14 things not to say to a military wife

A friend sent this to me. I don’t know the original author, but it is great!

1. ‘Aren’t you afraid that he’ll be killed?’
(This one ranks in at number one on the ‘duh’ list. Of course we’re afraid. We’re terrified. The thought always lingers at the backs of our minds —but thanks brilliant, you just brought it back to the front. Maybe next you can go ask someone with cancer if they’re scared of dying.)

2. ‘I don’t know how you manage. I don’t think I could do it.’
(This is intended to be a compliment. Though, its just a little annoying. Here’s why: it’s not like all of us military wives have been dreaming since childhood of the day we’d get to be anxious single moms who carry cell phones with us to the bathroom and in the shower. We’re not made of some mysterious matter that makes us more capable, we just got asked to take on a challenging job. So we rose to the challenge and found the strength to make sacrifices.)

3. ‘At least he’s not in Iraq.’
(This is the number one most annoying comment for those whose husbands are in Afghanistan. What do they think is happening in Afghanistan? An international game of golf? Guys are fighting and dying over there.)

4. ‘Do you think he’ll get to come home for Christmas/anniversary/birthday/birth of a child/wedding/family reunion, etc?’
(Don’t you watch the news? No! They don’t get to come home for any of these things. Please don’t ask again.)

5. ‘What are you going to do to keep yourself busy while he’s gone?’
(Short answer: Try to keep my sanity. Maybe there’s a military wife out there who gets bored when her husband leaves, but I have yet to meet her. For the rest of us, those with and without children, we find ourselves having to be two people. That keeps us plenty busy. We do get lonely, but we don’t get bored, and drinking massive amounts of wine always helps keep me busy.)

6. ‘How much longer does he have until he can get out?’
(This one is annoying to many of us whether our husbands are deployed or not. Many of our husbands aren’t counting down the days until they ‘can’ get out. Many of them keep signing back up again and again because they actually love what they do or they VOLUNTEER AGAIN and AGAIN to go back to Iraq b/c there is work that needs to be done.)

7. ‘This deployment shouldn’t be so bad, now that you’re used to it.’
(Sure, we do learn coping skills and its true the more deployments you’ve gone through, the easier dealing with it becomes. And we figure out ways to make life go smoother while the guys are gone. But it never gets ‘easy’ and the bullets and bombs don’t skip over our guys just because they’ve been there before. The worry never goes away.)

8. ‘My husband had to go to Europe for business once for three weeks. I totally know what you’re going through.’
(This one is similar to number two. Do not equate your husband’s three week trip to London/Omaha/Tokyo/etc. With a 12-15 month or more deployment to a war zone. Aside from the obvious time difference, nobody shot at your husband or tried to blow him up with an I.E.D., your husband could call home pretty much any time he wanted to, he flew comfortably on a commercial plane, slept between crisp white sheets and ate well, paying for everything with an expense account. There is no comparison. We do not feel bonded to you in the slightest because of this comment and, if anything, we probably resent you a bit for it. Comparing a 12 month combat deployment to a few weeks business trip is like comparing a shitty ford Taurus with Mercedes convertible.)

9. ‘Wow you must miss him?’
(This one also gets another big ‘duh’. Of course we miss our men. There are some wives who do not and they’re now divorced.)

10. ‘Where is he exactly? Where is that?’
(I don’t expect non-military folks to be able to find Anbar Province on a map, but they should know by now that it’s in Iraq. Likewise, know that Kabul and Kandahar are in Afghanistan. Know that Mutada al Sadr is the insurgent leader of the Mahdi Army in Iraq and that Sadr City is his home area. Know that Iran is a major threat to our country and that it is located between Afghanistan and Iraq. Our country has been at war in Afghanistan for seven years and at war in Iraq for five years. These basic facts are not secrets, they’re on the news every night and in the papers every day —and on maps everywhere.)

11. ‘Well, he signed up for it, so it’s his own fault whatever happens over there.
(Yes, ignorant, he did sign up. Each and every day he protects your right to make stupid comments like that. He didn’t sign up and ask to be hit by anything, he signed up to protect his country. Oh, and by the way, he asked me to tell you that ‘You’re welcome.’ He’s still fighting for your freedom.)

