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5 Lessons on Fatherhood from…PT?

Fathers, like children, should walk around with their eyes wide open. There are lessons everywhere – something to learn from everyday activities, wisdom to glean from our superiors and our subordinates, and a lot of applicable knowledge from our military careers. Yes, even PT can teach us a thing or...
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Marital Counseling

Marital counseling is a great way to improve your relationship and strengthen your family. Service members and their spouses face constant stress from all aspects of their lives, but especially when preparing for deployment and when reuniting. Seeking help through these difficult times is a brave and beneficial thing to...
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Just the Two of Us: Child-Free Couples and Military Culture

I still remember the first Family Readiness Group dinner that I attended after getting engaged to my husband. Most of the women in attendance were either pregnant, shepherding fairly young children, or both, and I barely lasted five minutes before a complete stranger hit me with the apparently inevitable (and...
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Lessons on Fatherhood From General Patton

For those of you who are up on your U.S. military history, you know about General George S. Patton: He was a complicated, mercurial man with delusions of grandeur, severe dyslexia and bipolar disorder. He was also one of the finest military minds that history has ever produced. He graduated...
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9 Reasons To Be The Best Military Dad You Can Be

What makes the difference between a good Marine and a great Marine? When I take the measure of my Marines – their capabilities, their strengths, their weaknesses and their welfare – I use a lot of metrics to form my judgments. But there are some things, called “intangibles” because they...
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A Guide to Understanding Deployment

Being a parent can be a difficult task in itself, but being an active duty military parent can not only be complicated, but also strenuous on a family unit. The United States Armed Forces have taken precautionary measures to insure the safety and well-being of all military dependents. Why The...
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The Importance of a Positive Attitude for a Military Spouse

It goes without saying that having a good attitude towards the ups and downs life throws your way is generally a helpful characteristic to have. In military life, however, it is even more vital. Life as a military spouse requires the relinquishment of a certain amount of control that for...
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The Emotional Timeline of a Separation

Brief or extended, the words “I’ll be leaving on_______ and by home by _______” strike a sadness into every military spouse’s heart. It’s a process of it’s own, somewhat like a grieving. Most spouses are given varying amounts of time to plan and prepare, but also to worry and become...
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Readjusting After a Deployment

You wait and you wait and you wait for the day your soldier gets home from deployment. Finally your life can go back to “normal,” finally you won’t have to shoulder all the responsibilities of holding down the home front. But homecomings aren’t always the fairy tale we build up...
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Issues Small Children Might Have During a Deployment

My oldest son has been through three deployments plus a long separation that was pretty much as long as our 3rd deployment. He is 8 years old and Daddy has been gone a lot during those years. I feel lucky since my husband has now been home for about 20...
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