I read a great editorial today on the need for military leaders to admit suffering from PTSD. (It’s pasted at the end of this post.) As you can guess, this is an issue that I have a deep connection to. When we were together, I used to celebrate every time Paul got promoted. Every time […]

I read a great article today about how celebrating the tiny moments in your life can raise your happiness level, increase your resilience when bad things happen, and help ward off depression. You can see the whole article here, or I pasted the text below this post. This study confirms what anyone who has survived a deployment […]

A nice editorial from the Washington Post…. I lost many of my civilian friends when Paul left for Afghanistan because they didn’t support the war and couldn’t make the leap to support him as a soldier and us as a military family. It baffles me that people can’t see that the reason they have the […]

Here’s a post by Sarah Gilbert, who’s husband is an Army reservist deployed to Afghanistan. She writes honestly about how the financial windfall associated with a deployment helped her family. You can read the original story here. I don’t know whether it was minutes or hours or even a day: the time it took me […]

Here is part of a post from Susan Katz Keating about watching her father suffer PTSD. It’s powerful – and recognizable for many of us who have loved ones suffering post-combat. You can read Susan’s blog here. I awakened late to the sound of violent pounding on the front door of our home in Riverside, California. By […]

I’m re-posting a wonderful entry from a woman living through deployment and musing about marrying her soldier. You can see her blog here. I don’t know any military spouses who haven’t had moments of ‘I can’t do this,’ or worse still, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ Certaintly I felt that way plenty during Paul’s […]

Attention Oregon National Guard Spouses & Friends: Lane Community College offers new Deployment classes!   Holding Down the Homefront: A Guide for Spouses   Based on the Army’s Battlemind training for spouses and her own work with military families as a Certified Professional Life Coach, Katie Dyer – National Guard wife and Founder of Heroes […]

By Sherri Ackerman / The Tampa Tribune Even with her father in Iraq, 2 1/2-year-old Keirah Nelson wakes to his voice each morning. “Keirah, this is Daddy,” Army Spect. Scott Nelson singsongs from a recording inside a cotton doll adorned with his picture. “I love you very much. Have a good day.” The custom-made Daddy […]

Dear Deployment, You won. I tried to fight you; but in the end you were more powerful than me. More powerful than him. More powerful than us. You changed him. After knowing you, he is not a man I recognize. I loved him the best I knew how, but I could not understand the secrets […]

This is a powerful post from a soldier serving in Afghanistan. See the orignal story here. On Friday our patrol got hit. An insurgent threw a grenade into one of our patrol vehicles. I helped the rest of my guys carry my roommate to the CSH (Combat Support Hospital) here in Mosul in a black […]