Monday Inspiration

I woke up this morning feeling pretty beaten up...it was one of those "never stop tossing and turning" nights. As I dragged myself to the coffee machine, with bags under my eyes and my hair looking fabulous in all its morning glory, I thought, "ughhhh - this is not how I want to start my week."

So I decided to peruse the internet for a little "pick-me up." With every reading and sip of coffee, I felt a little more revived and little less zombie-like. I'm more prepared to tackle the week ahead...with crazy hair and all : ) Here are some quotes to get you inspired for the week if you are having a Monday morning like mine:

Please be sure to check back here again this week, as I will be posting the final post in the "Keeping Our Identity" series, featuring a super awesome lady that I'm really excited to introduce you to. Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. Happy Monday! ; )

xoxo,

Whit

Keeping Our Identity: Part 2

Michelle responded to last week’s post with the following comment:

 “….Whenever we move to a new place I immediately began to find out what it is that I feel that I'm supposed to do while we are stationed there. I believe if I focus on that then I am being who I am and not just a military wife. So what ends up happening is that I become fulfilled and this carries over into my roles as a wife, mother and friend.”

 Thank you for sharing your experience Michelle. It is a relief to know that people will find what they are "supposed to do" eventually. I would be interested in finding out what other readers feel they are meant to do.

I think I have just really begun to understand what doing what you’re “supposed to” means.  Recently, I have taken up photography. At first I felt that it was pretty typical… it seems like everyone these days with a couple hundred bucks and an Apple computer is running around with their DSLR slung over their shoulder, snapping pictures of their friend’s babies and posting them on Facebook.  At first I was really self-conscious about it and I didn't even want to use the label "photographer." By using this label, I felt I had to own this as my profession and I wasn’t prepared for that. Even now, after quite a bit of experience, I prefer to say “I enjoy taking photographs.”

However, I slowly discovered that many people like to have their pictures taken because it makes them feel beautiful, and so many people just want to capture one second where they can look back and say, "I feel pretty."  My “payment” for taking pictures is when I see the joy on an expecting mother's face when she sees her pregnancy photos. And it is priceless to see a spouse smile and blush when I give her back her boudoir photos she intends to send her husband in Afghanistan. I walk away thinking, "I made someone feel pretty today." 

I didn’t have to be a world-renown photographer, I just had to be willing to ask..."would you like to have your picture taken?" When I ask that, I feel I am really asking, "can I make you feel beautiful?"  If they aren’t willing to have their pictures taken, then I don’t feel bad because I think this is what I am supposed to do....at least for now.

I think sometimes it just comes down to finding the courage to pursue something we like and finding a way to use that to give back. We don’t have to be an expert in a specific field, but I think if we discover something we love, go after it with everything we have then it can allow us to keep a sense of self…to keep our identity.

Thank you for your response, Michelle.  I would love to hear more from spouses that can share how they found "what they are supposed to do."

"Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity and fear of others. Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what 'little' acts have done for our world." 

-Steve Maraboli 

xoxo

Whit

Keeping Our Identity

"Hi, I'm Steve's wife, Whitney."

"My husband is in the 315th, what about yours?"
"What shift is he on?"
"Does he like his job?"

Transferring from the civilian world to the military, these comments seemed odd to me the first few times I heard them. I would wonder, "why does this matter? Do you want to get to know me or my husband?" Over time, I stopped asking myself these questions, and the "get to know my husband" icebreakers became commonplace.

Today I stopped, sat down, and asked myself why our (spouses) first conversation needs to be about our husbands and not directed at finding more about each other. Has our identity been pushed so far to the peripheral that we are only worth knowing if our husbands fit a criteria? Are people always going to be interested in what my husband does before they decide if they want to get to know me better? Am I going to be subject to this social vetting process for the next 20 years? I look forward to the days that someone will be my friend just because they like me and not because our husbands are the same rank or in the same unit.

I don't think this is always due to one's intent to push me out of their clique or climb a social ladder - spouses are desperately searching to find common ground with other spouses in order to establish relationships with someone. However, this frequent shift of attention and curiosity to our husbands, robs  us of being recognized as individuals: as a person who has her own personality, feelings and aspirations.

Not only do these questions take the focus away from the military spouse, they also tend to put people in a box and allow us to subconsciously label people by their answers - "enlisted, officer, young, old, pilot, mechanic, day shift, night shift" etc. By doing so, we are limiting our network of friends. We are allowing our husbands' jobs to define who we let in and who we exclude from our lives.

The next time you meet another military spouse, I challenge you to start by getting to know her first. Try starting the conversation with, "where are you from? how long have you been here? what do you do?" By shifting this focus, we can be known as individuals apart from our husbands and we allow ourselves the opportunity to meet some amazingly unique and diverse women.


xoxo,

Whit

A Salute to Military Wives

It is true when they say no one else can quite understand what a military spouse is going through besides another military spouse....

I found this graphic on In Good Measure, and I love it for so many reasons. So here's a salute to all the military spouses, and if you're not one, please remember not to "throw grenades." ; )

xoxo,

Whit

Living a Good Story

It was Easter weekend…my husband and I found ourselves sitting in front of the TV eating See’s Candies straight out of  a USPS shipping box that the in-laws sent us a week ago. For some reason, keeping it in the box made us feel less guilty about eating it…I don’t know why. Nontheless, the supply in the candy box kept dwindling and that one show of “The Office” we were going to watch turned into a full season. 

