHMs?

Although there are a lot of SAHMs military spouses and I have been one of them, not all military spouses want to be SAHMs or have ever been one. They have careers and work hard to bring in their own income. Some spouses work from home in order to have the flexibility to move their career around with them.

Some spouses work hard to find the right job at every duty station. Other spouses are in school, planning for when military life is over. And others take on their role as an SAHM and do wonderful things with it.

No, military spouses do not have to be SAHMs, even though some of them are. Yes, they can work outside the home or at home and create their own careers. As a spouse, you need to figure out what you want and what is going to work best for your situation.

You know your family and what you can personally handle. Some people thrive leaving the house at 7am and getting home at 6pm after a day at work, other people would fall apart if they had to have that type of schedule.

If you are a SAHM spouse and you enjoy it, keep going. You are doing great things.

If you are a SAHM spouse and wish you were doing something else, start looking for what that is today. Look into college classes and job openings and WAHM ideas. Think about what you like to do and what you are good at and go from there. You might end up in a field you would never have thought about.

If you need to be a SAHM for a small period of time, do it. If you want to work outside the home and can’t seem to find a job in your field, don’t give up. Keep looking and find resources to help you find the job that you want. Here are some links that can point you in the right direction:

Being married to someone in the military requires sacrifice and sometimes that means the spouse’s career. That does not mean a spouse has to give up who they are what they want to do. It just might look a little different than it would otherwise.

I am in such awe of what I have heard other military spouses do with their careers while married to a member of the military. From starting home businesses to continuing their law or teaching careers even though they are moving state to state. Military spouses can be anything, do anything, they just have to figure out what will work best for their own situation.

What about you? Are you a SAHM? Do you have a different goal? What are you working on right now?

Why You Should Live In Military Housing At Least Once

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Why You Should Live In Military Housing At Least Once

When we went in to talk to a recruiter back in 2005, one of the things he told us that has always stuck with me was the advice to live in Military housing at least once. Being so new to the Military I really didn’t know what to expect. Our first duty station together was in Germany and it only made sense to live on post there.

We arrived in March of 2006 (can’t believe that was almost ten years ago) and moved into Army housing. They put us on the 3rd floor of a stairwell apartment in an older building that was very European. We got lucky because our unit had been redone recently and we had our own washer and dryer in our bathroom. For the units that didn’t, they had to do their wash in the basement. Our apartment was small and was on the 3rd floor but it seemed perfect to us at the time. At least, until we had another baby.

One of my first memories of Military housing was hearing two wives talk with each other across the road. It was loud and I couldn’t believe they were doing that. There were also a lot of parties late into the night and a lot of noise. I was not new to apartment living but Military housing was so different then anything else I had experienced.

There are good things about living in Military housing and bad things about living in Military housing. There are many benefits that I missed after we lived off post. There are other things I was glad to leave behind. Overall, I think the recruiter’s advice was right on. It is a good idea to live on post at least once. Why?

Why?

To be surrounded by the Military Community

When you live in Military housing, you will be surrounded by other Military families. Your kids will go to school with our Military kids. You will be more likely to shop at the PX and Commissary on a regular basis. You will get a good feeling for the Military community. This will stay with you for the rest of your time as a Military Spouse and that is a good thing. It will allow you to feel a part of everything even if you decide to live off post in the future.

To meet other Military families on a daily basis

Because you will be on post you will always be meeting new Military families. If you see a moving truck in your neighborhood, you don’t have to wonder if they are Military or not. It is easier for you to attend events on post and there you will continue to meet other people. If you are in need of more Military friends, living on post is the way to go. You will always be meeting people associated with the Military.

To know how a Military post works

One thing you will learn after living on a Military post is how it works. You will hear Reveille and Retreat in the morning and evening and will know what to do when you hear it. Your kids will know what to do. After living off post, I realized we are not usually on post when that happens and I miss hearing it. You will get used to watching the service members run around post during PT or going for a lunch break. You will get used to all of this during your time in Military housing and it will be nice to look back on that time with good memories.

To make life a little easier during deployments

Deployments are usually easier if you live on post vs off. This isn’t always the case of course but there is something to be said about living around people whose spouse is also deployed or who have been through it before. When we were in Schweinfurt, our first duty station, almost everyone there had their husband deployed at the same time. This mean we had more people to walk through the deployment with. It was something our whole community went through together. My deployments when we have lived off post were different and I just didn’t feel as connected to others going through the same thing.

If you are not sure if you should live on post or not, think about the benefits and how doing so can help you understand the Military and Military life in general. Some people do have really good experiences off post as well. It really depends on what you are comfortable with and what you want to experience as well as where you are stationed.

In the end, I would tell you to live in Military housing if you get the chance. If you hate it, you never have to do it again but at least, you will have had that experience.

