These were the words that popped up on my email notifications first thing last Monday morning. I rubbed my eyes, sat up, and clicked on the email to read further. A few weeks before I had applied to graduate school and apparently I was accepted…with caution.
A million thoughts ran through my mind, most of them centering around the fact that this was about to get real, real fast. But one question kept nagging me: Why did they put “with caution” in the subject line? What did that mean?
One of the chief concerns of a milspouse facing a PCS is finding employment. The list of priorities is as follows:
Where will I live?
Where will my kids go to school?
How do I get to the grocery store?
Where will I work?
For us, the spouses, we have the option of being with friends and family, usually in a semi-familiar place for the holidays. We can choose what we want to do, what we want to cook and eat, what we want to buy, where we want to go. Unfortunately, our service members don’t get that luxury.
In the 13 years I've been with my service member, we've spent approximately six years of that time separated because of his military duty—whether it was for deployments, training, or simply hectic work schedules—and plenty of experience with deployment during the...
left on Christmas Day.
My 6-year-old has had three Christmases where Daddy was either going or gone. I know we aren’t alone in that situation, but the logic of “other people are dealing with it too” is often lost on children when all they really want in front of the fireplace on Christmas morning is their deployed parent.
Each year it seems like a difficult decision comes up: Do we go home for the holidays or not?
For some, this may be a topic that isn’t relevant. For others, it may be based on their current situation, i.e. deployment. Then there’s the other group.
This group, while the decision may still be discussed, will choose to spend the holidays their own way.
Mission: Milspouse is a
501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
EIN Number: 88-1604492
hello@missionmilspouse.org
P.O. Box 641341
El Paso, TX 79904