In the last six months, two of my husband’s friends have taken their own lives.

These men, his brothers in arms, had both lived full careers that each spanned more than 20 years. They were excellent soldiers and both had risen through the ranks to the top of their career fields.

Both were within a few years of retiring.

As word spread among the unit, neighbors and friends that they were gone, it was quickly followed with the question, ‘how’.

We were all stunned. We all asked, ‘Why?’

In March the Pentagon’s suicide prevention office presented a report to the House Armed Services Committee. There were 160 more suicides in 2012 than in 2001 across the Department of Defense. Investigators are still examining 59 deaths that year that may be ruled suicides as well.

The Army specifically, leaders said, had lost 324 soldiers to potential suicides in 2012, double the number of suicides in 2009. 

Why?

During the hearing, media reports quote an Army lieutenant general as telling the lawmakers that the military needs to destroy the stigma associated with seeking mental health care. Furthermore, military leaders need to do more to end the perception that seeking help could end a career and cause a soldier to lose their security clearance.

Would this knowledge have stopped our friends from taking their lives? Did they fear being ridiculed for speaking with a counselor? Did they fear losing the position, authority and accolades they worked for decades to earn?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that their passing has left an enormous, painful hole in our community.

What I do know is that more needs to be done to reach out to individuals who feel they have no other choices left. I’m not certain that anyone saw a sign that these men were considering suicide. But perhaps they would have reached out if they knew where to go.

As military spouses, you see military members outside the constraints of the workplace, in their homes and in their comfort zones. You attend meetings at the unit, at schools and at community functions. You have the opportunity to make sure that suicide prevention resources are advertised, flyers passed out and posters hung.

 I challenge each of you to help spread the word about the resources available. Post the links and phone numbers of the organizations listed below on your personal Facebook, on unit Facebook pages, on bulletin boards and in newsletters.

You may not be able to see the signs that someone is in crisis. But they may see your advertisement of one of these organizations.

And that may mean the difference between life and death.

www.realwarriors.net

www.suicideoutreach.org

Military Crisis Line: 1-800-273-(TALK) 8255

Military One Source: 1-800-342-9647

I am a runner.

I have been running for a little over a year. I don't run as fast as some people and I run faster than others. But whether you run a 4-minute mile or a 14-minute mile, you are a runner and that makes us family.

Our family was recently shaken to its very core.

As an Army Wife who has sent her sweet soldier to both Iraq and Afghanistan, I felt a switch in my head flip as I watched the news unfold on Twitter and as I read texts from my sweet soldier.

A switch flipped in my head as I moved into “war wife”, family readiness group leader mode. What can I do? What can I say to these families who may not have had a tragedy like this hit so close to home?

Truthfully, I am no expert. But having been thrown to the wolves more times than I care to count, the following ideas are submitted to you as food for thought.

Always limit the amount of news coverage that you watch. It is human nature to want to watch and find out all we can about details and people, but it weighs me down after a while. Change the channel. Step away from the computer or device of choice and watch a favorite show or get outside.

If your kids ask questions, and they will, only answer specifically what they ask. When I had the oldest sweet boy, my dad told me that kids need to know the answer to two questions. Am I loved? Who's in control? Knowing that there are people in the world who are willing to hurt others is difficult for a child to wrap their brain around. Make sure that they fully understand that no matter what, they are loved and protected by you as their parent and that the powers that be are fully in control of the situation as it stands. Then, sweet friends, turn off the TV and find something to do together.

Be sure that you and your spouse have all of your affairs in order. It is a grim and gruesome task, but unfortunately, it has to be done. I know exactly what to do for my sweet soldier if the unthinkable happens, but do you know what to do for your spouse?  Do you know where everything is, all of the important papers and such? At the very least, write a letter of instruction that tells what your wishes are and how to do all of the things that you do for the family.

The most important thing is to continue life as you know it. Keep doing the same things that you did before that horrible event. Don't be afraid. Be vigilant. Keep your eyes open. Watch out for your fellow mankind.