Have you ever lived in Military housing? Did you like it? Hate it?

All The Time He Has Missed During Military Life

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All The Time He Has Missed During Military Life

15 Months

11 Months

5.5 Months

6.5 Months

= 38 months or 3 years, 2 months.

This is how long my husband was gone on deployments. This does not count any of the other times he has been gone for non-deployment reasons.

WOW! Almost 3.5 years? I can’t even wrap my mind around that. I can’t. Looking back, we got through it. Sometimes just one hour at a time but we did it.

Sometimes I still break down over what he missed.

He missed so much. He kissed our 3-week old boy goodbye after meeting him just 2 weeks earlier and he did not see him again until he was almost one. He missed the whole first year of his life. That is a lot of time. If you have a baby, you know how different a 3 week old is from an 11-month-old. You know everything they go through in that time. All the stages and changes. My husband got to experience all of that through photos. That’s it. Just photos.

He said to me once that it was a weird feeling. Knowing you had a son out there that you loved but didn’t know at all. That broke my heart.

Was it worth it? I don’t know. I really don’t.

I don’t like to think about that. I don’t want to think about the politics of why he was there because it hurts too much. He joined the Army and did his job and THAT is why he was gone.

He has missed so much and for an involved father like him, I can’t even imagine what that would be like. I have been away from my boys for 10 days at the longest and I was SO ready to get back to them.

His first deployment was 15 months long. It was extended. It should have been shorter. He came home for R&R to be with me for the birth of our child but got there a few days late. That was okay. I was able to handle that but I knew I wanted him there for any future babies we were going to have. I didn’t want to have to give birth without my husband again.

To add to things, my husband didn’t join the Army until our oldest son was 13 months old. He didn’t miss anything with him. He was there for the pregnancy, the labor, the birth, the newborn months, watching him learn to roll, to sit, to stand.

What has your spouse missed during Military Life that really bothered you? What did you do to deal with it?

Knowing that he got to experience that with my now 11-year-old and not with the 9-year-old still makes me tear up.

I think about the wives of soldiers during WW2. My Grandpa was gone for three years. They didn’t have kids at the time but other soldiers did. Can you imagine leaving you 2-year-old and seeing them again when they were 5? With only letters to get by? I can’t. That makes what we went through seem a lot easier.

I know we can’t beat ourselves up for all that he missed. We just can’t. It comes with Military life. It is normal for them to miss things. Other Military spouses get it. They have been through it as well. They understand how hard it can be too.

There are things you can do to make the distance a little easier. You can talk on video chat, send a lot of photos, talk on the phone, send care packages, etc. But at the end of the day, it is not the same as having them live in the same house with you and your children day after day.

As a Military spouse, you have to come to a place of accepting that your spouse will miss part of your kid’s childhood. You can’t always plan when they will be home. You can’t make sure that they will be there when you have a baby, when your child walks for the first time, when they start Kindergarten or when they graduate from high school. You might have to be there without them, take a few videos and some photos and share them with your spouse that way. You accept all of this as a part of Military life.

You can hope and pray that they won’t miss too many important things. They will be home sometimes. They will not be gone for all of their Military careers. Remember that when you feel frustrated about how much they have missed.

Think about the times you have had together, the experiences you have had because you are a Military family and the good that can come from standing by your spouse as they go through their Military career.

What has your spouse missed during Military Life that really bothered you? What did you do to deal with it?

Why Military Spouses Can’t Just Put Down Their Smart Phone

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Military spouses and smart phones

Why Military Spouses Can’t Just Put Down Their Smart Phone

If you are on social media at all you know that there are quite a few articles going around about being on our cell phones too much. How we need to put them down, hide them, ignore them. While there is some good advice there, my first thought is usually something like, “Well, try being a Military spouse.”

Between having kids in school, having a husband who is gone a lot and making money online using my phone to do so, I will not be putting my phone down anytime soon. My phone is my lifeline and I really haven’t always had it. I didn’t even get a smart phone until 2011.

There are many reasons why people say we shouldn’t always have a phone in our hands, but Military spouses, NEED to have a phone in their hands.

Why? Because…

Our spouses live in our phone.

When your husband is gone and you only get to talk to them on the phone or over video chat, they live in your phone. That is your relationship. You are not going to be able to walk away from your phone for long. If you do, what happens if they call? You will miss the call. That is a hard thing to deal with. When we were in Germany, I only heard from my husband on the landline. That meant that I could not get his calls when I was out. It would kill me to come home to a message knowing I missed his call. For later deployments I didn’t have to worry about that. It was SO nice to know I wouldn’t miss his call just because we were out doing something. So no, I am not going to put my phone down so I miss his call.

Our friends live in our phone.

