By Rachel Crist
In The Beginning
I know I know “not another military spouse blog, please!” I was also one of those, until I realized my story could help others. Within my four years of being a military spouse I have gone through: military spouse bullying, my husband going viral, 2 deaths within 6 months, anxiety and depression, having a child, and opening a food pantry during a pandemic.
In 2017, I was a new spouse and had joined every Air Force spouse page I could on Facebook to help me figure out what my new life would be. From there I realized that while there are some spouses to make friends with and learn from, there are also some on there just to be bullies.
When we moved to Colorado, we were so excited. It was a couple of weeks before our first Air Force ball and I was so excited! We went to the ball, had fun that whole night, had a bunch of pictures taken, and just enjoyed the night with our friends. I got home super late ready to go to bed and our friends were texting me to hurry up and post all the pictures, so I did so without even going through them. That’s when I learned rule number one: go through any of your pictures before you post….
Later that day I woke up to a picture I took going viral for the wrong reasons. That picture was up for a total of 5 hours, but I later learned that someone who bullied me months before (who I’ve never met) created a group chat with my “friends” and posted the picture online to a group that was supposed to be satire.
The Day We Went Viral
We got death threats in both of our inboxes as someone from our base outed who we were and tagged us. We had our parents even see the post and they were not on military pages. We didn’t leave our apartment that whole weekend scared that someone would recognize us.
We had someone from our base go through all 324,322 comments and see if anyone from base commented, and if they did, they would be reprimanded.
From there I immediately thought I had ruined my husband’s career. I soon got a call from my key spouse (who later became my best friend) asking if we were okay and what she could do. I realized then that not everyone was out to hurt us.
One of my favorite quotes is, “Your eyes are placed on the front of your head, so you can’t look back in the past,” and from that moment on, I decided that was not what was going to define us.
Hope in the Darkness
2018. A year I will never be able to forget. I lost my grandpa early 2018, and then in October my dad passed as well. At 25, I never thought I would be losing my dad and my grandpa so fast.
A bright light in the middle of it all, I became pregnant! I was told from a very small age with all of my medical conditions that I probably wouldn’t be able to have children, and here he was. He was a miracle for our whole family in what felt like the darkest times.
I quickly learned with all of my medical stuff during this pregnancy how high risk I was, and soon wouldn’t be able to walk from the pain.
I started to become shut in, my anxiety and depression were back in full swing. Later on in pregnancy my depression started to get worse. I would try to go out to see my friends and then make excuses to not go. Not only was it from the pain, but I felt like I wasn’t able to go anywhere without constantly complaining, which I know took a toll on my friends.
I went to my 36-week appointment alone, and then found out I would be emergency-induced that day. I called my best friend, she told me to eat (smart choice since I couldn’t for 5 days) and that she would come there until my husband could. I then had Ryder 3 days later and he’s been my joy since then.
Remember that quote I mentioned above? I live by it. I moved on from all of that, decided to branch out and I joined our spouses’ group on base as a social chair! From there, is where my new story begins.
A New Hope
Once we were done with the 2019-2020 year, I was nominated to be the treasurer of the group. Let’s be real, I’ve never done anything like this in my life and was terrified, but my best friend believed in me and I trust her so I followed through.
It was a tough time at first, we all know how 2020 went. Small gatherings, no places to dine in, you felt alone and isolated with only technology to keep you in the loop.
Covid made everything brutal for our base. We had to go from no more than 50 people, to 25, to 10. We had to have our friends deliver us food from the food bank because we couldn’t go get it ourselves. I saw on base pages that people were giving away food and saw how fast it was going and realized we definitely weren’t the only ones struggling.
In July I thought, why don’t I try to open a food pantry on base? I worked within that month to make the connections I needed in order to get this to happen. I put surveys out, worked with other bases to ask how theirs operated, I even created a handbook. I worked with the Airman Family Readiness Center, and the First Sergeants’ council and within 4 months, it was going up to the commander to be an official “Gretel’s Pantry” My mind was blown. I did it. I opened up a food pantry on base.
The grand opening was November 30th, and the base did a post about my pantry that attracted many more to find the pantry and to use it. From there it exploded. I was getting so many messages about donations, we made it on the news, we had Colorado 30 present us a check, I was absolutely amazed at how in less than a month, I have attracted all this attention from people in Colorado and out-of-state.
In December I made a connection with the Elks. They were going to donate NINE THOUSAND pounds of food. So we created the first ever Gretel’s Pantry Food drive the week of Christmas. I advertised it like crazy hoping anyone would come since I had so much food. The day of the event we had people coming in before we even started. There were people nonstop and lines were out the door! We had over 230 people show up that day.
I had people coming up to me with tears in their eyes because they weren’t going to be able to eat for Christmas. We had a surprise toy room full of donated toys from Toys for Tots and just seeing everyone’s face when they went in there was amazing. They now not only had food for Christmas, but also could give their children toys as well. So far the pantry has received over $2000 in donations, and served over 500 people and it has only been four months.
The whole point of this is to tell you, even though it seems like everything might be crashing down now, you’ll be able to overcome it and do amazing things. If I would have given up a few years ago when it was hard, I wouldn’t be making a difference on this base. I wouldn’t have my best friend who’s gotten me through it all. I wouldn’t be able to share my story.