Sweet friends, people don't have to die or be injured for terror to be successful. If it makes us afraid to be who we are, then they have won.

Whether your spouse is deployed or at home. Whether you are a runner or love someone who is. Don't let a horrible act make you afraid. You have an indomitable spirit!  

"This is the part of me that they're never gonna ever take away from me..."

Strength and Courage ... sby

Our favorite blog of the month: www.usmclife.com

Google the words, “military blogs” and your search casts a very wide net: 874,000,000 hits strong.

The Department of Defense once tried to shut down military blogs in the heat of the Iraq War. Now, even the DOD has a blogger.

There’s a lot to read out there about military life. Every month, we are going to spotlight our favorite web-based reads.

This month, the honor goes to Marine Corps wife Kristine Schellhaas, founder of www.usmclife.com

 I had the pleasure of meeting Kristine earlier this year at a spouse event in Honolulu. What a great gal.

As the event’s guest speaker she made me laugh, cry and tingle with feelings I had long since stored away when my husband returned from deployment.

Her site is not just a blog. It is an ode to all things military and a great resource for all military spouses, not just Marine Corps wives. Kristine’s columns address everything from managing deployments to properly reading 24-hour, military time. Ha! You’re husband will never get away with military jargon again! 

Check out her page at www.usmclife.com

Enjoy!

Know a military blogger you’d like to see featured? Send us a link at info@salutetospouses.com

Typical, favorite family stories involve visits with loving grandparents, trips to amusement parks and Christmas dinners.

Favorite military family stories usually are in far-flung locations, away from extended family and often involve some type of military movement, jargon or equipment.

As PCS season swiftly approaches and many of you are prepping for moving day, I want to share with you my family’s favorite story and tale of a PCS gone woefully wrong.

***

We were leaving Greensboro, N.C. for Tampa, Fla. My husband had been back just a matter of days after being gone for nearly three years to Kuwait and Iraq. He had just four months at home between each of those tours. To say we were not on the same sheet of music is an understatement.

He was determined to make money on the PCS move so he called off the professional movers and rented a U-Haul truck - the biggest one they make. He hitched his pickup truck to the back of it and filled it with household goods. I couldn’t see out of my back window for the pile of suitcases tossed in the rear.

And, there was still stuff in the house. It was very, stressful.

As we tried not to argue or walk out on each other as we haphazardly began throwing items into the trash for no better reason than the fact that they didn’t fit, my friend Kim arrived to help. I think we may have scared her.

Regardless, the pile was soon down to a single nightstand, sitting squarely in the middle of our bedroom. Kim saw the exhaustion in our faces and ran out to find us food in the wee hours of the night.

She drove away and I heard a scream from inside. Our oldest children, toddlers at the time, were running in circles around the nightstand. Our 2-year-old managed to fall and bust her head against the only piece of furniture in the house.

Seriously.

There was blood everywhere.

I tossed the babies in the car and took off for the hospital. My car was so stuffed that my husband couldn’t squeeze in. He followed us in his U-Haul with the pickup truck dragging behind.

We left every light in the house on.

The front door was wide open.

The front steps were stained with blood.

Hours later I checked my phone, which didn’t receive a signal in the hospital.

Kim had left a message.

“I don’t know where you are, but nothing good has happened here.”

By sunrise, the baby was fine, Kim was confident we were not dragged from the house bloody and beaten and we were headed down I-95 with our caravan of stuff.

The night stand was left, abandoned, by the curb.

Here’s to a stress-free, 2013 PCS season! May all your packing and unpacking be drama and injury free.

April is Autism Awareness month as well as the Month of the Military Child and I am proud to say that I have both of those causes rolled up into one of the cutest packages I have ever seen. My littlest sweet boy may be diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder, but he is just as resilient as any other neuro-typical kid I have encountered.