12. ‘Don’t you miss sex! I couldn’t do it!’
(hmmm, no i don’t miss sex. i’m a robot. seriously…military spouses learn quickly that our relationships must be founded on something greater than sex. We learn to appreciate the important things, like simply hearing their voices, seeing their faces, being able to have dinner together every night. And the hard truth is, most relationships probably couldn’t withstand 12 months of sex deprivation.)

13. ‘Well in my opinion…..’
(Stop right there. Yo, I didn’t ask for you your personal political opinions. Hey, I love a heated political debate, but not in the grocery store, not in Jamba Juice, not at Nordstrom, not in a bar when I’m out with my girls trying to forget the war, and CERTAINLY NOT AT WORK. We tell co-workers about deployments so when we have to spend lunch hours running our asses off doing errands and taking care of the house, dog, and kids, they have an understanding. We do not tell co-workers and colleagues because we are giving an invitation to ramble about politics or because we so eagerly want to hear how much they hate the President, esp. while we’re trying to heat up our lean cuisines in the crappy office microwaves.)

last but not least….

14. ‘OH, that’s horrible…I’m so sorry!’
(He’s doing his job and he’s a badass. Don’t be sorry. Be appreciative and please take a moment out of your comfortable American lives to realize that our soldiers fight the wars abroad so those wars stay abroad.)

If you want to say anything, say thank you.

Giving Back to Veterans

Giving Back – Great Article in Times Mag

Military Handbooks

Here’s a link with great info!

http://www.militaryhandbooks.com

Hope Rides Alone

Sgt. Jeffers was a strong soldier and talented writer. He died in Iraq on September 19, 2007. He was a loving husband, brother and son. His service was more than this country could ever grasp – but the least you can do for the man who sacrificed his life for you is listen to what he had to say. Listen up and pay attention to all of the Cindy Sheehans and Al Frankens of the world. To MSNBC, CNN, and CBS. To all who call themselves Americans

Hope Rides Alone.

By Eddie Jeffers

I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods.

My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others.

I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to me to direct them in a manner that will someday allow them to see their families again. And yet, I too, am just a boy….my age not but a few years more than that of the ones I lead. I am stressed, I am scared, and I am paranoid… because death is everywhere. It waits for me, it calls to me from around street corners and windows, and……..it is always there. There are the demons that follow me, and tempt me into thoughts and actions that are not my own…but that are necessary for survival. I’ve made compromises with my humanity. And I am not alone in this.

Miles from me are my brethren in this world, who walk in the same streets… who feel the same things, whether they admit to it or not. And to think, I volunteered for this… And I am ignorant to the rest of the world…or so I thought. But even thousands of miles away, in Ramadi, Iraq, the cries and screams and complaints of the ungrateful reach me. In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn’t fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America, and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler.

I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about. It is their right, however, and it is a right that is defended by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls scattered across the world, far from home. I use the words boys and girls, because that’s what they are. In the Army, the average age of the infantryman is nineteen years old. The average rank of soldiers killed in action is Private First Class.

People like Cindy Sheehan are ignorant. Not just to this war, but to the results of their idiotic ramblings, or, at least I hope they are. They don’t realize its effects on this war. In this war, there are no Geneva Conventions, no cease fires. Medics and Chaplains are not spared from the enemy’s brutality because it’s against the rules. I can only imagine the horrors a military Chaplain would experience at the hands of the enemy. The enemy slinks in the shadows and fights a coward’s war against us. It is effective though, as many men and women have died since the start of this war. And the memory of their service to America is tainted by the inconsiderate remarks on our nation’s news outlets.

And every day, the enemy changes…only now, the enemy is becoming something new. The enemy is transitioning from the Muslim extremists to Americans. The enemy is becoming the very people whom we defend with our lives. And they do not realize it. But in denouncing our actions, denouncing our leaders, denouncing the war we live and fight, they are isolating the military from society… and they are becoming our enemy.

The Senate Democrats and peace activists like to toss the word “quagmire” around and compare this war to Vietnam. In a way they are right, this war is becoming like Vietnam. Not the actual war, but in the isolation of country and military. America is not a nation at war; they are a nation with its military at war. Like it or not, we are here, some of us for our second, or third times; some even for their fourth and so on. Americans are so concerned now with politics, that it is interfering with our war. Terrorists cut the heads off of American citizens on the Internet… and there is no outrage, but an American soldier kills an Iraqi in the midst of battle, and there are investigations, and sometimes soldiers are even jailed…for doing their job.

