By Julia Kysela
This year began with a challenge as my husband deployed. I have been lucky enough to have him home since 2009, so I almost forgot what this feels like. Slowly but surely, some of my other milspouse friends began to share with me that their spouses were deploying too, and I found myself saying, “We are in the same boat.”
Okay, I might have called it a crappy boat or a stupid boat or an “expletive” boat, but a boat nevertheless. Some of us might be embarking on our maiden journey, others might feel like they are the captain of the ship, while many of us are in between. Even though we may be miles apart, our spouses may be in different branches, or we have only met for a short period of time, we are on the same voyage. We can weather this storm together as a milspouse team.
There will be days we will be docked for emotional refit and others where we will be full steam ahead tackling whatever might be the great victory of the day. Unfortunately our ship may be attacked by the notorious Murphy and his gang of pirates. Once we fend them off, hopefully we can have some R&R to drop anchor off the shore of “WeGotThis” Island and bask in the calm paradise of everything going right for once. The majority of our days at sea though, will be spent staying afloat and making sure we don’t capsize.
Even though we are sure to be jealous, we won’t make you walk the plank when you need to abandon ship if your spouse is lucky enough to get mid-tour leave or even better-come home! We can keep in mind that eventually our ship will come back to home port and our voyage will end too.
So to all you spouses out there, crack some champagne on the bow and don’t forget to pour some in your glasses. “All Aboard” the USS Deployment.
Smooth sailing, Julia