Over the course of this deployment it has been exciting to watch littlest sweet boy grow and change. I have found it extremely interesting to see that he didn't want to talk to our sweet soldier via video chat, but the day after our sweet soldier came home for R&R, littlest sweet boy did not want to get on the bus and go to school. He gripped the front door and cried the largest tears I had ever seen. Once I reassured him that daddy would be home when he got home from school that day he got on the bus and left.

I admit openly that I sometimes forget that he really does understand some things. The tooth fairy may not be at the top on his list of worries, but daddy really has been. It was reported to me from school that his behavior changed during R&R. He was doing what kids do sometimes and testing his boundaries.

Now that we are working through the homecoming and reintegration process, it has become interesting to see littlest sweet boy and his dad.

The two of them seem to be getting along great. Littlest sweet boy trusts his dad, as much as he did before dad left, and he is almost as obedient as any 6-year-old child.

They are both being fairly patient with the other and I couldn't ask for more!

Strength and Courage ... sby

Tomorrow my husband leaves for the first time in over a year. A year ago, and with one less kid, this would have been easy.  But, after having a baby during a deployment and going through numerous, month-long trainings during our son’s first year, a week away is bound to feel like one really long day.  

Since then, we have been lucky enough to have an entire year with no trainings and no deployments. His time in this school has spoiled us and I have found myself wondering just how I am going to tackle a week alone with my two boys.

To be honest, a few months ago I would have been a nervous wreck, but we are in a good routine right now. But with a PCS around the corner, three weeks to be exact, I just don’t have it in me to stress about this. Things are about to get shaken up so I really am just trying to enjoy our last weeks here before the moving chaos begins.

I have already given myself the week off from PCS related duties. I am on strict survival mode. Happy kids and a happy mom is the goal! And maybe, I will take a couple of showers for myself. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

Looking at the week ahead, my little boys and I will keep our normal routine during the day. Sticking to the routine is the key for us all, whether it be during trainings or deployments. Bath and bedtime may be tricky but there could be worse things than dirty kids in bed.

Then, after everyone is fast asleep (I sent the memo to the kids that they will sleep through the night all week), that leaves “me” time. Do I even remember what that is like?

I can stay up a little later. My husband goes to bed early so I feel like a teenager on spring break when he’s gone. I can also clean, uninterrupted.  I don’t enjoy cleaning per say, but a clean house makes me happy and starting the day on a good note (i.e. with a clean house) is key for my sanity.

I can also catch up on my ‘chick’ shows and enjoy some peace and quiet, guilt free. And, I can shower. It might be 11 at night, but I will have a chance to shower.

See, we can do this! I can do this. 

A lot of things can fall apart, go wrong or break during the week. That is usually what happens when my Marine is away. But no sense in worrying about that until it happens.

So for now, I will curl up on the couch in my favorite spot (missing my Marine of course) and watch every chick show on cable, guilt free - with clean hair. Hopefully.

We have less than a month now before our fourth deployment begins.  The anticipation is nearly eating me alive. 

I’m up at 2 a.m., trying to memorize what his breathing sounds like, trying to mentally carve the image of him sleeping next to me into my memory. I know, soon enough, he’ll be gone, and these hard-fought memories will start to fade. 

His bag is packed, sitting on the floor of our closet - a constant reminder every day when I dress that he’s leaving soon. The random tears have begun, when denial seeps away and I realize that we’re about to do this again. The tears seem to lie in wait until the quiet moments when I can’t force them back any more. 

This is about to suck.

In the midst of all this, I can’t help but think, “Would you just go already?” 

Not because I want him gone, but rather because this part is killing me.  I’m tired of talking about it and the endless preparations. I’m tired of the pangs in my heart that hit while I watch him play with our kids and I imagine how big they’ll be when he returns. I’m sick of his phone ringing off the hook with unit calls. More than once I’ve been tempted to chuck it out of our window and into the nearest snowbank. I’m sick of pre-deployment and the overwhelming stress it brings with it.

