Kimber's Five

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...

In my 11 years of marriage, we have moved 5 times and we are a few short months away from moving for a 6th time. The longest we have lived somewhere is just shy of 3 years. Our family has grown from just me and my husband to what we have now-- 5 children, a dog, and a cat. As a woman, a military spouse, and a mother, making friends has been difficult. There are a lot of obstacles to overcome when it comes to making friends. In my years of trying to connect at my husband's duty stations, I have felt that this particular hardship of the military lifestyle is treated as a women's issue.  I say this because the spouse groups are set up to support the female, stay-at-home spouses. The meetings are held during a weekday morning, often include some sort of childcare, and generally are held with coffee and a craft. The spouse groups attached to commands will also do things like bake for the command during weeks with long hours or host Ladies' Nights Out. As our family ...

I have struggled with my role as a military spouse, now more than ever. For a long time I felt like there was something I just "didn't get." It felt like a lot of the seasoned spouses I knew were comfortable in their roles and maybe even enjoyed some of the challenges of being a military spouse. I felt like I needed to hang on, dig deep, and that it would come together and I would figure it out. Tour after tour happened and my life shifted in various ways. I pushed my dreams off for another duty station and yet another, when the time would be "right." I focused on my family because, as a military spouse, we move from duty station to duty station where we do not have a built in support network. Even if we build those support networks at a duty station, there is still a period in time where we have to hustle and line it all up. Doctors, dentists, childcare, schools, preschools, playdates, friend circles, mommy meet-ups, on and on. There is not a line of people w...