The struggle is real.

As a military spouse, finding employment can be a serious challenge. The military family lifestyle is something that employers are often hesitant to embrace, as it can seem unstable, unavailable and ever changing.  

And sometimes, it is - but it doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker.

Spouses who can juggle PCS, deployment, children and securing the home front often don’t realize that those challenges build an exceptional set of skills that also make them excellent employees.

“Feel empowered, not hindered, by your military lifestyle,” said Kim Morton of Hiring Our Heroes. “It’s giving you a set of skills that a lot of civilians don’t have. It’s something that should be emphasized, not hidden.”

Hiring Our Heroes was formed in March 2011, after the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Foundation took notice of the high rate of veteran unemployment. The program’s success grew and so did the foundation’s attention towards another struggling demographic: military spouses.

A 2012 study by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics showed that the employment rate of military spouses was only 26 percent. In January 2012, after noticing a significant lack of military spouse participation in their job fairs, Hiring our Heroes stepped up again and began hosting military spouse specific events.

Since then, more than 1,700 businesses have vowed to hire a staggering 585,000 members of the veteran and military spouse community. Hiring our Heroes job fairs have helped more than 385,000 veterans and military spouses secure employment.   

The foundation built on that success and created the Military Spouse Employer Partnership (https://msepjobs.militaryonesource.mil) to work hand in hand with participating companies and help them understand the military spouse culture and the unique skill set that military spouses possess.

The gap between military and civilian was lessened. But the process only works, Morton said, if military spouses reciprocate and be the professionals that the foundation touted them as.

And for a job fair, that means being prepared.

Prior to attending, it is best to research the companies that will be there. It shows you have taken initiative and are well-prepared to speak to the representatives.

Also, show up to a job fair in the same clothes you would wear to a job interview, Morton said.  She stressed that dressing nicely shows that you care enough to look presentable, and also reflects an understanding of the culture of the companies in attendance.

Morton explained that while a chronological resume is the style job seekers often use, military spouses professional experiences are best outlined in a way that lists your skills and strengths, rather than simply lists your prior employment sequentially.

A good resume is significant. However, Morton stressed that it may not be enough to get you the job. You need to know your brand, own it and market it. It is important to have a firm grasp on professional and personal skills, background and strengths.  

“Have your elevator pitch ready,” Morton said.

There is a small window of opportunity to make a great impression, so practice your best “I’m-so-awesome-you-should-hire-me-today!” speech ahead of time.

A mother slit her three very young children’s throats last week.

She was also a military spouse. This fact was noted at the very bottom of the story, right beside the fact that her husband had recently returned from deployment.

Officers said she repeated the phrase, “he never helps,” referring to her husband.

I want her, and every other young military spouse, to know they are not alone. This is a very difficult life.

The military upper echelon can sing their own praises all they want and brag about the support networks and the help they make available to military families. But when it comes down to it, getting that help isn’t always easy.

When you move, it’s hard to make friends to build that support network. To find people you can call at midnight and say, please, just please take my screaming children for five minutes. I am at a breaking point. People judge. People talk. Especially in military neighborhoods. It can be hard to know who is really there to help, and who is there to gossip.

When you move, you can’t just slide into life on base and drop your kids off at hourly care when you are at your breaking point. You have to file paperwork, bring shot records, get your husband’s signature, who by the way, may already be deployed. When we moved to Fort Bragg it took officials there a full year to process the paperwork that would allow my children to be left in hourly care.

One year. It took one year for an office worker to pick up my packet, open it, look for the four pieces of paper I had to turn in and stamp it as approved. This took 365 days.

Our military families have reached a breaking point.

And unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time. A spouse in Florida last year also killed her two children. Friends remarked that they had no idea. Military police are kept busy every single day tending to domestic issues on base.

I say, this is because we as a community are very bad at doing what we claim to do best: supporting each other.

Military communities are full of people who gossip and judge each other. There is a fear that appearing as though you can’t keep your home life together will harm your military member’s career.

Spouses are left home to handle everything: kids, house, yard, the mountains of paperwork that have to be filed in triplicate just to get some help. When the unit comes home the men can’t help or won’t help. They are tired, they are injured, they are back out in the field as soon as they return.

The young mother also allegedly told officers that her husband becomes angry when the children, a 2-year-old and 6-month-old twins, cry.

Officials tend to forget that when soldiers come home broken from their wartime duty, they take out their frustrations on their families. They don’t deal well with crying and screaming babies, again, leaving the spouse to handle his lingering PTSD as well as needy children.

