Today I am a freaking rock star! Today I am not only surviving my husband's deployment to Afghanistan, I am kicking some deployment a$$! Today I am mom to my 2 and 3-year-old kiddos, and I am Detective to nearly everyone else. I am also covered in buggers from a sick little one!
My husband, CJ, is a Black Hawk pilot in the National Guard, and he has just begun what will be around a 9 month deployment. That does not include all of the pre deployment crap he did before. Basically he will have been gone on and off for just over a year once this 9ish months is done.
I have tried to read some of the army books for wives. Nearly all of them suck. I don't move every few years so get rid of that chapter, money is better when he is activated for Guard duty than for his regular job so the finances chapter can go, and don't tell me to get away or stay with family when things get tough. I have a freaking career that makes it kind of difficult to just spend a month with relatives. I read something that suggested just quitting for the deployment and starting back when he gets home. Really!?! I don't exactly have the type of job you can just put on hold. I did take off nearly a year to be with him for most of his flight school. I also sped up plans for baby #2 so I wouldn't have to take any more time off after being gone for a year. Once you take out the finances chapter, the chapter on moving all the time and the crap about giving up your career or worse yet the books that assume since your husband is military you couldn't possibly have the drive and determination to have your own career you have no book. I will discuss my deep hatred for the assumption that I am my husband, and that no military wife has career aspirations or accomplishments of her own in a later post.
It is from my inability to find much good advice or support from anything that pretends to represent military wives that I am choosing to write this blog. Yes, my husband is "only National Guard" so I probably don't know anything about anything, and since he is "only National Guard" the scare of in in being gone is so much less, and I hear RPGs don't hit National Guard helicopters. Choose to dismiss me as not knowing crap if you want, or choose to find another voice speaking for what I hope is many women around the country who feel alienated from their communities as their neighbors live the normal life and from the military since we aren't really military families.
Today I choose to at least be a whispers for a voice that is very often not heard or at least not given a second thought. Today I give a fresh prospective of a somewhat successful working woman, mother and wife to a Deployed United States Soldier.
My husband, CJ, is a Black Hawk pilot in the National Guard, and he has just begun what will be around a 9 month deployment. That does not include all of the pre deployment crap he did before. Basically he will have been gone on and off for just over a year once this 9ish months is done.
I have tried to read some of the army books for wives. Nearly all of them suck. I don't move every few years so get rid of that chapter, money is better when he is activated for Guard duty than for his regular job so the finances chapter can go, and don't tell me to get away or stay with family when things get tough. I have a freaking career that makes it kind of difficult to just spend a month with relatives. I read something that suggested just quitting for the deployment and starting back when he gets home. Really!?! I don't exactly have the type of job you can just put on hold. I did take off nearly a year to be with him for most of his flight school. I also sped up plans for baby #2 so I wouldn't have to take any more time off after being gone for a year. Once you take out the finances chapter, the chapter on moving all the time and the crap about giving up your career or worse yet the books that assume since your husband is military you couldn't possibly have the drive and determination to have your own career you have no book. I will discuss my deep hatred for the assumption that I am my husband, and that no military wife has career aspirations or accomplishments of her own in a later post.
It is from my inability to find much good advice or support from anything that pretends to represent military wives that I am choosing to write this blog. Yes, my husband is "only National Guard" so I probably don't know anything about anything, and since he is "only National Guard" the scare of in in being gone is so much less, and I hear RPGs don't hit National Guard helicopters. Choose to dismiss me as not knowing crap if you want, or choose to find another voice speaking for what I hope is many women around the country who feel alienated from their communities as their neighbors live the normal life and from the military since we aren't really military families.
Today I choose to at least be a whispers for a voice that is very often not heard or at least not given a second thought. Today I give a fresh prospective of a somewhat successful working woman, mother and wife to a Deployed United States Soldier.
Amen!! I get so incredibly sick of being dismissed as if my husband being in the National Guard is not dangerous. The next person who tells me he is just a "weekend warrior" I might strangle. All sacrifices are meaningful. I haven't had to endure a deployment yet, thank God. I just wanted tolet you know that you are an amazing mother and wife. Keep your head held high. Like you said, you're a rockstar!! (:
ReplyDeleteThank you.
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