The Case to Stay on Base During Deployments

Deployments are hard, heart wrenching, and go by painfully slow. Many wives choose to lock up and leave their homes to go back to their home towns. This might seem like a good idea, but it has many drawbacks. Next time your husband goes on deployment, consider staying in town to help other wives in your command, and get support from those that have been there before.

Wives Are Support Units

Getting away from everything that reminds you of your beloved husband sounds like a good idea. Remember that if you are moving home to a non-military community, getting empathy will be hard. Wives serve as support units when the husbands are gone. Wives ARE the husbands when the husbands are gone. They act as mom and dad for the kids, have to do woman and man chores around the house, and take on the life that is abstract and hard for civilians to relate to. Civilians can sympathize, and most do for the wrong reasons, but they will never GET it.

Deployments Create Long-Lasting Friendships

Wives need each other to hold play dates, host parties, and socialize, more so when the men are gone. It takes a lot to build a friendship and realize whether there is anything long-lasting. A deployment is the ticket into a solid friendship, and is often the most common way friendships are forged. Wives meet just before the men deploy during deployment briefings. They connect, they exchange numbers or e-mail, and when the men leave they walk out together. This personal moment is a magnificent thing to have in common. It is like super fertilizer for a plant. Don’t walk out on an opportunity to have a great friend.

Don’t Abandon your Friends

Nothing is worse than being the only wife at the command. The men are gone, the wives leave soon after, and soon you are left by yourself with your kids. Its even worse when you have toddlers and have nobody to watch one when the other has an ear infection, or when you NEED to get your hair done. Wives depend on each other. Women in general invest a lot of time in developing friendships, so don’t throw all of that time away and abandon your friend during a deployment. Military moms should stick together. It makes the woman a better mom and stronger wife, the husband more confident and relaxed, the team stronger because the husband is focused, and the military stronger because of a functional group of confident men.

Military moms are more important than they know. Solidarity is key to living in this unusual subculture that often feels backwards. Sticking together will ease tension, stress, and create a caring environment with one goal in mind: getting the men home safely.

Carmen Grant is a proud combat military wife and mother of two toddlers. She is the Family Readiness Group President for her husband’s command, and volunteers at the Navy Marine-Corps Relief Society as a financial caseworker. She also writes about foreign policy, parenting, fundraising, and fitness at Suite101.

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