That's How It Is.

This is a personal email someone wrote to me on Facebook...This is the advice i have given her.


"I have been having some problems ever since my other half came home about 2 months ago. And, i'm looking for some support, someone to talk to, I went to a woman who has something in common with me; her husband has been over in Iraq for the better part of last year. What I was not expecting was her reaction to my asking her for help. She told me that, because I don't have a ring on my finger, my situation had no comparison to hers, since I wasn't a military wife that I wasn't worth anything. That I couldn't possibly know anything about how it feels or what it's like when he is away. I don't understand how i'm any different. What do you think?"

I just want to set the record strait for anyone out there who agrees with her, while she may not be a wife to her soldier, she has has been as good as one for almost a year now. She may not know much, but this is what she does know: She knows what it is like to hold him and kiss him for the last time before he boards a plane that will take him away from her for months. He is gone for weeks and her not being able to touch him. She's watched him scarf his food down in two minutes flat because that is the amount of time he was used to allotting himself for a meal. She's seen him exhausted and barely able to talk to her for five minutes because he was forced to stay up for over 24 hours. She's woken up to him shaking and couldn't even BEGIN to imagine what he saw in his dreams. She knows what it's like to wonder when she'll ever be able to see him. She may not be a military wife and she may not know much about being one -- technically, but she knows everything I have mentioned above because she has seen it and felt it for herself. She knows her soldier, inside and out... and backwards. She probably knows him better than he knows himself. And, no matter where he is, what he is going through, what he is doing and whatever he is thinking about at the time... when she's with him, she is home. And she would do anything, within or completely out of her reach to keep him safe and with her at all times.


To me, that is what a military wife really is, it has nothing to do with a marriage license or jewelry.

To the Military Wives & GF's: I know that we are all going though tough times and we deal with it in different ways and it is so hard sometimes. I have recently run into a number of wives/girlfriends who are going through this or have gone through this and too many of them give up. I care too much about mine to let that happen and while he claims he does not need help, that he has only been home for a little while and it will get better, I know that just sticking by him will mean a world of difference.