Kimber's Five

I finished my first semester back in college taking a full load of classes-- five classes, actually. Last spring, I was nervous signing up for that class load. We were getting ready to make a cross country move. My husband was deployed. We were in the process of building our house at our new duty station. It felt like it would end being a lot of work transitioning our children and settling into our new home. I wasn't sure how that would workload would translate onto my schedule. Would I be able to support all of the needs of my family as well as support a full load in college? As a sort of compromise, I signed up for online classes. While I knew we would want childcare for our two toddlers, we would be able to take a flexible approach to how that childcare would look. We were able to find a less expensive preschool for them, giving our four-year old four full days at preschool and our two-year old two half days at preschool. Any extra hours I needed for our two-year old could ...

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...

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...

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...