Military spouse friends move away. Then they live in our phones, they live on Facebook and that is where our relationship is. I have a handful of friends I will text or message throughout the day. It keeps us connected and makes it seem like they are not quite as far away. When you are having a bad deployment day, it can be helpful to pick up your phone and text a friend or check out their photos on Facebook. It makes you feel better and can keep your mind off of missing your husband.

Our family lives in our phone.

Only a small amount of Military families live close to their own family. Most of us live far enough away that the phone is the way we communicate with them. I will text or message my own family several times during the week. It is a great way to keep in touch and not lose contact with one another. Sometimes my family will Facetime me and it is fun to do that with them.

I hate phone shaming in general.

Yes it is possible to be on your phone too much, to ignore people while you are on it and to get sucked into the online world, but overall, a smart phone adds to your life.

So, Military spouse, don’t feel badly if you always have your phone on you. You need it. You rely on it. It is a tool you are using to make your life a little easier. No one should shame you for it. If they are, they just don’t get it so don’t let them bother you.

Military Spouses Serve Their Country Too

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Military Spouses Serve Their Country Too

There is a debate going on about whether Military Spouses serve too. The question is, serve what?

Serve in the Military? No, unless they too have actually enlisted.

Serve their country? Yes, totally.

When your spouse is in the Military, it is not just a job but also a lifestyle.

Maybe this is because my first duty station as an Army wife was in Germany. Overseas things are a little different then stateside. People can’t live as separate of a life as they can in the states. When you have to depend on the local Military post for American foods, your mail, your car, etc, it is a lot harder to stay away from the Military as a whole. Stateside you don’t have to depend on the Military post for as much.

When my husband re-enlisted in 2005, everything changed. I realized this right away when I had zero control about what was going to happen to us. He went over to Germany and I had to wait behind in the states until the Army finished all the paperwork that needed to be done for me to join him. At the time I thought I had some control but I found out that I didn’t. If someone who was supposed to sign our paperwork went on a two-week vacation, we just had to wait.

Deployments

You can’t control those either. Sometimes things can happen such as a soldier staying behind because you are having a baby. That was part of the reason my husband didn’t leave for his third deployment earlier, I was due one month after his year at home was over. We were not so lucky with baby #2 because he had to leave when I was 25 weeks pregnant and came home for R&R when he was born, missing the birth by 3 days. It really just depends on the Command and what they want to allow you to do.

I have been the wife of a soldier and the wife of someone working a regular job and there is a world a difference.

So back to the question, does the Military spouse serve her country?

If you are serving your country, you can do so in different ways. Standing by your Military spouse is one way to do that. Being there for them whether they are deployed or at home. When orders say it is time to move across the country, you do it. Understanding that the Military comes first and they can’t just call their boss to change things around. The Military is the one pillar in your life you have to work around. It isn’t flexible and if your spouse is making it a career, you have to figure out how you can handle it for the long haul.

Some years will be easier than others. Some deployments will be easier than others. Some duty stations will be easier than others.

Spouses serve in so many different ways. It’s a different type of serving than those who are serving IN the Military. We don’t have to see any battles, we don’t have to put on a uniform, we don’t have to say goodbye to our families for months at a time. We don’t have to put our lives in danger.

We serve in different ways. We serve our families and our communities. We strive to make things better, even in the simple ways. We are the support our spouse needs when they are home and away. We help make it possible for those with families to keep serving their country and it is nice to acknowledge that.

What do you think? Does it bother you if someone thanks you for serving too?

How To Choose A Good College

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how to choose a good college

When I was looking for a college to attend, I did a lot of research. It was important to me to find the right place to go. It was a bit overwhelming looking at all of my choices.

I took a lot of time to look into the schools I thought I wanted to go to. I am glad I did as I was able to find the right place to get my education at.

Are you thinking about going to college? One of the best ways for a Military spouse to go to school would be to use MyCAA benefits. If you are married to an active duty service member or an activated reservist or guard member E-5 or below you can apply for these benefits. It can allow you to attend college without having to get student loans. I would have taken advantage of this if I had been a Military spouse during my college years.

Once you have decided that college is what you want to do, you will have to start the process of looking for the right school. While doing this you should narrow down the search to schools that:

  • Have a good program for what you want to study.You want a school that will allow you to study what you want to study. You also want to make sure that the school will work with you when it comes to how long it will take to get your degree.
  • In a location you are happy with. When I was picking out a college location was very important to me. I wanted to go to a school in a place I wanted to live. This narrowed down my choices quite a bit. A great option for Military spouses is distance learning. This way you don’t have to worry about where the college is physically located. This makes it easier for those who move around.
  • Rated High. You don’t want to go to a college that isn’t rated high overall. Even if they might have a good program, you want to be able to graduate from a school you will be proud of. Take a look at graduation rates, student satisfaction and length of time in business.
  • Works with Military families. When I was starting my college search I was not a Military spouse quite yet but if I had been this would have been really important to me. I would have wanted to find a place that could give me extra help and know what it is like to use the military benefits like MyCAA.