There can seem like there is no end in sight.

The military is not going to change. The military is not going to stop requiring that you file dozens of papers and wait months to get that much needed help. The machine is tangled so tightly in its own red tape that only a change in attitude from the top down will give spouses the real help they need.

I, unfortunately, believe that will never happen.

We have to make changes from the bottom up.

Your sisters in arms need help. Knock on the door. Be a friend, a real friend who is willing to listen and not just get info to gossip.

Don’t assume you are being too pushy by checking in on the new family. Check in, talk with her, be present in the moment. Sometimes that can make all the difference, and even save a young life. 

By Jim Hinton - Special Guest Contributor

“This We’ll Defend.” “Honor, Courage, Commitment.” “Semper Fidelis.” “Aim High.”

These are the mottos our military service members all follow as they fight for our nation. They deploy to the hotspots of our world. They head out to exercises and drills. They step out the front door in the morning and engage in the day to day tasks needed to maintain their readiness for the fight.

As a military spouse you, too, are engaged in readiness training as well. You may not be maintaining the engine of a tank, or standing watch in the engine room, or out on the runway refueling fast-movers, but you are still a part of the military team. When your spouse steps out that doorway, whether for a day, a week, or a year, you are the one maintaining the home front, and keeping it in readiness for their return.

Unfortunately not all of those returns find your spouse hardy and hale, ready to go back to the business of defending our nation tomorrow morning. In thirteen years of fighting approximately 2.5 million of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of those, somewhere around 675,000 have some form of disability. For many of these injured soldiers a disability is a sudden career ender.

I’m one of them. An Army Aviation trooper, I earned my Stetson and Spurs in Afghanistan. I came home from my third combat deployment expecting to continue on towards my twenty year letter after a little bit of post deployment leave. Instead, a doctor at Darnell Army Medical Center informed me that my career was over. The lingering cold I had brought back from Kandahar was no mere cough. It was permanent lung damage, and the exhaustion my difficult breathing was causing would never go away. Within a short time I was out-processed, enrolled with the VA, and receiving a monthly stipend as compensation.

This unfortunate experience quickly brought me to the awareness of something neither I nor my wife had ever had occasion to worry about. We, like so many other military families, had never made plans for a career ending injury. We were confident that we would go all the way to twenty, or maybe even thirty, and enjoy a well-deserved retirement. Instead, we found ourselves suddenly thrust into the civilian world without any plans or preparation and living on a fraction of what we had become accustomed to.

We did make it in the end. I used the many excellent opportunities offered to me, such as my GI Bill benefits and the VR&E program. I was able to get a decent job where my lung damage was not a significant impediment, and now I and my family live comfortably, settled into our civilian life. But it took three years to get there, and those were three long, hard, and avoidable years.

It’s not something talked about much, but stories like this do happen with far greater frequency than anyone cares to admit. The important thing is that they do not have to happen. As the military spouse you have the opportunity and power to be the Plan B that takes over should your service member’s career come to a sudden end thanks to an injury.

As the spouse you often find yourself responsible for handling the day to day finances so that your service member can focus on the deployment or exercise at hand. As such you have the opportunity to prepare a buffer. Set aside a set amount every month. We all have USAA banking available, use it to set up a savings account with an automatic transfer, then sit on it.

If you were to save $200 a month, in five years you could have almost $5,000 in the bank. Added to disability payments that could give you three months of padding towards reestablishing your family in the civilian world. After ten years and with interest? $12,000. That’s a comfortable half of a year. And if you go career and never have to face injury? Imagine starting your retirement with somewhere around $40,000 in the bank.

Stocking funds away into a bank account makes for a nice buffer zone. Unfortunately, buffer zones aren’t unlimited, and there’s the chance that, like happened with me, the injury can last longer than the buffer zone. Unfortunately you could find yourself out of funds before your veteran can become fully established in a job sufficient to provide for the family.

Part of family readiness that you can provide as the military spouse is the ability to take over as the primary income if it becomes necessary. There are a number of programs out there available to military spouses that will allow you to obtain certifications and degrees you can utilize to find work sufficient to support you, your service member, and your family for as long as it takes. The military may not give briefings about these programs for you, but they exist.

Just a few examples of the programs you can utilize include STAP and MyCAA. Both are readily available to provide funding to help you, as a spouse, obtain your degree while your service member is still in and healthy, allowing you to prepare to be Plan B. Salute to Spouses has a page listing and describing a number of these programs, as well as offering its own scholarship to help out.

