Did you know… Mission: Milspouse published its 3000th blog post in 2023 and is still growing!
Love: The Hardest Thing On The Planet
Love. Love is…? How would you describe love? I don’t know. How does one go about defining something like love? I forget where I heard it, but there’s the old adage about it. It goes along the lines of “love is something you know you feel once you’re in it”. Sounds...
We Aren’t Just Weekend Warriors
My husband and I meet in high school. Life goes on. We graduate. He goes into the Marines. Then to the Georgia Guard. Then the Ohio Guard. Wherever life took him, his love for the military followed right along with him.
As for me, I fumbled around. Took way too many years to find myself.
Eighteen years after graduation, life brings us back together once again. About a year after we started dating, we went on a New Year’s trip to New Orleans with my sister and her hubby (who has been in the Army National Guard for many years). The boys talked military and beer all the way to, from, and during the trip. My sister and I joked we could have stolen their credit cards and gone on a shopping spree and they would never have known it. By the time we headed back, my sister overheard the infamous “you should sign back up” conversation.
More Manageable New Year’s Resolutions
Looking forward to a New Year often includes making New Year’s resolutions. Mid-December, I get all optimistic and create lists of things I want to accomplish in the New Year. It’s so easy to dream big in the middle of all the holiday magic. Then, the New Year rolls around and without all the cheerful holiday décor, the gloomy winter days start to drain all that built up holiday magic. I don’t know about you, but it never seems to fail that by mid-January, I’ve already hit a slump for a good chunk of those goals and am spiraling toward defeat.
What if there was a way to help make those New Year’s resolutions more manageable?
Making Space at the Table
When I was in high school, I used to pride myself on how filled the calendar pages of December were—events and deadlines coordinated by color. Busy equaled success and accomplishment.
But now, as I look at my calendar for December, I realize just how quickly January and 2020 are approaching and 2019 slipped through my grasp. All of the events and deadlines on my calendar no longer fill me with pride, but rather with an unwanted desire for this season to be over so I can simply move on to the next (hopefully) less busy season (spoiler alert: it won’t be less busy).
Mindfulness: The Key to Building Your Presence
Military life is beautiful, exciting, heartbreaking, and exhausting all at once. From OCONUS to CONUS moves, trainings that seem so frequent it all just becomes a blur, to deployments that go by at a snail’s pace. On what feels like a rare occasion, when you and your spouse get downtime to sit and chat, have you ever reflected on all that you’ve been through as a military family?
Hope For The Warriors is here to tell you that you are resilient. Need proof? Just look at the number of curtains you have accumulated from all the moves. Life in the military, whether you are an active-duty service member, veteran, or family member, necessitates resilience.
The Benefits of Family Traditions
“We are what we celebrate,” Meg Cox writes.
Our traditions are an outward expression of our family identity. The traditions we observe and the meaning behind them communicator family values to our children and others. The types of traditions we teach our children, and that were taught to us as children, are one way our family values get passed down from one generation to the next. For example, a family that values community service may have a tradition of volunteering at a soup kitchen or food bank together.
The scary thing is we teach our children about our family identity all the time by the activities we engage in as a family. Worried about the message that gift-centric traditions might be communicating to your children? Start a gratitude tradition! That is why intentionality in observing traditions is so important; without it, you forfeit your power to forge your family’s own identity. However, what makes traditions effective is that they bring together the family, foster connection, and have a purpose, and you get to chose that purpose.
Family Traditions and How They Strengthen Bonds
It’s that time of year when family traditions and celebrations abound. It’s a beautiful, magical time.
However, when faced with a deployment this season takes on a tinge of blue. I’ve been there.
Last Christmas, I was pregnant, alone, and my hormones made sure I felt all the feelings. I didn’t have my hubby home and didn’t have the option to fly as I was too far along in my pregnancy. So, I decided not to do anything for Christmas. I thought it would just be more manageable, less stress, and maybe, just maybe, it would make me feel better about spending it alone.
Boy, was I wrong.
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