It is absolutely sickening to me to think our country has come to this. Why are we so obsessed with the bad news? Why will people stop at nothing to be against this war, no matter how much evidence of the good we’ve done is thrown in their face? When is the last time CNN or MSNBC or CBS reported the opening of schools and hospitals in Iraq? Or the leaders of terror cells being detained or killed? It’s all happening, but people will not let up their hatred of Bush. They will ignore the good news, because it just might show people that Bush was right.

America has lost its will to fight. It has lost its will to defend what is right and just in the world. The crazy thing of it all is that the American people have not even been asked to sacrifice a single thing. It’s not like World War Two, where people rationed food, and turned in cars to be made into metal for tanks. The American people have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Unless you are in the military or the family member of a service member, it’s life as usual…the war doesn’t affect you. But it affects us. And when it is over, and the troops come home, and they try to piece together what’s left of them after their service…where will the detractors be then?

Where will the Cindy Sheehans be to comfort and talk to soldiers and help them sort out the last couple years of their lives, most of which have been spent dodging death and wading through the deaths of their friends? They will be where they always are, somewhere far away, where the horrors of the world can’t touch them. Somewhere where they can complain about things they will never experience in their lifetime; things that the young men and women of America have willingly taken upon their shoulders.

We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children in. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped, and murdered if they do not comply with the terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause, and see it to its end.

But the country must unite in this endeavor…we cannot place the burden on our military alone. We must all stand up and fight, whether in uniform or not. And supporting us is more than sticking yellow ribbon stickers on your cars. It’s supporting our President, our troops and our cause. Right now, the burden is all on the American soldiers. Right now, hope rides alone. But it can change, it must change. Because there is only failure and darkness ahead for us as a country, as a people, if it doesn’t. Let’s stop all the political nonsense, let’s stop all the bickering, let’s stop all the bad news, and let’s stand and fight!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eddie’s father, David Jeffers, writes:

I’m not sure how many letters or articles you’ve ever read from the genre of “News from the Front,” but this is one of the best I’ve ever read, including all of America’s wars.

As I was reading this, I forgot that it was my son who had written it. My emotions range from great pride to great sorrow, knowing that my little boy (22 years old) has become this man.

He is my hero.

God bless.

Though Eddie is no longer with us, you can help to let his voice be heard. And pass his words on to others…

HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE MILITARY THERE WOULD BE NO AMERICA

Say Thank You

http://www.gratitudecampaign.org/fullmovie.php

I thought this was very cool!

PTSD Information

I came across this informative piece on PTSD for families. I haven’t read it completely, but I will be, then I’ll have more thoughts about it. In the meantime, I hope it helps you.

Click Here to Download the PTSD info

Home 3 years and what now?

So my husband will have been home 3 years this June from his tour in the middle east. Even now, 3 years later, issues and problems are revealing their ugly head. We have had a rough few months. My husband suffers from PTSD and it has dramatically impacted our family. So many families think that issues will develop within the first year, but its only now 3 years later that they are being discovered.

What took so long ..well I think there are many reasons, but here are a few of my top.

• Denial. I was so happy to have him home, I didn’t want anything to wrong.
• He was in denial. He wanted to make everything better because he left.
• We tried to “go back to normal” but who really goes back to normal. Normal doesn’t exist.
• Life happens. You get busy and just go through the motions, until you realize, your moved further away than you thought.

Who knew? That after this much time, our greatest tests could come. After talking to many families, I discovered many families dealing with the same thing?

Are you?

Forced Apart By War Yet Connected By The Internet

Chicago Tribune
December 16, 2007

Forced Apart By War Yet Connected By The Internet

Web has military families in touch like never before during long stints in Iraq

By Dahleen Glanton and Aamer Madhani, Tribune national correspondents

FT. STEWART, Ga. — Before her husband left for Iraq last spring, Amanda Nelson purchased a used laptop computer, and soon she was flooding her husband’s e-mail with videos and photos of their new baby.

For Pfc. Josh Nelson, the electronic messages became a lifeline to Amanda and their infant daughter, Kylee.

But as Amanda grew used to talking to her husband almost daily by phone, the e-mail routine faded. At the end of his recent home leave, Josh let her know what a loss that was.