Of course, being a military spouse you have to worry about a PCS every two to three years. This may seem to be an obstacle to obtaining the education you need even with the funds from the above programs. Will your credits transfer to an institution near your new station? Are you going to have to move during a semester?

Fortunately, these days many accredited institutions offer full degrees online. Salute to Spouse’s scholarship is useful for the online program at Bryant & Stratton, for example allowing you to get a BA in Accounting, Business Admin, or Health Services Admin.

The important thing is that you have multiple options to receive the education you need to be able to be Plan B. As much as we hope your spouse comes home safe and sound, the chance that they could return home with a career ending injury is quite real. Just as your soldier, sailor, or airman needs to be focused on operational readiness you need to be focused on family readiness. Pray for the best, but prepare for the worst. To paraphrase Chaplain Forgy, “Praise the Lord and pass the education.” It’s one of the most important things you can do as a military spouse.

By Tiffany Shedd

I don’t know about you, but this Mommy needs a break.

A break from cleaning up dirty dishes, putting away laundry, picking up hundreds of toys, making dinner, grocery shopping - I think you get my point. I need a break. As a stay-at-home mom, that break typically doesn’t come.

I am sure that this is true of all moms and dads, whether you work inside or out of your home, the tasks never end. This can be compounded when you have a child who has special needs as well. You have to add the appointments and therapies and just plan for every eventuality, because any deviation from a schedule can throw your entire day or even week off. It can get to be extremely overwhelming.

But, you don’t have time to be overwhelmed. It’s a vicious cycle. In order to take care of those that we love, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves.

Taking care of ourselves, especially for women (moms especially), does not come naturally. We tend to put everyone else’s needs before our own. This might mean that we are lugging around kids while we’re running a fever of 101 or taking a forgotten lunch to school when we are late for an appointment on the other side of town. All of these things add up and start to take a toll on our mental and physical well-being.

So, what’s the solution? I don’t know. I wish I had the magic answer that would make everything fit into place, the baby sleep through the night, kids remember their coats, or spouses lend more of a hand, but I don’t. You have to figure out what works for you and your family.

However, I can tell you some things that work for me and point out a few resources that may help take some of the pressure off of you.

I feel most rested, calm and collected when I am organized. I keep several calendars with all of my child’s specialty appointments, play dates, my physical therapy dates, my husband’s TDY dates, basically everything in strategic places around my house. I set alarms on my phone to help me remember to give my son his medicines. You would think that after doing so for over a year that it would be second nature, but again, any unforeseen event can send me off in another direction and without that reminder, I might not remember to give it to him on time. Maybe writing things down doesn’t work for you, figure out what does and do it.

Taking care of myself physically also helps me feel calm and less stressed out. I try to get to the gym several times a week. This can be tricky if you do not go to a gym that provides childcare. If you live on a military installation, check out your Child, Youth, School Services (Army) and find out about their drop-in child care. You can use this as a way to get to the gym, run a few child-free errands or even go to a doctor’s appointment by yourself. I know that with the Army they charge a smaller fee for drop-in care if you are going to a medical appointment.

If you can’t make it the gym by yourself because CYSS is booked up, take half an hour before your kids wake up or after they go to sleep (or during naptime, if you’re so lucky) to do a quick workout on YouTube. There are plenty of free workout routines that you can do in your own home.

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, check out the classes that Morale, Welfare and Recreation (Army) offer. I took a multi-day course dealing with resiliency and learned some very valuable coping skills that have gotten me through long TDYs, deployments and my son’s medical challenges.

One technique I use a lot to deal with anxiety is taking a problem and thinking about the worst thing that could happen. For example: I forgot to pay my phone bill on time. Because I forgot to pay, the phone company dinged my credit report. I didn’t have good credit, so I had to get an apartment in a bad neighborhood during our next PCS. The bad neighborhood was full of crime, and we got robbed. All of our stuff was gone, and we had to live in our car. Our car broke down and the windows were broken out of it. We had to live in a box under a bridge. Obviously, none of these things happened to me, but when you think it out to the unforeseeable end, you’ll end up seeing that whatever the problem was probably isn’t as bad as you think. You might even laugh at how farfetched you take it, and laughter really is great medicine.

The most important thing is that you know yourself and know your limits. Sometimes just taking a few minutes and stepping away from a situation and being quiet and breathing deeply will give you enough resolve and calm to get through it.

