I see you over there at every significant event with your spouse and kids and parents and in-laws, siblings and their kids, grandparents, and extended family, friends even.
You’re loud with inside jokes and almost obnoxious laughter within your safety net of family and close friends, whom you’ve known forever, in a place where you’ve always lived, surrounded by people who love you and whom you love, despite the mistakes of your past, your gawky teen years, going away to college and returning to marry and start your own family.
I don’t know what it’s like to be surrounded by friends and family.
Your eyes cut to me more than once.
Do you look uncomfortable or curious?
I’m the mom at her kids’ events, alone.
You might wonder if I’m a single mom.
Am I separated, divorced, or widowed?
You might wonder where my people are – parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, whoever.
I try to take lots of pictures for memories.
I go home after events and practices to email or text a summary and all the photos that turn out.
My husband is deployed.
Or TDY.
Or working late, weekends, doubles.
His parents passed the first year we married. His sisters choose not to have a relationship with us.
My parents live far away and we’re not close. Almost all my extended family have passed since I’m the youngest grandbaby.
Many people ask, “How do you do it?”
I just do.
This is my life.
I’ve had some scoff that this is my choice and I could make changes if I really wanted to.
I wonder: what could they possibly mean? Separation from the military before retirement (maybe in two more years!) and lose all those benefits? Geobaching? Divorce? What?
Of course it’s my choice. I knew what I was doing when I married my military man. It doesn’t make life any easier when the going gets rough.
I didn’t realize I can’t ever express sorrow, regret, loneliness, heartache – or any emotion that isn’t overwhelmingly patriotic and positive – over certain life circumstances like others so often do for shallow sympathy.
I do what I have to do to raise my children well, often with an absent father who travels or deploys for work. I sometimes struggle to be everything to my kids – mother and father. They know to rely on themselves and each other and me. I’m the constant. I’m consistent.
Sometimes, it’s just really hard and lonely.
Solo Parenting Tips
- Stricter schedule
- Earlier bedtimes for kids so I have alone time
- Nature/outdoor time daily for at least 30 minutes
- Healthy eating and plenty of water
- Hire or borrow help when needed
- Take lots of pictures
- Video chat
- Texting
- Have kids draw pictures, write letters, make treats to mail
- Have kids help create and deliver care packages to USPS
- Scrapbook or photo book of time missed
Have you ever parented alone and how did you manage?
Resources:
- This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are by Melody Warnick
- Almost There: Searching for Home in a Life on the Move by Bekah DiFelice
- God Strong: The Military Wife’s Spiritual Survival Guide by Sara Horn
- Tour of Duty: Preparing Our Hearts for Deployment: A Bible Study for Military Wives by Sara Horn
- Chicken Soup for the Military Wife’s Soul: 101 Stories to Touch the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Charles Preston
- Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives by Jocelyn Green
- Faith Deployed…Again: More Daily Encouragement for Military Wives by Jocelyn Green
- Faith, Hope, Love, & Deployment: 40 Devotions for Military Couples by Heather Gray
Thank you for your service as a military wife! Thanks to your husband for his part in defending our freedom!! I have a good friend that went through multiple deployments when her kids were young and it was so hard at times for her. My husband had to be away from our home for 6mths one time and that was….hard, so I look up to you and I know you must lean into God’s strength to get you through! #kingdombloggers linkuo
You wrote a great article to bring awareness to the mom sitting all alone. We need to reach out. Great tips. Thank you for your husband and to you for his service. Sharing!
Jennifer, thank you for this great post and the tips. Such great reminders. We don’t have anyone in our family in the military, but I know plenty of friends that are. This post really opened my eyes to their needs. Thank you!!! Pinned!
Thanks for linking up at InstaEncouragements!
Jennifer, thank you for the sacrifices you make as a military wife. I appreciate your husbands’ service and your service here at home. I can’t imagine doing life like you do. Thank you.
Thinking of you! Just remember – you’re a pro and you’ve got this!
God bless you, and thank you so much for your family’s service to our country. I pray God surrounds you with a network of helpful friends. I do understand a bit what it is like because when my children were small, my husband was ill with bipolar disorder. I, too, had to go everywhere with the children like I was a single parent. It truly is hard, but being there for your children is also very rewarding. Thanks for reminding us to look out for those who need support.
ah, that must’ve been hard! Blessings.
I almost had to parent during my husband’s deployment to Somalia back in 1992. I was pregnant with our first child, a boy, when my husband was handed sudden deployment orders. We had less than 2 days notice. We were in Yuma, Arizona. Both of our families were back here in Georgia. I was told that I could introduce my son to his daddy sometime around his first birthday or later. Deployments back then were much longer than they are today. I flew home to wait through the duration of my pregnancy here with our family. Due to a series of circumstances which can only be explained as Divine intervention, my husband was able to come back earlier than expected. I was within days of my due date so he met me here in Georgia. I experienced my first contractions AT THE AIRPORT while picking him up, but I kept that a secret. After 4 days of labor and a difficult delivery, we finally held our baby boy – together. That same baby boy is currently deployed to Afghanistan. His wife of 5 years is here but, thankfully, she has a strong support system and they don’t have children yet. Several of my son’s “brothers in arms” have wives parenting alone at home right now. A few of those babies were born during this deployment. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have had to parent my son without his daddy during that first year even with a supportive extended family here at home. Thank you for all you do to raise up your family of patriots. Thank you to your husband for his service.
Thank you so much for your family’s stories. I love to hear about it!