An Open Letter to Military Moms: I was an Army Brat too

 

 

This is for my mom-tribe: especially the military moms who are doubting a little bit.  Is this military life harder on them than it is on me?  Should I even have kids while he’s still in?  Will the military mess up my kids?

Dear Moms,

Once upon a time, I was the little kid that fell asleep with a xeroxed picture of my dad above my bed.  (Black and white and extremely pixilated because home-printed photos were the rage back then).  It stayed there to say goodnight to me, when he wasn’t there to do so.

I remember waiting until 8pm to have dinner some nights because there had been a delay at the motor pool.  There was that Thanksgiving Dinner at a dining facility full of soldiers instead of relatives, with sweet potato pie instead of pumpkin (that was the part that shocked me).  Christmas happened on January 8th one year instead of December 25th. When people asked me where I was from, I always had to say, “the USA.”

I lived in 8 different houses.   We always moved the month of my birthday.  Always.  In college, there was a deployment star hanging in my window, for my entire sophomore year.  One time, I found out my dad was still okay by seeing his picture in a headline.  We hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

But there were good times too.

I got to see my dad on TV.  My barbie married GI Joe (Ken was demoted to roll of teenage brother because he had less muscle).  I got to visit inside the Pentagon and White House.  The military paid for more than half of my college tuition.  I got to live in Canada.  I experienced the rolling hills of Kentucky and the southern hospitality of Georgia.

Freedom wasn’t just something that I witnessed and believed in.  It was what I lived.  I never was tied down to the same routine, circle of friends, or town footprint.  My five sisters became my best friends, which is something a lot of my civilian friends say never happened with their siblings.  Don’t get me wrong, we had friends. haha

But our friendships, especially with other military brats, always had an end-clause.  There would always be a goodbye.  No matter when how long they endured, we always knew there would be a goodbye.

It was like our friendships were conditioned with that one fact.

But we were also really good at that part.  Not that we liked it.  Just that we were conditioned to handle it.

“Conditioned to handle it” is probably the motto of military brats.

We never invited the discomforts.  We never cherished the goodbyes.  But no matter how “tough” the times got– there was one thing we always had in common:

Not a single one of us ever said, “I wish this wasn’t my life.”

Because we were conditioned to handle it.

And the reason that is so striking, is because as a military spouse now, I hear:

“I wish he would get out.”  “The military is really hard on our family.”  “He needs to get out so we can have kids (as if you can’t have kids in the military).”  “Our life was better before this.”  “I’m not his priority anymore.”  “I didn’t sign up for all this.”

Have you ever heard an Army brat say those things?

I never have.  We never did.  I don’t think we ever will.

Military spouses aren’t conditioned (by nature) to handle it.  We can handle it.  And we are good at handling it (sometimes more than other times).  But we have adapted to handle it.  That’s our secret strength as spouses.  And that’s the fundamental difference between military spouses and their military brat children.

We have adapted.  They are conditioned.

I’m not saying that to make military spouses any less heroic.  On the contrary, I have found (and was shocked) that being a military spouse comes with so many more worries than being a military brat ever did.  Really.  But that is exactly what my point is here.

Military wives go through so much heartache and hardship and they look at their children and imagine: “If this is so hard for me as an adult, I can’t even begin to think of what kind of effect this hardship must have on my child.”  And it’s perfectly normal to think that way.

But you don’t need to anymore.

Military kids are born into a world where saying goodbye is normal.  (I didn’t say easy, I just said normal).  They exist in a world that doesn’t know one specific hometown or one and only one place to celebrate Christmas.  Their world is far more adventurous, fluid, and for lack of a better word, unique than their adult military dependent counterparts.  The very aspects of the military life that wow civilians or frustrate us are the very things that are extremely normal for them.

Moving houses.  Changing bedroom arrangements.  Making all new friends two years from now.  Living inside a gated community.  Having half of your neighborhood be close in age to you.  Sitting quiet at a military function.  Singing the national anthem at something other than a sports game. Shopping for groceries, playing sports, eating out, going to church, and living in a duplex all within a 15 mile radius of each other.   These things, and so many more, are all parts of the military that spouses have to get used to and that brats simply know as “life itself.”

Maybe you feel comforted by knowing this.  Maybe it’s nice to hear from someone who experienced it herself.  Or  maybe you don’t feel any better.  Maybe you feel like sooner or later your child will catch onto how “different” their life is compared to their civilian friends.

You’re not necessarily wrong.

There comes a point in time for many military brats where they do start to see how different their life is from what is “normal” on TV.  Or from what their civilian friends do.  Perhaps your child has already approached you with a question or two about their lifestyle.  Maybe even a complaint.

Military brats might be conditioned for all of this, but it doesn’t mean they are robots or blind to hardships.  It was hard as a kid to countdown the days until dad got home.  It was sad when friends moved before we did.  I remember watching a Christmas movie during which a kid yelled at his dad and said he didn’t want to spend Christmas with him, and how hurt I felt because I would have given anything to have my dad home for Christmas (or home at all that year).  And there is no way that I’m the only military brat who felt like that.  But at the end of the day, military brats don’t struggle with doubt during those moments of hardship.

They are just hardwired to not doubt their life, which is not something that spouses are naturally equipped with.  You military child isn’t going to call into question everything that they know about life.  Military spouses face fear and doubt far more than children ever do.

Have you ever been “pitied” by civilians?  They feel bad for us military wives, but it’s not just because what we do is hard.  It’s because they don’t fully understand just how strong we are– how we CAN and DO handle it.

That’s how it is for your children.

You may know them like the back of your hand and better than anyone else.  But if you weren’t a military brat yourself, you may wonder how they are feeling.  If the military is too hard for them.  You might pity them.

Don’t.

Have compassion for your children.  Of course!  But you don’t need to pity military brats.  We are okay.  It’s no different than military wives who are pitied by those who have never walked in our shoes.  It might be tough, but we are okay.  We thrive, survive, and even improve.

So do your children.

They are what the world calls a “dandelion child.”  A son or daughter who has the shallowest roots of any flower, and yet manages to grow in any climate it’s seeds are dropped in.  Soft green Kansas fields.  The sidewalk cracks of a long deployment.

Managing to grow in those spots wasn’t always easy, but it wasn’t all that bad.  And I try to remember that myself when I look in the review mirror, as we drive away from my daughter’s first house.   I look at my girls and I realize that they are my dandelions now.

And the only way dandelions thrive is to be blown away from their original spot.  It’s in their nature.

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“We spent our entire childhoods in the service of our country,

and no one even knew we were there.” – Pat Conroy

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For more resources for your Military Brat, check out:

10 Coping Mechanisms That Actually Work For Kids During Deployment

How the Army Helped Pay for My College: Scholarships for Military Children