If you get to the point where you just can’t do it one more second, call someone. Ask for help. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you need some help, even if it is just someone to listen to you vent. Use your support system, that’s why you have one.

The day after we got home from family vacation, we found out I was pregnant with our third child.

I think all color immediately leached from my face; I was shocked.

My husband, meanwhile, did his customary fist-pump and grin-with-glee routine.  He loves babies, and he was so excited.

The timing was perfect.  He would be home for the baby’s birth and early infancy.

A few weeks in, and I was catching my husband’s excitement, too.  I didn’t have my traditional morning sickness.  My oldest daughter kept talking about our “sweet second baby,” telling my younger daughter she was the “first baby.”

A close friend dropped off a tote of maternity clothes.  I started looking at where we could fit a third small set of drawers for his or her little sleepers and onesies.  We decided we didn’t want to find out the gender; I wanted the surprise.

And then, three days after Christmas, while we were out of town visiting my parents for the holiday, I started bleeding. 

It got worse and worse throughout the day.  I was doubled over with cramps.  Felt gushes of blood.  And eventually had to hole myself up in my parent’s guest bathroom while my mother and husband took care of my little girls.
 
By the next morning, I knew it was over.  Everyone else tried to remain positive for me, including my midwife who had been on my phone with me all night from Georgia.

But I knew.

But we still packed up all our Christmas gifts and our girls and drove back to Georgia.

I cried the whole way home.  I was so devastated because I knew.

My husband didn’t want to talk about it until we had a guarantee.

And so we had an ultrasound the next day.

And within seconds, before the ultrasound technician said a word, I knew again.  The baby was gone.

The baby that was supposed to be so perfectly timed, so that my husband would be home to see him or her be born.

The baby I had dreamt about two nights before, knowing he was a boy.  I had seen him and held him and rocked him.

He was gone.

Of course, the midwife and doctor sat down and wanted to talk about our plans.  Because I had no complications, they were excited to tell me I could try again right away.

Except, I couldn’t.

Thanks to the Navy, my better half wouldn’t be there to try with me for much longer.

And we are now in a window where, if we get pregnant again quickly, my husband won’t be home for the birth of the baby.  Or his or her infancy.

It felt like a double blow.  The loss of our third child and the loss of an open opportunity to grow our family.

I think I will forever grieve the loss of this little one.  I also think I won’t find that joy I had before until we get another chance to add another baby to the family.

But thanks to the Navy, that may not happen any time soon.

And so, I pick up, soldier on, and try to put on a brave face for the two blessings I already have while their daddy leaves for awhile once again.

Not how I imagined starting the New Year, that’s for sure.

The last thing you want to do in frigid temperatures is don a business suit.

Sweat pants, hot cocoa and warm blankets are the good stuff about the winter months.

But when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday in February, you can’t just schlep to work in your flannel pajamas.

Business dress has to be maintained, no matter the weather, said Ann Marie Sabath, author of “Beyond Business Casual: What to Wear to Work If You Want to Get Ahead.”

“You are preparing for your next position,” she said. “You are an individual.  You are a professional.”

The basic rules of professional dress apply, even if it’s icy and cold outside, said Sabath, also president of At Ease, Inc., a firm specializing in domestic and international business etiquette programs.

Go with the basics, she said.  Dress in layers.  Put on a top that covers your shoulders and has a neckline that is “not too high, not too low,” plus a pair of tailored pants that hit at your waist, not hips, or a pencil skirt with no slit and tights.

“Wear things you’re not going to wear going out to have fun,” she said.  “Your goal should be business casual, not bar casual.”

Layer with a sweater and/or a blazer.  Dress just like you’re going into air-conditioning.

She recommends using your accessories to make your winter office-wear more personalized.

However, women should also make sure they know what the highest women employed at their place of work is wearing.

“Wear earrings that don’t drag you down the corporate ladder,” she said.

If the highest-level woman wears panty hose, then you should wear panty-hose. 

“Play the game,” she adds.

Avoid painting your nails with anything that makes them “look like claws, glitters, or glows,” she added.

Remember that a necklace can add presence to an outfit if you do decide to remove your jacket when you’re warmer indoors.  Though you should always have that blazer ready to go, in case you have a surprise meeting with a client or your boss calls you into his or her office.

“Always have a blazer,” she said.  “It’s your armor.”

Winter or not, don’t wear stilettos, Sabath said.  You want a decent pair of heels, though you can definitely wear a pair of ballet flats or boots for walking through the ice or snow to work.  No need to slip.

