Military Spouse Network
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Picking up and moving to a foreign country can not only be stressful, it can be scary. With a variety of supportive resources, especially if living on base, Heather Sweeney says it can be far too easy to hide in the fishbowl in hopes of replicating life in America. A Navy wife and mother of two, Sweeney experienced her own hesitation while stationed with her husband in Japan.
“The language was too hard to learn, I’d be way too far away from family, and there was no way a 5′ 7″ blonde female could possibly blend in. I would stand out like, well, an American in Japan,” she writes in SpouseBUZZ.
Fortunately, Sweeney overcame the culture shock to make the best of the overseas tour. Here’s how you can too.
Some military parents fear that their lifestyle hurts or would hurt their children. So, some service members decide to leave the military for the sake of their kids. Military children, though, have been resilient and grew up to take advantage of the benefits gained during their childhood.
I am one of millions of American “military brats.” Here are five benefits I have received from my military family experiences.
The Military Ball is the black tie event of the year and provides military couples with an excellent opportunity to dress up and wine and dine with their closest peers. For female spouses of military members, the ball is always a great time to find a new exquisite gown, stunning jewelry and a nice pair of heels to match. While shopping for a new ball gown is always fun, trying to find a dress that’s both stunning and appropriate that adheres to the military ball dress code can lead to a bit of anxiety.
Some women have a tendency to be over the top when it comes to the military ball. While any woman would love to have a presence, spouses should remember that the military ball is about their service member and that there is a fine line between classy and trashy. So how does a spouse go about finding that perfect gown for the ball? By taking a few lessons from prior ball gown traditions.
Spring break is just around the corner, and even if you feel like a vacation may be out of your financial comfort zone, there are plenty of options for families looking to travel on a budget.
According to the Department of Labor, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was enacted to help “balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families.” Anyone who has attempted to juggle the demands of being a parent or spouse with being an employee knows how difficult this task can be.
The additional stress of being a parent or spouse in the military community can make finding and keeping a job even harder. For this reason, the military community has been a primary focus for FMLA legislation over the past 20 years. Recent changes to FMLA specifically address issues faced by the military community.
A lot of focus is placed on the difficulty associated with military families transferring schools during a PCS or deployment, but the military community faces problems with school bureaucracy at other times as well. Not every school district is lax with rules and regulations, and spending time with a parent they don’t often see because of deployment can make their grades suffer.
A new bill proposed in Texas is hoping to relax the rules a bit for the unique situations military families experience. Will it work?
Pin-up style photography has been a long-standing tradition within the military and veteran communities, and for good reason. What better than playful flirting to boost morale among tired and wounded soldiers?
Although the concept of the pin-up predates the 20th century, its prevalence in modern conflicts has faded to the background. Still, there’s a few women keeping the flame alive for pin-ups, and keeping morale up the best way they know how.
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Saying “I love you” isn’t very difficult, but it can prove to be an issue when your spouse is deployed and communication isn’t easy. If you can’t talk on the phone every day, you might find it hard to communicate your love on a regular basis.
So the next best thing is to get creative with the methods through which you say “I love you.” Here are several creative things you can do from the home front that serve that purpose.
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If you’re a military spouse, you might have to move by yourself.
Moving houses can be intimidating in the first place, but having to move by yourself can be downright frightening. If you’re a military spouse, that might be the reality at some point in your life when your spouse is deployed.
“I am an active duty military spouse with two children and six ‘on my own’ moves under my belt,” said Roxanne Reed, Executive Director of the Military Spouse Foundation and Marine Corps spouse. “I’ll be honest — moving stressed me out to no end in the beginning, but now I see it as a time to clean out, reorganize and start fresh.”
Although moving by yourself is an ominous prospect, there are several tips and precautions you can take that will make the process much smoother and easier.
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With Veterans Day just behind us, it is important to remember that honoring veterans and the military community is something we should extend well beyond one or two days a year. In an effort to increase public awareness of the sacrifices the military community makes every day, November was recently declared Military Family Month.
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