“You’d better send me pictures this time,” he said between the teary hugs and kisses at the airport as he prepared to board a plane to return to Iraq. “All the videos you said you were going to send me, you never did.”

“I will send you lots of stuff,” she assured him.

Another skirmish in America’s first major war in an age of e-mail.

For families separated by long deployments to Iraq, letters that take weeks to arrive have been replaced by e-mail, blogs, videoconferencing, video cameras, instant messaging and Web sites from YouTube to MySpace.

All this 21st Century technology has transformed military life: The home front and the battlefront are connected as never before. That has made for an odd mix of intimacy and distance—and created an unprecedented challenge for combat leaders who must sustain morale.

“For some people, it’s good to maintain that contact with home and know that they can help if possible. While for others, the bliss of ignorance makes it easier to get through what we go through over here,” said 2nd Lt. Kyle Graham, Nelson’s platoon leader in Bonecrusher Troop, an element of the Army’s 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment.

“The only thing I caution … is don’t overdo it,” said Graham, 23. “The phone is like alcohol: It’s good in moderation, but if you use it too much you get hooked.”

Earlier this year, the Defense Department blocked MySpace and other sites on military computers, restricting access for soldiers serving in Iraq and on bases around the world. Military officials cited security concerns and a lack of adequate bandwidth as the primary reasons for the ban.

But the Internet clearly has presented difficulties beyond military security, a fact played out in the lives of Bonecrusher Troop families such as Josh and Amanda Nelson.

For Army wives like Amanda, cell phones and computers are as necessary as weapons are to the soldiers. Because of the cost of cell phones, most soldiers do not have them in Iraq, so their spouses wait, sometimes impatiently, for them to call. On the other end, soldiers like Josh have come to expect a steady flow of e-mails, photos and videos from home.

In the seven months since he left for Iraq as part of President Bush’s addition of nearly 30,000 troops in a “surge” to stabilize the country, Josh has balanced his duties as a soldier with helping his wife back home at Ft. Stewart.

Thousands of miles apart, they decided via telephone and Josh e-mailing from an Internet cafe in Iraq that Amanda would try to get pregnant during his home leave. Josh also helped her work out a household budget when she ran out of money at the end of the month.

Such connectedness has helped many couples through the Iraq war’s long deployments, but it also can damage morale at home and abroad.

After Bonecrusher Troop deployed with the rest of the Army’s 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, the brigade commander replaced the leader of the troop’s family support group back at Ft. Stewart when word spread about certain postings on her personal MySpace page.

The woman, the wife of a deployed soldier, was replaced because the controversy had affected the morale of the entire troop, the military said.

“If you are a wife,” Amanda said, “people might not know your name, but they know when you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing.”

Not the life she expected

On the May morning her husband first left for Iraq, Amanda had planned to get up before dawn. She would have his favorite breakfast—fried egg sandwich with cheese, ketchup and Tabasco sauce—waiting for him when he got out of the shower.

But the mounting fear of what lay ahead overwhelmed her. All she could do was lie in bed next to him and watch the minutes tick away on the clock.

As Josh got dressed in his fatigues, she thought to herself how handsome he looked, like G.I. Joe. She was sure that the Army would be good for him, that it would give him the discipline he needed to be a strong husband and father.

She was not as certain about herself. She was suddenly thrust onto unfamiliar turf as an Army wife, and she had no idea what that entailed.

In the months that followed Bonecrusher Troop’s departure, though, Amanda evolved from a teary-eyed, love-struck young woman into a mature, devoted mother determined to get her own life on track while holding her young family together.

She is raising Kylee alone, in a sometimes cold and isolating place where friends are there one day and deployed the next. Though she tries to remain strong, she has battled loneliness that threatens her promise to Josh that she would stay in their apartment on base during the 15 months he is in Iraq.

She gave up her dream of a college degree after a few weeks because there was no one to care for Kylee. And there is no reprieve from the lingering fear that she might get a call that her husband has been injured or killed. After only a few months, she is fed up with Ft. Stewart.

Scholarship for Military Spouses

WGU Expands Scholarship Opportunities for Military Spouses

Salt Lake City, Utah – (October 30, 2007) Western Governors University (http://www.wgu.edu) is now taking applications for its new WGU Spouses to Graduates Scholarships. These scholarships are designed to help spouses of active duty military personnel earn a degree online in business, education, healthcare, or information technology.