Boots or sturdier shoes are totally fine while you walk to work in the snow, said Matthew Randall, the executive director of the Center for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania.  Then you can change into something more business appropriate in the lobby or at your desk.

However, don’t plan to change your entire outfit when you get to work, unless your office has a gym and locker room – some place appropriate for you to change, Randall added.

When working hours start, you should be dressed at your desk in business appropriate attire, he said.

It really doesn’t take an extensive budget or wardrobe to dress professionally in all kinds of weather, Sabath said.

Consignment sales, TJ Maxx, and your own closet can all come together to give you the basics of professional dress, she said.

What you wear can affect your future success, so it is important, she said.

“Dress for the position you want, not for the one you have.”

 

It has finally happened.

My children are settled.

After six military moves in 14 years, they like where we have landed for retirement. And my husband and I are breathing a sigh of relief.

Our last move was a gamble. We had never lived in this state or this part of the country. But we were both offered great jobs – an oddity as most military families know – and we couldn’t pass up the steady paychecks in favor of continuing to search aimlessly, moving from town to town like Goldilocks in search of the perfect fit.

So we went.

Everything about this place is different than any place we had lived before: the food, the long drawn out words, the manners, the catchphrases.

We’ve lived in unusual places, where the neighborhoods, customs and even the language was completely foreign. Our children did well. They assimilated and had fun but they were never settled. They dealt, they thrived but if you asked them point blank if they wanted to stay forever, the answer was a resounding, no.

This morning as I was looking over lovely, snow-covered photos my friends had sent from my New England hometown I mentioned, half-jokingly, to my husband that we should move there next.

“No.”

Across the room my son repeated again, “No. I like it here. I don’t want to move.”

And just like that, we were done. We had found our home.

The kids have made friends they don’t want to leave. They are active in clubs and activities that they want to see through for more than a few semesters. They have found their perfect fit.

And as far as I’m concerned, it is just right.

One of the many things I have learned as a military spouse is to always do my research and be not only an advocate for myself, but for my children as well.

Whether it be a PCS, our medical care, future possible duty stations or pretty much any life altering circumstance for my family, I am constantly reading, asking questions and taking notes. I am very fortunate that my husband values my opinion and takes into consideration what is right for not only his career but our family as well.

When my husband started discussing the possibility of leaving the military for a civilian career, before retiring at 20 years, we knew it would take some time to plan and coordinate all the logistics to make it work.

It would take time to make sure we could make the transition financially.

While the thought of facing no deployments, ever again, is certainly tempting, the secure income and health insurance are a big perk to help us choose staying on this military roller coaster. And, it’s not easy to just walk away from the only life we have known together; especially one that allows me to be home with our young children.

The unknown is terrifying.

We have decided that whether we leave this life behind in two years or 10, we need to start covering all of our bases.  Even if my husband decides to finish out his original 20-year plan, I am so happy we discussed our options because we have learned so much in our research.

I urge all of you to take a closer look at the Post 9-11 Bill. My husband and I had both assumed once he hit six years of military service, he would be able to transfer his unused educational benefits to our children at any time. Since he has passed that six years of service time we thought nothing more of it and figured we would worry about it later.

With a 4- and 2-year-old, college is an eternity away! Sure the days of breaking up Power Ranger fights and stepping on Legos sure go by in a flash but not that fast. We thought we had time on our side.

I happened to read a financial management magazine I received on base and this topic caught my eye so I decided to read into it a little more. The most important fact that stuck out was that once benefits are transferred to a spouse or other dependent, the service member must complete four more years of service from the date of transfer.  

Four more years.

Even though our boys were not old enough to attend college anytime soon, my husband could still transfer his benefit now so he could fulfill that 4-year extended commitment (even though our boys were not 18).

If my husband decided not to use the benefit, it is at least nice to have the option to use it for one of them rather than walking away from his military career and not getting the educational benefit at all.

And if he wanted to get out of the military on his terms earlier than planned, the sooner the transfer the better for our family. He currently has served eight years and right now, it seems like the further over the 10 year in service mark the more tempting it is to hold out and retire at 20 (or more!!) years.

He can change the allocation of benefits at any time so he decided to also add me to some of the transfer benefits incase our families needs change. There may come a time when my husband may not be the primary provider in our family and in order to financially provide for us, I may have to further my education to advance in a career so knowing I have that option down the line is nice.

We also like to think, like most proud parents, that we have the smartest and most athletic kids ever so they will be gifted  in academic and athletic scholarships and we won’t have to use that GI Bill for them. Haha!