It’s not that I want him to go, as much as it is that I am desperate for him to come back.  Logically speaking, the sooner he goes, the sooner he returns and I just need to get it started. I know that once he goes, survival mode will kick in. The kids will go to school, chores will get done, life will pass, but this wait is torturous. We’re strapped in, headed up the first hill of a roller coaster and I can’t keep from looking down to see just how far we’re about to drop.  It feels like such a long way. But if we can just get this started, I can stop counting down to when he leaves and instead countdown to when he comes home. 

This last month is such a riot of emotion. I need time to slow down so I can soak up every moment, every kiss, every breath until the manifest is called and he is gone. But as desperate as I am to cling to every heartbeat of having him here, I’m ready to rip off the bandage and start the momentary wallow, the routine and the healing that always signals the passage of time.

I’m ready for him to go already, but only because I’m already waiting for him to come home. 

Follow Rebecca at http://theonlygirlamongboys.blogspot.com/

When my sweet soldier came home, it was a natural progression to move from the topic of deployment to the topic of reintegration in this blog. But writing about my own reintegration proved to be more difficult than I thought. Realistically, I have to live with my sweet soldier, and I don't want him to think that I am airing our "laundry."

This morning, the text traffic went like this:

Him: How's it going?

Me: Just finished.

Him: Cool!

Me: Going to pick up lunch and head to the school. Are you going to swim?

Him: No swim

Me: Wanna pick up something and meet at the school?

Him: I still need to shower.

Me: No worries. Sweet Girl's lunch is 12:20 if you want to meet us.

That is where the conversation ended on text but not in my head. In my head I was continuing the conversation ...

Should I have offered to pick up his lunch?

But what if he didn't show up? Then what?

If I push him on it, will he think that I am trying to force him to do something that he doesn't want to do?

Sigh ... There really is medication for this!

Here is the issue for me. It is not a matter of who can I talk to. I can talk to a chaplain or my Military Family Life Consultant, but he or she doesn't know me or my sweet soldier.

I can go to the chaplain's marriage retreat, but they divide up into small groups. What if I am in a group with a general officer? What if I am in a group with a junior enlisted couple in our section who is looking for us to set the example. Do we want either of those couples knowing for sure that the Youngs are "going off the rails on the crazy train"?

For me, I feel that if I go to a therapist, I am just complaining, and that's not right either. I chose my sweet soldier and therefore, I chose this life.

So who do we talk to? Do we burden our friends, our pastors/chaplains, our MFLCs, our commanders' spouse? We trust that the chaplain and the MFLC will not share our inner most thoughts and feelings, but what about friends or command spouses? What if they let our secrets slip. Everyone loves gossip. Everyone would like confirmation that the Youngs are not perfect.

I can't tell you who to trust, but I can tell you that I have someone that I trust. Our husbands don't work together, and not only are we the same age, but our kids are the same ages too. She knows everything about me and loves me anyway and we can share joys and frustrations without fear of being judged.

But what happens if your "dirty laundry" gets out? What then? I say, embrace it! It is okay to not be perfect. While it may be embarrassing, there will be other wives who will look at you and deep down think, 'I'm glad it is not just me.'

Hang in there, Sweet friends. This is the hard part, but we will get through it together!

Strength and Courage ... sby

Monday morning, I woke up before my alarm, thanking the heavens that both my girls had slept past 6.

I gazed lovingly at the baby tucked in my arm from her last nightly nursing session and then rolled over to brush the hair out of the sleeping eyes of my toddler. She always spends a few weeks in my bed when her father deploys.

Then, I heard it.  The reason this tired mama woke up at all.

The grind and groan of the garbage truck came like clockwork for the weekly trash pick-up.

“Oh, crap!” I yelped, disentangling from the kids and leaping out of bed in one fell swoop.

I grabbed my husband’s old PT sweatshirt hanging on the back of the door and threw it over my bed-head as I ran down the hall, through the living room and dining room, and into the kitchen.

In another singular movement, I grabbed up the kitchen trash and went out the garage door, furiously pushing the button and running out to our long driveway at the same time.

