We become resilient because what other choice is there? This life demands it, and you often must bow to that power.

The year is 2015.

We are living in Washington on Fort Lewis, and have been for about 3 years by then. I am barely pregnant with my oldest child. My husband is about to go to South Korea for the first time as a PCS.

I decide to stay behind and get permission from housing to keep our house while he’s gone. He will be gone for a year on an unaccompanied tour.

He comes back just a week before I have our baby.

The delivery of my baby was traumatic. My stay at Madigan Army Hospital is an unrelenting nightmare of people constantly in and out of my room, never allowing me to sleep more than an hour at a time for days.

I am already struggling with postpartum depression knowing I will be alone again, but this time with a baby relying on me.

My world feels turned upside down.

At 20 days old, he’s gone again, heading back to South Korea. I am home alone with a newborn, in absolute shambles. My dad comes to help me for a week about a month later.

The adjustment has been hard. My doctor puts me on antidepressants. With time, I adjust. I miss him, but I am a mom now.

By the time he returns, we have a 6 month old. He has missed a lot of things, but thankfully not much more. We leave Washington and go to Scott Air Force Base in southern Illinois.

Life changes all over again.

The year is 2024.

We move away from recruiting duty in Chicago to Fort Carson, Colorado. While recruiting was a stressful time for my spouse, there was one thing that was always guaranteed: he would not go on any deployments during his time as a recruiter.

Once we reached Fort Carson, however, I knew that that was likely to change. It wasn’t long before that knowledge turned into reality.

He would go on a rotation to South Korea. My feelings about South Korea are still the same: a mystery that I didn’t take advantage of unraveling 10 years ago.

This time the story is more difficult. I have two children. My oldest is 9 years old, and youngest is 7.

Because of the last two duty station assignments, their dad has not gone on any long deployments, or even done field training.

His longest absence maybe being 6 weeks for an army school.

But they barely remember it. They were toddlers.

This time is different.

They’re old enough to understand.

They’re old enough to ask questions. But they truly do not understand what those 9 months actually mean. Kids don’t have the same grasp of time. They weren’t there when he was gone before.

March 2010.

We live in Charlottesville, Virginia. We are at a remote duty station, where my spouse works at a building with DoD employees. We spent 3 years apart regularly while he was stationed in Hawaii, and I finished college before we finally moved to Virginia.

Our relationship suffered for those years due to the distance. But I feel, “Finally. Finally we will be together”.

I think, “He will not deploy. This is not a regular duty station”. But, I am wrong. He goes to Afghanistan as an individual.

He is gone for a year. It is a long and difficult year, often filled with anxiety, but we get through it. We’ve gotten through many long and difficult years by now.

We move to Washington to Fort Lewis shortly after he returns in 2011.

April 2012.

He goes back to Afghanistan with rear- detachment. This time for 8 months. A grueling situation that I hate, as his dwell time had just reset, and barely. Blackouts are common and time moves slowly.

He comes back after Thanksgiving. He goes out for month-long field training here and there.

Things feel better and more normal. I hope that it is the last time.

June 2025.

Time is racing towards another deployment. I can hardly contain my emotions.

What will it look like solo parenting?

Can I handle it?

Can I handle the emotions of three people this time?

I find this version of myself facing a different but practically same scenario. The time has come. It feels strange how slowly but also quickly the last 6 months of this year have passed by.

My kids and I take him to do the last few tasks before they pack up and leave their work building to go and do what needs to be done before the long travel day. My kids cry, and so do I. We drive home, and go to bed.

After my spouse flies to Korea, I do not hear from him for around 24 hours. And once I do, I feel some of the stress release. But the hard part has barely begun.

There is a yearning for my spouse’s presence.

Anxiety envelopes me with the unknown, and the yearning is almost unbearable. I feel it in my body: like an important question you keep asking but can’t yet find the answer to, though somehow it feels as if it is on the tip of your tongue.

Time moves slowly and I have moments where his absence hits me like a ton of bricks.

These are not as frequent, as I find myself coping mostly well, but still have trouble knowing he won’t be on the same continent for the rest of this year.

We make a long drive back to the Midwest to visit our family before the school year starts. I’ve been helping plan my high school reunion as well, and this has given me a distraction.

This helps with some of the stress, but I know once we are back in Colorado, it will change. It will be impossible to come back to visit again before he returns.

I find myself coping even better than I believed I would, at least for now. My spouse and I talk every day, and quite often several times a day. This helps me keep the anxiety at bay, though it does not change that I miss him and wish he were here.

My spouse will reach his 20 year mark in July.

I have been with him throughout his whole career, and wonder what life could be like when he decides to retire. He talks about it more frequently these days.

Our kids cope with the changes, though they are often difficult. They’ve coped fairly well so far with this situation, though my youngest child has told me in his own way that he’s glad he has me, because he doesn’t currently have his dad.

I frequently wonder how far into this rotation it will take before things start to change again, before the reality really sinks in that dad is not coming back for quite a long time.

I have done my very best with my experience as a milspouse to prepare them. I often think that at least it is not Afghanistan.

At least he is safe. So much changes, but so much stays the same.

The sameness helps the change be more palatable.

The military life is very much so the military life at this moment. (Life is life-ing, you might say.) And when I think about the last 15 or so years, I can’t even begin to grasp how much has changed, how much we have endured, and how much this rotation reminds me of that.

We become resilient because what other choice is there? This life demands it, and you often
must bow to that power.

I hope these next months go by quickly, and that I continue to hold onto the strength I need to
push through this separation.

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