Here’s the deal: until my husband came along I had no idea what I was missing and I was blissfully ignorant with pretty things. While we had a PCS rumor in the mix, I kept my job and I found my calling within the Marine Corps significant others world. As a girlfriend, fiance and wife in a very short time, I saw the gaps in community and how a boots on the ground initiative could change things. We all want to know: how do I make friends? Where are they hiding? How do I make friends offline but avoid getting bullied during my search? So I launched a non profit to support Marine significant others, created programs, events and opportunities for SO’s to find those friends and start connecting in person.
It is crucial that I make it darn clear you know I won’t rest until I know every single one of you feel you have the love, support and the friendships you need to get through the years of military life. Period.
When we launched our second chapter in Camp Pendleton, I was hit in the face with so much hurt that was new to me for fleet SO’s. You see, it’s different in DC, so I didn’t get the manual on multiple deployments, month long field ops in between, 14 hour days outside of that and lets not forget 24 hour duty multiple times a month.
Also remember, I am now a 32 year old in an E3/E4 neighborhood, battalion and world of younger spouses. I’ve BEEN the girl that’s moved away the first time, learned how to make friends, the girl trying to write her resume, find a job, learn how to interview. I’ve been there. So it was a much easier transition for me than for the spouses dealing with it at average ages of 18 – 24. Most importantly though, all I heard about were “the sites.” In DC I think there were like 3?
I could be wrong but when you get to a base this big it was astronomical how many sites you could step into and get your status update stolen and re-posted in bully sites. I grew up being bullied my whole life and when I was younger sometimes I would have 6 girls wait for me at the bus after class and although I obviously made it through, I couldn’t imagine being younger and have the online presence of 150 “likes” and comments from strangers all about me.
Inspires confidence in your community right?
ALL of us military significant others know one thing collectively… it is really darn hard to navigate the community when you first become involved or even when you’ve been in for years. Questions like, what’s a FRO? TriCare..Standard or Prime? GPS doesn’t work on base; how do I get to the commissary? We have all been that person once (or a few times), but then somehow people become annoyed in the online “communities” because they’ve now seen it a million times and therefore they’ve automatically earned their stripes to expose others to mass public humiliation. You know who I’m talking about, right?
The ones that officially graduated to the seniority mountain that gave them the angle to look down from? ‘Cause ya know.. they got the secret handbook that came with all of the answers. Does the MCX carry a copy? I mean I have looked and looked and I can’t even find it on Amazon.
