Kimber's Five

There is one aspect of military spouse life that I do not think that I can ever get used to: isolation. I feel like I make my own memories. That sounds like such a small thing, but as our family has grown and we have moved time after time, I've realized I really hate it. What do I mean make my own memories? Well, my husband is rarely home or with me. Sea duty doesn't mean he's working a 9-5 job when he isn't deployed. Even when he is "home" or "in port" he has schools he has to attend, training to go to, a boat to work on, on and on. He often leaves before the kids and I get up and gets home after they are in bed (sometimes after I am in bed). For awhile, he had literally 2 days off a month and they weren't even on the same weekend. So I'm not making memories with my husband, living day to day life with him. Sharing time with him and sharing the kids with him. I'm usually informing him of our day and showing him pictures and videos. T...

This is the second part to my "Mental health support" post. This one is about what I have done to create an environment for myself that prioritized my mental health. At some point when my mental health was at an all-time low, I thought about all of the things that were bothering me and adding to my depression. I put things in columns: one column was things I can change and the other was things I couldn't change. The list helped me realize that I cannot change all the bad things happening to our family and I can't change how people feel about me. However, I can change the support around me and I can change how I feel about all things that happened. I went home to be with my family and friends during my husband's deployment and to give myself a chance to process the past couple years. Getting myself out of the situation also gave me a chance to think about what I liked about being at home with support and all the ways life was less hard when I wasn't goin...

Man, what a tough week with such amazing people ending their lives. There seems to be a lot more talk recently about mental health and I am all about it {if you have read any of my blog posts in the last year or the past 5 minutes, you probably already know this}. I had a mental breakdown last year. I've gone over my story many times, but basically my husband is a submariner and went back to sea duty, which means deployments and the boat schedule and duty days. I had our 5th baby here and it was a complicated pregnancy in which we almost lost her many times, almost lost me, and I battled preterm labor. After I had her, I kept telling myself it would get better, but then life carried on as usual. Our 2 asthmatics had flair ups. My grandmother had a stroke. My mom completely severed her Achilles tendon. My husband's boat schedule kept changing. My post-partum complications were horrible and made me feel like less than a person. Just... everything. Everything was a struggle. I di...

My husband is in the military and we have moved every 1-3 years for 11 years together. We are in the midst of our 6th military move now and we will live at our next duty station for 3 years. That means that I have had to make adult friends at 5 different duty stations already and I'm about to do it again at a 6th. I have found that my needs for friends has varied as our family has grown and as I have grown. When we first got married and didn't have kids, I wanted friends who were out doing things at night. I liked a fun party and going out. I wanted people to do things with-- dinner parties, outings, even day to day errands. It was just nice hanging out, texting, drinking, and talking about books and hobbies. At our second duty station with one child, I wanted people to meet up with. I kept a Pack'n'Play in my Jeep and I would go to dinner parties, put the baby down to nap in the master bedroom. I liked day trips, playdates, barbecues, farmer's markets on the we...

Having my house on the market with 5 kids has been nothing short of a cluster f*ck. I say that with all due respect. To have your house show ready, you need: The beds made. All 6 of them that we are sleeping in. Laundry put away. Laundry for 6 people. Meaning, the 1 adult adult, me-- who does the laundry-- and the 9, 7, 7, 3, and 1 year olds who create most of the laundry. The laundry situation is a nightmare. Can we please talk about the sheets? The kitchen towels? The bath towels? Did I mention the laundry? Neat and tidy. We are talking toys in the bedrooms. In the loft. In the halls. In the bathrooms {why are there toys in the bathroom?!}. On the stairs. In the family room. In the kitchen. In every single nook and cranny of our house. Horizontal surfaces cleared. This means the folders from school that get emptied x3 everyday have to be immediately taken care of. The bathroom counters in all 3.5 of our bathrooms have to be cleared. The kitchen counters. Nightstands. Bookcases...

There have been so many positive changes in my surrounding the past couple weeks and months. We've had new families move in on our street. My kids have so many people their age to play with outside. I made good friends with my neighbors and they are real and genuine people that I can feel a deep connection with-- the type of people that you can see being friends with for a long, long time. I love their whole family and they welcome my entire family with open arms. It's amazing. I love the feel of our street right now. It's the type of place you want to lean back and enjoy, let some roots grow. I have spent the past couple weeks and months saying, "What if it had been like this the whole time we lived here?" For just about the first time since we got here, my physical health hasn't been a problem. I started this duty station with an incredibly bad case of mastitis, swooped into a horrible pregnancy that almost killed me and my daughter, and post-partum co...

We are getting ready to move away from our current duty station. We sold our house and we've bought our next house. We have packers coming here, contractors scheduled there, hotels booked. All of the months and weeks of planning are all finally coming together to now: Go Time. It is always weird to me when I get ready to leave a place. I start looking at things that I took for granted-- and possibly even disliked-- differently. The other morning I was walking up to our house after getting the newspaper and my bare foot stepped on a pebble on our driveway. I bent down to brush it off and heard the birds chirping, the sound of a car starting up the street. I heard my kids screaming at each other inside the house-- probably over who's turn it was to pick a show. I was struck with nostalgia. Our house felt so alive in that moment. Our street radiated familiarity. I could almost smell home, the entire state of Washington, and spring itself. Standing there, I took a mental snapshot...

A thought that keeps bouncing around in my mind lately is how to accept my present circumstances. I feel like I'm chaffing under the yoke of being a military spouse. There are so many aspects of this life that, after 11 years, I am very tired of dealing with. 1. I'm tired of trying to make friends. 2. I'm very tired of meeting great friends just as I'm getting ready to PCS or when they are about to PCS or when they are about to deploy. I want my friendships to last and line up. 3. I'm tired of feeling like my life is on hold. 4. I'm tired of people telling me my life is not on hold and that I just need to make the most of it. 5. I'm tired of having the mentality that I'm only going to live somewhere for 3 years, max, and so when I start reaching the end of that time, I start passing up opportunities or letting my roots grow any deeper because I know I'm about to move from there again. 6. I'm tired of bumping into people that want to...