Navigating new motherhood one cold cup of coffee at a time
Our first duty station was Hawaii, and I gained so much from our time there. I was ambitious, young and impressionable. I was starting my career, pursuing this thing called love; I couldn't have been in a better place for this chapter, where the community leads with Aloha – a powerful outlook that set me… Continue reading What I didn’t know when I married the military
I officially hit the third trimester of this second pregnancy. It's surreal that we will meet our daughter in a few short months. Last pregnancy, there was this constant looming and enormous news that we were going to become parents, and it made us one giant ball of nerves. Now that our days are already consumed… Continue reading Third trimester turbulence
When we got pregnant, my first thought was a blur of joy and shock. My second thought was to count through the nine months it would take to grow you to see if daddy would be home for your birth. If we were staying in Hawaii, he would have deployed for a fourth time. Lucky us, we had… Continue reading A letter to our military child
*Photo by Just B Photo* Nov. 21: What is the one thing you wish people better understood about something in your life? One of the biggest misunderstandings people have about me is my happiness. I am an optimistic person, and I do have a generally happy-go-lucky personality. I firmly believe that this positive outlook is… Continue reading I am happy, but that doesn’t make me superhuman
I started this blog when I learned that my husband and I were expecting, just two months before our cross-country move. This marked the start of an exciting journey, but also a tough goodbye as I left 3.5 years of hard work behind me, saying goodbye to a career I had tirelessly advanced in a community I adored. But… Continue reading Conquered: My biggest fears about being a stay-at-home mom
I don't really think of myself as a military spouse. I think of myself as a wife - perhaps because I don't know any other life. To me, marriage has always been and will always be marked by dreaded bouts of distance followed by highly emotional homecomings, too many acronyms to be considered English, a transient… Continue reading What being a military spouse is really like
One of the most unsuspecting challenges of pregnancy thus far has been its impact on my marriage. I had this vision that my husband would be overjoyed at the news and would seamlessly step into the unknowns of parenthood with me day by day, hand in hand. Things didn’t unfold quite so beautifully: “Sean, I think we got… Continue reading What pregnancy has done to my marriage
Last year's birthday couldn't be more different than this year's. Sean was deployed, though due to come home soon. After 7 months apart I was fully adjusted to doing my thing. I was rocking the job of my dreams, surrounded by dear friends-turned-family, with plenty of spare time to pursue my own passions. Everything was on my terms – keyword: my. Then… Continue reading My birthday will never be the same
It's not that any military spouse actually looks forward to a deployment the same way we count down to homecoming, but there are certainly positives to the distance that tend to get buried underneath the negative connotations of long-distance love. Below are 10 aspects that I whole-heartedly appreciate when my husband deploys, which I've decided to publicly share… Continue reading Why deployments are actually the best
Below is an attempt to answer some of the most common, misguided questions that military spouses get. *Also published on HuffPost Blog. How do you do it!? I could never be with someone who's gone all the time. We work on our relationship the same way you do -- one day at a time. The… Continue reading 9 questions military spouses are tired of answering