With one arm now in the sweatshirt furiously waving, I yell, “Wait! Wait!” and grab the big city-distributed trash can and wheel it haphazardly down the slope, totally unapologetic that I am still in my pajamas.

The garbage man laughs as I hand him up the extra trash from the kitchen and I see my neighbor, recently home from his own deployment, giving me a knowing smile.

We have been here before.

Every deployment, every time my husband leaves, I become the disheveled woman on Monday morning who, no matter how many alarms I set or how many reminders I post Sunday night, I still forget trash day.

And like clockwork, every Monday morning, after I finish my pathetic trash dance and start my walk of shame back up the driveway, I think, “Man, I miss my husband.”

Because, even though the holidays are painful, and the dance recitals and weddings and funerals are even more heart-wrenching when he’s not here, there are also the little things that make us hate deployment all the more.

The responsibilities that seem insignificant but are huge reminders when we take them over that he’s no longer home: changing hard-to-reach light-bulbs, cooking bacon on Saturday morning, re-organizing your “Documents” file on the computer, taking out the trash on Sunday night.

Those are the things that make you hate the fact that they’re gone. Each of these jobs is yet another reminder that you’re holding it down alone.

But, for every military spouse, there is that season.

The season when you mow the lawn or put up the Christmas decorations alone.  The season when you mail the birthday cards and you water the godforsaken indoor plant he insisted on buying. The season when you make the smiley-faced tacos on your family Taco Tuesday night.

Right now, I’m in that season.  The season of waiting, watching, hoping and missing him.

But hopefully next week, I’ll beat that truck to the curb, with time to spare.

Follow Brittany at www.brittsbeat.com

Ahhh. Retirement. No job. No rules. All relaxation.

Not yet.

Before you can stretch out on your backyard hammock, first you apparently spend a good six to 12 months in panic mode as you file paperwork, reconfigure your household budget and hyperventilate just a few times as you ponder the reality of living on that single amount of money. Forever.

This has at least been my experience.

Military retirement is arguably the best deal in the nation. Few other employers can guarantee that employees who stick around for 20 years will receive a pension equal to 50 percent of their paycheck - for life. The medical benefits that veterans and their dependents have access to and the community discounts are icing on the cake.

But none of that comes easy.  Like all things military, there are rolls of red tape to be cut, paperwork to shuffle and explanations of benefits that seem clear cut but really are not. If you are medically retired, multiply that chaos by 10.

 As I researched the benefits and entitlements my husband should expect upon his impending retirement I have compiled a list of websites that seem to be helpful.

I wish I could tell you retirement was simple, but it’s not. There are a lot of unanswered questions. There are a lot of decisions to be made. There are a lot of unexpected surprises, especially if you still have young children in the house to support.

However, these sites give a good overview of many of the different aspects of military retirement: pay, housing, medical and death benefits.

You will have more questions, but these sites should get your planning juices flowing.

Here’s to frothy drinks with paper umbrellas … eventually. First, check these out:

Retirement Pay Calculator
Want a good estimate of what your monthly take will be after retirement?

The Military Retirement System
A basic overview of what happens upon retirement, an explanation of some of the basic lingo and what you should expect:

2013 U.S. Military Retired Handbook
This site publishes handbooks for all aspects of military life, including retirement. It has a detailed breakdown of what every term means, and you can download it for free.  

Social Security and Military Benefits
Many veterans are eligible to receive social security benefits even if they receive a monthly pension. Here are the details, how to file and how to know if you are eligible.

Best Places for Military Retirees
Never had to pick a place to live permanently? Let U.S. News & World Report do it for you. They write an annual piece rating the best places for military retirees. 

Veterans Health Administration
Many veterans will qualify for care through the Veterans’ Administration, however there are rules and more paperwork.

Federal Benefits for Veterans, Dependents and Survivors
The U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs offers an entire package of benefits to veterans and their dependents.

State Veteran's Benefits
Each state also offers veterans benefits, ranging from education dollars to lower property taxes. Check your state’s programs here.