A couple of months into the deployment, Register Guard columnist Bob Welch asked if he could publish my journals. I turned them over! Here is the article he wrote.

Ugh… re-reading that article I can still feel how terrible I felt back then. The first few months of a deployment are absolutely the hardest. Everyone told me I would get into a “Deployment Grove” and it would get easier. I didn’t believe it at the time, but something does change inside you along the way. I don’t think it ever gets easier, but it is true that after a certain number of months alone, THAT becomes “normal” and having Paul home started to feel “special” in my mind.

Now that the deployment is over, we’re making a difficult adjustment the other way. The “specialness” of being together again starts to fade into the every day routines and it’s like, ‘oh, he really does live here again. I can’t be in charge of everything anymore!’