4 Tactics to Deal With the MilSpouse Mean Girls

For the last four months, I have been the music director for my daughter’s elementary school musical, Alice in Wonderland (my dreams are filled with a late white rabbit and dancing playing cards). Just last night, opening night, the audience got a kick out of the boisterous music, every tongue-in-cheek line, and all of the characters’ personalities—especially the lovely, beautiful flowers in the garden.

Those flowers. So stunning and poised. Dancing around the stage in glittery dresses and sparkling tulle, that gaggle of lilies and petunias and daisies and more captured the audience’s attention with their beauty, their finesse, and their total cruelty toward Alice.

Wait, what?
That’s right. Rude, mocking cruelty. Even Alice in Wonderland has mean girls. Discourteous, judging, intolerant, and toxic people (er, flowers) that wind their thorny vines around us and squeeze until we feel just like Alice—about three inches tall.

Unfortunately, the mean girl culture isn’t confined to just Disney movies or popular teenage comedies. It’s not even confined to a gender. It’s a mean person culture. And it’s pervasive—a snake-in-the-grass trend that affects our children, our friendships and other relationships, and, more intimately, the military spouse environment.

There’s no perfect fix. No easy buttons or magic tonic marked “Drink Me!” Each situation calls for different remedies, different prescriptions in the medicine cabinet. But the clear assessment is simple: We each need to figure out ways to address the meanies in our lives, in our ‘hoods, in our FRGs/units. What will we do?

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Kiera Durfee: Kiera Durfee is an eleven-year military spouse veteran and is an avid writer, teacher, Netflix operator, doughnut eater, and procrastinator. She represented Utah National Guard spouses as the 2014 Utah National Guard Spouse of the Year and feels strongly about military spouses finding the communal and spousal support needed to navigate the tumultuous storms of military living. Kiera enjoys eating, exercising (in that order), singing, ignoring the laundry, and being with her husband and three little girls who are the very center of her life and who simultaneously drive her mad. In addition to being well-versed in hearty wit and sarcasm, she knows all of the state capitals.
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