WGU has been and remains a leader in providing opportunities for Troops to Teachers and Spouses to Teachers with existing programs for individuals who want to become teachers through the WGU Teachers College. This new expansion of scholarships widens the opportunity for military spouses to get degrees in the other disciplines offered by WGU in its Colleges of Business, Education, Information Technology, and Health Professions.

This military spouse scholarship is valued up to $1,500, and will pay $300 per six-month term for up to five terms. Multiple scholarships will be awarded to candidates based on their previous academic experience, their readiness for online study, and their current competencies.

WGU’s unique competency approach allows students to earn a degree of their choice by studying anywhere at any time, regardless of their location. The WGU competency-based model measures students on what they know, rather than the number of hours they spend in a classroom. It also gives working adults that have acquired competencies through their professional experience a chance to complete their degree at a quicker pace.

To be admitted to WGU and considered for this military spouse scholarship, candidates must show proof of status as a spouse of active-duty military personnel and, if living outside of the U.S., must have access to a proctored test facility on a U.S. military installation. Spouses of reservists and National Guard are also eligible.
For more information on this scholarship and eligibility requirements, please contact WGU Enrollment 1-866-225-5948 or go to www.wgu.edu/militaryspouses.

About Western Governors University (WGU)
WGU is the only accredited university in the U.S. offering online competency-based degree programs. The private non-profit university was founded and is supported by 19 governors, as well as more than 20 leading corporations and foundations, such as Hospital Corporation of America, Oracle, Thomson Corporation, Marriot Foundation, Convergys and AT&T. WGU offers bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business, information technology, teacher education and healthcare, with students in all 50 states and 10 foreign countries.

Old Faithful Erupts in My Front Yard

Men are Mars. Women are from Venus.

You know this phrase. You’ve probably even read the book. We have our roles. I mop the floor, he mows the lawn. I clean toilets; he refills the oil in the car. There are little jobs that each of you do that makes your family work. I don’t explain to my husband my theories behind why I choose that particular wall decoration and I never really wanted to know why he blew out the sprinkling system in the fall. Well, now I know.

It was just another afternoon at work, when I received a phone call from one of my neighbors. “Your front yard is flooding” she proclaimed.  I paused and thought to my self, now why is my front yard flooding, it is 22 degrees and there is snow on the ground. Then it hit me. Oh No! I forgot to turn off the sprinklers.

While I raced home, I cursed my husband in everyway possible. Why didn’t he remind me to turn off the sprinklers from a war zone? Why did he have to leave? I can’t remember everything.  I can’t do it all. Why didn’t he write that on list of the stuff I had to remember to do while he was gone? Oh yeah, he didn’t leave me a list like that.  In any case, this was his fault.

It’s dark, snowing and about 20 degrees outside, when I pulled in my driveway to find my wonderful neighbor knee deep in mud, with water shooting out of the ground; you would have thought Old Faithful had just erupted in my front yard. He is anxiously trying to figure out where the valve to turn off my sprinkler was, as he is getting sprayed in the face with VERY cold water.

All I could do was stand there and cry. Why was this happening to me? This is the part where I am sure my neighbor was thinking why don’t you shut up, pick up a shovel and help me dig.

But I didn’t, all I could do was think why me? Why now? So I did what any wife with a husband overseas would do. Jumped on the computer and emailed my husband to scream at him.

From: Meagen
To: Jay

HELP, HELP, HELP. Our sprinklers have burst. Water is everywhere. CONTACT ME ASAP.

Love Your Desperate Wife.

Now think about it. What is my husband, a half a world away, going to do about the fountain of water pouring out of my flowerbed? I receive this email in return.

From: Jay
To: Meagen

Turn it off. Have it repaired in the spring.

Jay

That’s it. No, sorry honey this happened. I’ll fly right home and fix it message. Duh. I thought I’d let it run all winter. What a stupid reply.  How could he say something like that? Our neighbor had it under control. He was turning it off. He was my knight in shining waterproof boots. YOU, You should be turning it off. That’s your job. You’re the HUSBAND!

I am sure you are thinking, what horrible thoughts to think about your husband, while he is defending our country. But when, you realize that another women’s husband is braving Old Faithful and wadding through the muddy tar pits, to save what is left of your sprinkling system, that you should have remembered to turn off 3 weeks earlier, then you have a greater understanding for why it was just easier to blame my husband for leaving.