This past week, I decided to start a spouse coffee for the Captain’s Career Course.

But, let me back up a second.

My husband brought us here to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to be an instructor for the Field Artillery CCC. To make sense of the situation for you, I will explain.

There are at least two classes of captains going through this course at the same time. Right now, there are three. Each is divided into four sections with their own instructor. My husband is one of them. His section has about 15 students. It doesn’t function like a normal unit—they’re here for six months and then they leave to other duty stations.

Nevertheless, they are here for six months.

Six months of not knowing a soul.

Six months of working alongside their peers in a course designed to prepare them for command.

Six months their spouses know no one, and six months they could be learning, too.

I found out, once I settled our own family, that there wasn’t anything for these ladies. No coffee, no FRG. So I set out to create something simple—a spouse “meet and greet.” You’d think it was simple.

It wasn’t.

I spent the latter part of two weeks preparing a roster of spouses. How hard could it be? Captains giving up their spouses’ emails. We’re not talking brand new Joe here—we’re talking 30 year old men (okay, I’m averaging).

WRONG! It was an act of Congress.

The end result was combining eight different rosters and a bunch of “hey, I know this girl isn’t on there” from the spouses. We’re still not complete, but we are working out the kinks. I’ve gotten pretty far—enough to be able to be at their spouse welcome and a great connection with the commander with support to make this work. We started with only a few addresses, and now we have quite a list. We started with three RSVPs for the coffee, and now we have more than 30 attending.

It’s something I’m proud of, but it scares me to death at the same time. I’ll meet people, which is great. I know I can help them, which is what I love to do.

But 30 people in my living room tomorrow night? Woo!

The moral of the story is, if you don’t see something you think should be available, don’t be afraid to start it yourself. One person can change something.

The other moral is, make sure your service member knows your email address and knows that he should give it out when asked about spouse events. Let it be known to him that you want to participate and that you do care about things that are going on in your FRG, spouses’ club, on-post events, etc. I think sometimes they assume that since they don’t care, you won’t care either. Grill them on bringing home flyers and making sure they make it to your desk.

I’ll let you know how the coffee goes!