Although searching for a good college can seem a bit overwhelming it is such an important step in your career. One college that is worth looking into is Martinsburg College. They are a great school to get your education from because of what they can offer you.

  • Students who attend Martinsburg College have access to a sophisticated learning management system (LMS) which provides an interactive and rich educational experience and makes it simple to progress logically through the program.
  • There is a lot of support for students with many hours of support available each week for a student that might need some instructional help. They also have one-on-one and direct telephone or digital tutoring sessions.
  • Since they have been working with the Military community since 2004, they understand the needs of service members and their families.
  • They have a very high satisfaction rate with 95% of the students who take a survey expressing satisfaction with their experience.

If you are interested in learning more, visit the Facebook group that has been set up so Military spouses can learn more about Martinsburg.

This is a sponsored post by Quality Blue. All opinions are my own.

Five Myths About Military Spouses

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Five Myths About Military Spouses

Here is the thing about Military Spouses, we are not all the same. We come from different backgrounds and different places. We have different likes and dislikes. Some of us are older and some of us are younger. There is not just one type of military spouse. The community is made up of different personalities and different ways of looking at life.

Here are some of the most common myths people have about military spouses.

1) We are all Christians and go to church. There are Military spouses of every religion. I know there seems to be a lot of Christians and there are. I am one of them but there are also a lot of people who are not. I love talking about religion with people. I find it so fascinating. And I like that we are not all the same. We can teach each other things we have learned from our own faith and I find that really valuable, especially in a community with a lot of stressful situations going on. Don’t ever assume that everyone has the same faith that you do.

2) We are all Republicans. A lot of the Military Community lean to the right politically, but we are not all Republicans. We all support the troops but we might see other topics really differently. Some of us are liberal, some of us just don’t have a side. There is a big range of people with all types of different political beliefs that are married to members of the military.

3) We all want to have children. There are so many Military children but not every Military spouse wants to be a mom. Some are waiting until after their husband is out of the Military and others are fine without never having children. There are also many spouses that want children and cannot have them. This can get hard when it comes to planning FRG events as some are really geared towards children and others are not. I have also heard that it can be hard to make friends on a Military post when you don’t have children.

4) We are all SAHMs or SAHWs. There are a lot of SAHMs in the Military world. That does not mean that everyone who is married to someone in the Military wants to be one. Some people have their own careers, others wish they could have a career but are unable to do so because of where they are currently living. It can be quite difficult to keep up your career when you have to move every few years. Some spouses are going to school. Some spouses have a college degree. Some plan to work once their spouse retires.

5) We can get through anything with a smile on our face. We are not always happy. We can’t be. Life gets rough sometimes. We need to vent. We get frustrated and we need to figure out how to get through whatever stressful situation we have to go through. We simply can’t be happy all the time. We can try to be positive but the reality is it isn’t always easy to keep a smile on your face 24/7. This is okay. Do your best to get through whatever challenge you need to get there.

Do you ever feel like you don’t fit into the Military Spouse world?

We Are Military Spouses

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20110508-IMG_1553My post today is for Blue Star Families. I will be answering the question, “Are Military Spouses today able to suck it up or are do we whine too much and feel we are entitled?”

I think that most Military spouses today are able to suck it up, at least for the most part. I think there is a difference between being whiney and wanting to vent. I also think it isn’t an easy thing to figure out sometimes. It can be difficult to understand your emotions. We don’t always know why we feel the way we do about certain circumstances.

Whenever Sears does their Heroes At Home (which will be tomorrow by the way) you hear the internet go wild with complaining, venting, name calling and it can get down right nasty at times. Someone can get frustrated over not getting the extra money and someone else calls them entitled. Maybe they are being entitled or maybe they are struggling and thought this would be a good thing for their family. It is so hard to judge, especially on the Internet.

I think this lifestyle can be pretty difficult and because of that a lot of venting goes on. Some people have a harder time than others. We all do what we can to support our service member. Or maybe I should say most of us do. We have all heard the stories of the wife who cheated or just gave up and went home. I think venting can cross into whininess pretty quickly. It is a fine line. One which I am sure I cross some times.

I do think we need services such as FRGs, free or reduced childcare, classes and other support systems through a deployment or even during a non-deployment period. I don’t think that makes us weak. I think it makes us smart enough to realize that we do need some help along the way. And I think those in years past who did not have everything we did are happy that we are given the extra support.

What do you think?

Follow Blue Star Families on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and build a support network so you can keep your family and personal community strong throughout the duration of the entire deployment life cycle.