Did you know… Mission: Milspouse published its 3000th blog post in 2023 and is still growing!
How to Navigate a Short-Notice Overseas Move
Many military members have undergone overseas PCS moves, with some encountering short-notice moves and even fewer faced with a short-notice move to an overseas duty station.
Military Spouse Entrepreneurship
Last year, I attended a conference in Austin, Texas, that centered on military spouse employment. I discovered that unlike the national unemployment rates of 3-4%, military spouse unemployment was at around 24% (pre-Covid-19 statistics).
Fortunately, the room was filled with bright minds and outside-the-box thinkers that were working hard to find solutions to this problem. I was intrigued by the percentages they shared and concerned about the room filled with women and men that had advanced degrees but could not find a comparable job.
News 6 Mashup: July 27, 2020
Here are the top stories for the week of June 1, 2020, straight from AWN News 6 Correspondent, Jolene McNutt:
• DoD Bans Photographs from Officer and Enlisted Promotion Boards
* Recycling Innovation: Plastic Bottles Find New Life
* Military Families Have Free Access to Digital Library
* This Week in History
The Never-ending War
Every two or three years a battle happens for military families who are PCSing.
That battlefield is your home, and the casualties are not only your possessions, but your sense of calm, serenity, and sense of right and wrong.
I’m talking about moving.
Some battles are so epic, it spawns a Facebook group with thousands of members consisting of military families that have faced moving horror stories. They turn to this group not only for retribution solutions, but also to simply share their grief, anger, and bewilderment.
Be the Bright Side
Military life is hard enough, and plenty of us know that, but this season of life is particularly hard due to COVID restrictions.
It’s more difficult to make friends.
It’s more difficult for our children to find friends.
Many of us have already found out our kids will be doing virtual schooling in the fall, while others await a decision.
And some of us are holding on to that last strand of sanity, preventing ourselves from falling apart simply because we have to keep on keepin’ on.
This is how life goes, even though this might not feel like living.
Taking Care of Business: A Celebration of Deployment Victories
A new friend and fellow milspouse just embarked on her first deployment, and she was telling me about some things she had successfully accomplished while her husband was gone.
As she accomplishes a task that perhaps her husband would have normally taken care of, she gives herself an imaginary pat on the back, takes a picture, and sends it to her husband with the hashtag #takingcareofbusiness. It’s become a cute way for her to share what’s going on day to day, build her confidence that she can do this, and also remind her husband that she’s doing just fine.
I thought it was such a great idea, so it got me thinking about the last 16 years of Army wife life and all the unique skills that I have developed, thanks to those Army-ordered times of separation.
OCONUS PCS Pro Tips
Now that I have moved into our house (albeit, without our HHG which are somewhere on a container ship in the Atlantic Ocean at this moment), I can breathe a nice, full breath knowing we successfully navigated an OCONUS PCS right smack-dab in the middle of COVID.
I’m not writing you today to tell you about a PCS during COVID, but rather, about a couple important and helpful tips we used to PCS from an OCONUS duty station, because that’s a whole new ball of wax with more opinions on the rules than those put forth by medical and political Facebook experts.
Here are six pro tips:
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