How to Survive a Deployment

These stories were submitted by website visitors.

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as submitted by Karina

My fiancee is in the Army and this is his first deployment. He left at the end of January, and came back for his mid-tour leave on April 6th for two weeks, then he went back and I wont see him again until next year, around Jan or the first week of Feb that’s if they don’t extend. I’m in the military as well.

I’m in the Coast Guard, but even though I have a lot to do I still feel down at times, and picking myself up is hard and causes me tons of tears, questions and sleepless nights. What has helped me a lot though is working out.

When I’m at the gym my  purposes are:

1. To get rid of all the anger, stress, sadness and all the emotions that come within.

2. To get a nice body that I know my fiancee would love and admire.

Hope that helps, it has helped me and trust me, when he came back for his mid-tour leave, he noticed it all right, and told me that I look sexy. I got toned, got my stamina higher, lost a few pounds, and I actually do much more at work.

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as submitted by Pat

To stay busy during your husband’s deployment you can get more involved with your kids since it helps the whole family. I have 3 kids; a 16 year boy, and 7 & 9 yr old girls. I stay up and wait for my son to come home each night. Often the best conversations about his life are had over a late night snack.

I also make sure to have girl’s days out with each of my daughters individually. Usually I take one girl each Saturday to help me do errands. We have a “special” lunch at their favorite fast food place and talk about them. My girls are also involved in 4-H (which supports military kids) and I go to the monthly meetings and volunteer wherever they need me. Make sure you have family dinners most days, and go to church on Sundays too.

One of my problems is sleeping alone while my husband is deployed. I shouldn’t have trouble (as I am always sleep deprived), but I couldn’t seem to fall asleep at night. Now I use the “herbal contour neck wrap”, from AAFES online. When I go to bed at night, I lie on my side, and drape the neck wrap over my shoulder. The weight of it is like having your husbands arm around you, and the herbs in it make you sleep better. Make sure you keep it in a Ziploc bag during the days, so the herbs stay fresh.

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as submitted by Becky M.

As much as we like to pretend it isn’t true we are Military wives, and our life is an interesting mix of wonderful and terrifying. The deployments we face are challenges that most people will never have to deal with.

It is hard, it sometimes takes every bit of emotional strength we have, and sometimes it is so hard to deal with that it that we want to give up but even in the hardest times we face, we pull ourselves together and keep moving forward. We stay strong for our husbands and families, we know that it doesn’t help our soldier to hear us totally broken down, and we know that our families don’t understand what is happening as well as we do.

They need us to be their rock, and sometimes it feels so unfair to have to be “fine” when we really aren’t, but we still put on the happy face when they need us, but behind closed doors we all break down, and we all have our ways of coping with the person we love being thousands of miles away. Those things we do for ourselves help us combat the fear and loneliness.

Mostly for me it has been a learn as I go adventure, which hasn’t really worked out the greatest for me, I should have listened more to other wives about how they got through, because learning the hard way is not the smartest decision when you have other wives around to help you out and give you advice.

I am a military wife too and i know its rough to wake up every day not knowing what your husband is doing, where he is, or when he will be home. My hubby has been gone for a while now and its been hard, and really hard at times, but I’ve gotten through it mostly unscathed by doing a few things for myself every day, whether it be taking a bath, or sitting down with a cup of coffee and just taking some quiet time to reflect and deal with everything.

The moments we steal for ourselves may be the best thing we have. We do get so wrapped up in making sure our husbands have everything they need, and that we are strong when he calls, that we tend to forget to take care of ourselves sometimes. When you spend all your time and energy making sure everyone else is set and forget yourself, eventually you won’t be able to be there for everyone else. So take the time to take care of you, make sure you are okay emotionally and physically, you may be everyone’s rock but you also have to be your own.

If you feel like crying, just take a minute and cry, it isn’t a crime to cry. Sometimes when I feel sad I will put on a sad song or movie and give my tears a little help coming out, because I too suffer from “too proud to cry syndrome” sometimes. I have learned that not all tears are bad, and that crying because I miss my husband isn’t selfish.

If you are having one of those days where you have had about a million things go wrong and you wish with everything you have that your husband was there because he would make it all better, just let yourself cry, letting all those tears and emotions build up isn’t a good thing, when you let it build up and refuse to let it all out, it adds more stress that, trust me, you don’t need. Plus if you let it build up too much when it finally takes over, you will cry so hard and so long that you think it will never stop! I learned this lesson the hard way, it wasn’t very fun, and I don’t recommend learning the hard way.

Before my husband deployed I was convinced that I wouldn’t write many letters, I figured it would just be one more thing on the giant pile of stress that I was already dealing with, again I was wrong, I write a letter every night, sometimes more, and not because I know my husband loves getting letters, but because its like therapy. Well, ok it helps to know that my husband likes the letters, but that wouldn’t stop me from writing them.

When something happens that I just have to share with my husband sometimes I just write him a short note or email, I’ll put the short note in the next envelope I send him a letter in. Letters don’t have to be three pages long to mean something, a sentence can mean more than three pages depending on what is said.

I heard a song once that said “I can’t wait to recount them, it seems like nothing really happens until I shared it with you,” and I never believed that until I went through a deployment, but a lot of things happen in the months that they are away, and sometimes you get scared that things are changing too much and too fast while they are gone, but sharing the things that happen really makes it feel like they are involved more, even from half a world away.

Another thing that I am so grateful for is that I have a group of amazing friends here on post, the ones that have been there before give great advice, whether it be to not watch the news, or if it is how to get those customs declarations forms filled out properly to send that care package over there with out many problems.

Other military wives are more understanding of what you are going through, they will listen, they will let you have your moment to cry or to be scared. Lots of time, if you are in need of assistance because something went wrong with your washer, that shelf you tried to hang yourself fell down for the tenth time today, or if your yard looks like a jungle, those that have husbands at home will lend them to you to help you.

One thing I really learned the hard way though, is that some people don’t understand or won’t understand how hard a deployment is on those at home, they think because we aren’t in danger that we have no reason to be stressed out and sad. I have had people tell me things like “You knew this was coming” or “You signed on for this.” Thanks for pointing that out people, yes we did know a deployment would come our way and yes its part of the military life, but that doesn’t make it easy.

I find my self wanting to say “so you are saying because you see a baseball flying towards your face, when it hits you it shouldn’t hurt, because you saw it?” but I don’t because it isn’t worth the time, and if they are saying things like that, then they don’t need to be my friend anyway. I know that sounds mean, and I am to the point now where I don’t really care, again, we need to take care of ourselves, and listening to something like that is a step in the wrong direction.

On the same lines, there is a little game that I refuse to play, and it is played a lot in the military, I call it the “my life sucks more than yours” game. Its stupid. I don’t care what branch or MOS your husband is in, a separation is hard, no matter what. It could be a week, a month or a year, it is still hard. Sometimes it seems like a competition that basically revolves around who has the highest level of self pity.

How is that helpful? It has become another way to find out who my friends really are. If someone is going to jump me because my husband’s deployments are shorter, they don’t need to be involved in my life. I really try to avoid that kind of negativity, because in the end it comes down to the old saying “misery loves company.” I don’t want to be that company.

In the end it will all be worth it when we see our husbands get off the plane or bus or whatever, but sometimes it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but its there.

Just do your best to take care of yourself while taking care of everyone else too, and be proud of yourself and how you are coping, deployment is a challenge and when you face it head on and get through it all you will find that you are a much stronger person than you ever imagined.