Whether it be the service member using the education benefits or you decide to transfer them to the dependent, do your research and cover your bases for any situation. Service members and their families sacrifice so much and are entitled to the benefits promised to them when they enlist. Do your research, take the transition classes whether you are a year away from making that jump to civilian life or five years. You have to protect yourself and your family for any given situation.

For more facts on transferring GI benefits, you can visit http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2009/0409%5Fgibill/

Tax season, ugh. Free stuff, good!

Now, you can have free stuff, during tax season.

Military OneSource offers free tax preparation for active duty military members, recent retirees and several other categories of qualified, military-related individuals.

The site can be tricky to find. We were temporarily stuck in a five minute loop of pressing a button to get to the tax page that only took us back to the website’s main page where we didn’t realize you had to wait for the tax preparation advertisement to pop up and then click on it. But, for it’s not a lot of hassle for getting free tax preparation in return.

Visit the tax prep site offered by Military OneSource by going directly to: http://www.militaryonesource.mil/taxes

There, you will not only be able to prepare your taxes, for free, but also find information on filing late, for military members in combat zones, how to prepare taxes for an injured service member unable to do so for themselves, how to file an extension and even how to use that fat return check to increase your financial stability rather than increase the size of your television.

When you visit the site, you will be asked to create a Military OneSource User ID and password. Please don’t let this turn you off. Being a member of the site actually gives you lots of access to information regarding military benefits and updates, not just the tax preparation.

And, when you login and are ready to begin the process, do have all your tax documents on hand, including your w-2 which you can find at www.mypay.dfas.mil

Happy filing!

By Tiffany Shed

If you are like me, you are slowly dragging yourself into the new year. The tree has been taken down. The ornaments and decorations all packed away. You’re looking around for places to put all the new toys and gadgets your family accumulated over the last few weeks.

If you’re also like me, you probably are thinking about change, because that’s what the new year brings … change. Some changes aren’t voluntary, like all the holiday flavors disappearing from menus and store shelves. Bye, bye peppermint hot chocolate. But some changes are those that we make ourselves. Those dreaded new years’ resolutions have probably already started popping up in your Facebook newsfeed or on your favorite blogs.  

I don’t like the word resolution. To me, I associate it with the word resolve, and to resolve something means that there will be a definite solution or ending point. That’s a lot of pressure. What if I can’t resolve my resolution before December 31^st of this year?

I think that this year, I will make some intentions.

I intend to make use of all of the resources that I have at my disposal to get my family all of the care they need. Being a military spouse comes with a lot of perks sometimes. There are tons of ways we can seek help for ourselves and our families. Usually a simple Google search will lead to a whole host of ways to help.

If that doesn’t help, check out a couple of my favorite places: Military OneSource, Army Wife Network, and the National Military Family Association. Whether you need to know how to register for EFMP, find out how to ship your household goods, or just need a laugh to make your day brighter, you’ll find it on one of these websites. These are just a few examples of great online resources available to us though. Do a little searching and find your own.

I intend to take full advantage of any and all time I can get with my mommy group and special needs mom support group. We all need someone to lean on, especially when we’re dealing with a special needs family member.

Military life is tough in and of itself, but add special needs to the mix and things get far more complicated. I have been lucky enough to find an excellent group of moms that have helped me through the last year.

I found them through The Mommies Network. Luckily, the Mommies Network is all around the country. The next time we get PCS orders, I know that my first internet search will be to find out if there is a Mommies Network group in the area.

If there isn’t one in your area, don’t despair. Your search may be a bit harder, but there are groups where you can find support. Talk to your PCM or go to your Community Resource center on your installation (that’s ACS for all you Army folks). They will be able to help you find a support group in your area.

My biggest intention for 2015 is to try not to worry as much about the things that I have no control over.

I don’t have control over my husband’s training schedule. I don’t have control over my son’s epilepsy. I don’t have control over when or where our next PCS will occur. These are just a few of the things I worry about - a lot.

I can’t do anything about any of these things, but they consume so much of my daily thoughts. I intend to trust my son’s doctors. I intend to stay calm when my husband is gone (because I have my mommy group and my literal mommy, who thankfully loves visiting her grandson). I intend to enjoy the time we have left here in our house and not worry about what to do with it when we have to leave or having to find a new one until the time actually comes.

Will I succeed with my intentions? Who knows? The most important thing is that I am going to try. Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you intend on making the most of it.