Engage. Educate. Encourage. EMPOWER.
It’s safe to say that our country is hurting. We’ve had an entire year through a worldwide pandemic, political polarization, enormous numbers of grieving Americans, and feelings of impatience and anger as we seek our ideas of justice and freedom.
If you’re like me, you’ve been asking yourself, how do we heal?
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Before I met my husband, James, I had no connection to military life beyond my grandfathers who both served in WWII. In my world, the military was a foreign, invasive force that attracted only those who sought out and enjoyed violence.
It wasn’t just the US military. I felt this way about all those who I believed chose war—otherwise, why choose to be in the service?
In those initial months dating James, I had so many questions. I could not put together the idea of this tremendously kind, gentle, compassionate man who I was getting to know to be the same person who I would have assumed to choose violence and anger before anything else. Needless to say, this was the early part of my journey of transformation in my beliefs about military service—where I can now stand by my husband with pride as he serves our country, and I feel honored to be a military spouse.
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To the civilians on the outside of military families, there are only few life circumstances to which they can relate. Often, there are many life experiences that can be hard to relate to when you aren’t in the thick of military service. Last month, I wrote a blog called It’s Okay to Struggle in hopes of normalizing the struggles that each of us as military spouses may experience, and in turn empower us to be honest about the hard things we’re going through. This month, I wanted to try something different.
Naming what we may grieve.
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Our service members carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Their burden is shared by us, the people who love them. The act of taking on this kind of stress is taxing. Our ability to live fully ourselves is more important than ever. But sometimes, we struggle.
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Over the last almost 10 years, I’ve been working in senior living communities. Most of my days are spent connecting with those who have lived 80 years or more. Ever since my first holiday season working with seniors, I’ve observed that there are two sides of their holiday coin.
On one hand, you have tremendous joy and gratitude—it’s a season of giving!
On the other, you have grief and longing.
In most of their long lives, they’ve had tremendous joy alongside tremendous hardship. I only began to understand these two sides as I experienced my own hardship while my soldier husband, James, was away on his first deployment.
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It’s said that we only have a few seconds to make a strong first impression when meeting someone new. Is that also true when it comes to reading the writing of a stranger? Let’s find out as I introduce myself to you as a new Experience Blog Contributor with Army Wife Network—and I think I’ve already used up those few seconds of time…
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