3 | Don’t be afraid to share the fact that it’s scary
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned after all these deployments is that I HAVE to stop telling everyone I’m “fine.” I’m not always great, but when I put on my going-out face and shut all the real emotions in the closet and hide my real emotions, I can completely convince everyone that I’m not only managing – I’m rocking this! Clearly, they don’t live with me or haven’t asked my kid whether Mom falls apart when she’s at home. Hint – she does! But most people I know casually are completely sure I’ve got it together!
I was an actor growing up and I haven’t lost that skill set. It was the recent long (for us) deployment that finally tore down my walls some and I started to admit to friends that I wasn’t fine. I needed help. I needed support and love and shepherding, and I didn’t feel like I was getting it where it should come from. So, I ended up going out and creating my own Tribe. I learned when I opened up and shared all my weaknesses and struggles that I was not the only one struggling. Then we started our own sort of therapy group where we got together consistently and talked problems out. There were 4 of us so we had multiple personalities to bounce ideas around, but that was one of my saving graces of that deployment because I needed not to lie about how much trouble I was having, but I also needed to truly lay my heart out on the table and show how broken I was instead of trying to live this fake life I would project out to our friends and family around us.
4 | Don’t let people’s comments affect you
This will be my shortest point, but it’s so true. I find myself secretly seething when someone approaches me to tell me that we’ll be just fine because we’ve done it for 5 years and we rocked every single one of them!! And even if those words are like nails on a chalkboard, you have to try to take it with the love and care which it was most likely intended instead of the “sensitive, about to be spouse-less for xxx number of days, emotional basket case,” that I often become in that position. Most of the time, in a case like this, the intent is loving, caring, thoughtful, and meant to build and lift you up – but the interpretation can be very different (especially if you’re an emotional wreck because they’re deploying!!
To sum up – No deployments are ever “easy.” We can work to make them easier on ourselves in the midst of the trial. We can gain good insight from previous deployments. We can have plans in place where we’re determined it is going to be the BEST ONE EVER!!!!! But at the end of the day, it’s going to be a process. It will have high points and low points. It is going to be different than the last one (maybe good, maybe bad) but there’s no sense in ramping yourself up ahead of time worrying about it just as there’s no sense trying to deny very real, normal pre-deployment emotions!
