We Wish You Knew: Feelings from Home
National Guard life is so different than “Big Army.” At least as many people often assume.
Well, it isn’t.
There is a group of elite soldiers within the National Guard who maintain a high operational tempo, and we are not just talking about once a month and two annual trainings a year. We are talking about Joint Combined Exchange Trainings, TDYs, schools, deployments, and Guard weekend obligations. A lot of National Guard soldiers within this specific community also have civilian jobs that tie into the world of serving: government contracting, S.W.A.T, law enforcement, and more. This means that Guard spouses navigate alone much of the time.
Guard life is so different. Most of us do not live near a base or a military community. We are surrounded by a community of people who have forgotten that we are still at war. We live on streets where flags do not fly. There are no blue stars in the window or yellow ribbons on trees. Our closest military bestie might be 35 minutes away or live in our phone.
A fellow spouse in this community remarked, “My husband was gone 48 out of 52 weeks in 2019.” Another spouse said, “My husband missed every holiday in 2019, as well as the beginning of those in 2020.” The most eye opening comment: “My best friend (whose husband is an active-duty elite solider) and I compared how much our husbands were gone, and mine was gone twice as much.”
We are beyond proud of our husbands; we are not complaining. We just wish people around us in our local community knew.
Many National Guard Spouses hold part-time or full-time jobs.
We are tired. We wake up exhausted. We work because the Guard life has unknown financial stability.
We often have multiple little ones at home.
Deployments come unplanned and fast.
Littles are born without their fathers there and then raised by a solo parent.
We wish you knew how much we love being a mom, but a nap sounds magical.
We wish you knew that we often feel torn between two worlds.
We wish you knew that we chose Guard life in the hopes that it would be easier than active duty.
We wish you knew it is not.
BUT, we wish you knew that this community is unlike anything else.
We wish you knew that when we hear that someone has been killed in action we rally around that family forever. We rally around their children.
When a spouse is suffering we jump into action. We are force multiplers. We mentor one another.
We drive across states to spend less than 24 hours with our husband and best friends.
We take care of each other’s children. We take care of one another.
We have bonds that can never be broken.
We are family. A family that has spouses deployed in more than 50 countries securing America’s strategic interests.
We wish you knew.