We decided we needed to expel some of the energy resulting from our chocolate sugar high on a walk around our neighborhood. While walking, the guilt from wasting a perfectly good Saturday in front of the TV set in. We started talking about adjustments we could make that would allow us to lead a more fulfilling and adventurous life.

I brought up a book I was currently reading by Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, that talked about making your life into a good story. According to Donald Miller, to make your life a good story you need to have adventure.

Some people would say being in the military is a great adventure. While I would agree with them, it is easy to get tied up in the frustrations of everyday military life. The adventure of moving to a new place across the country gets bogged down with PCS paperwork, dealing with finance, damaged goods, finding work and a place to live, etc. So rather than adventurous, life can seem mundane and frustrating.

Donald Miller explains in his book that in order to have adventure, the main character must go through challenges. Think about some of the most interesting people you know…I am sure almost all of them have gone through and overcome some sort of significant challenge. The struggle they go through is what makes their story rich.

Donald Miller makes the following points in his book on ways to live a good story:

• The first of many keys to living a great life is to take full responsibility for our lives. You are the storyteller and the principal character all in one. You have the ability and control over your life to determine if your life story is boring or not.

• The character (aka YOU) has to want something. When we find that thing we want, our story not only engages the world, it engages us and we become much more interested in life itself.

• Every character must go through conflict. Far from being a bad thing, conflict in story is a necessity. In America we live in a culture that avoids conflict, but we do so to our own detriment. Conflict fills a story with meaning and beauty. 

• Stories must resolve. In stories there’s a scene called a climax. A climactic scene will resolve all the conflict in the story in a single action. Life doesn’t really work this way, but having a visual scene in your mind that you can head toward is motivating. For instance, if you want to lose 30 pounds, don’t set that as a goal, make the goal finishing a 5k. Finishing a 5k is visual and much more motivating.

(source: Donald Miller's blog, donmilleris.com)

By the end of our discussion, my husband and I had reached a small pier on our walk. Feeling inspired by Donald Miller’s words and the residual effects from our sugar high, we decided to be “adventurous” and jump off the pier fully-clothed. Was this silly, cliché act the embodiment of what it means to live a good story? Definitely not….but it is a small step to making a greater effort to embrace life and adventure.

While our lifestyle has not changed overnight since reading this book, we have started taking steps to ensure our lives are more fulfilling. For example, we’ve decided every couple months we are going to take a road trip to surrounding cities and states to explore other places. We now try to plan our weekends in advance so we can make sure we don’t have another Saturday like the one over Easter weekend. We even recently invested in a surfboard to entertain the locals and give them something to laugh at while they are laying out on the beach ; )

When it’s all said and done, what we are really focusing on is not running away from the challenges and frustrations of life…even boredom. Instead, we are attempting to confront them and find new, creative ways to overcome them.

Your challenge for the week, should you choose to accept it: do ONE thing this week that has been on your mind and you’ve been thinking about for some time. Try a new restaurant, visit another town, go for a hike, complete your scrapbooking project, call a friend to go to lunch, etc. These small acts can help you in your path to living a good story.

Xoxo,

Whit

New Healthcare Plan: Making the "Military Pay"

If you've watched the news at all recently, you've most likely heard some "mumblings" about the plans to increase healthcare costs for the troops. If you're in the military, you've listened especially close to this information and most likely been a little perturbed by what you heard. 


So unfortunately, this is not going to be one of those "feel good" posts, but I think the following points are important and you should be aware of any future changes that may take place. 


Here are some of the proposed changes that, if approved, will be starting next year :


1) The defense budget calls for military families and retirees to pay more for their healthcare, while leaving unionized civilian defense workers' benefits untouched. 
2) The government seeks to save $1.8 billion from the Tricare medical system in the fiscal 2013 budget, and $12.9 billion by 2017.
3) The plan calls for increases between 30 percent to 78 percent in Tricare annual premiums for the first year and then five-year increases ranging from 94 percent to 345 percent—more than 3 times current levels.
4) According to congressional assessments, a retired Army colonel with a family currently paying $460 a year for health care would now pay $2,048.
5) The new plan hits active duty personnel by increasing co-payments for pharmaceuticals and eliminating incentives for using generic drugs.

(source: Fox.com)

This budget has yet to be approved and these items may change in the next few months, but it's always good to be prepared in case things to take a turn for the worst. 

Wishing this post was a happier one,

Whit

Friends - Even Supermoms Need Them

I remember the first time I met Chantelle Girley. We had only been at our first duty station for two weeks and I was already itching to be involved and make some friends. I heard through the grapevine that there was going to be a spouses' club meeting on base one evening, so I jumped at the chance to go. Woo hoo! Friend-making time!  What I didn't realize when I arrived was there wasn't an actual spouses' club at this base yet and that this meeting was intended to CREATE one. 

After going over some legal information for the first part of the meeting, we arrived at the time where board members needed to be selected. Slowly and hesitantly, people started volunteering for various positions. Then came the time for the president role........silence. Eyes nervously darted around the room...whose going to do it? Whose going to step up and take the challenge? After what seemed like an eternity of silence, a small hand went up and then soon after a soft voice saying, "I'll do it." I looked over at this courageous woman who had a big smile on her face and a little 6-month-old baby at her side. "Wow," I thought to myself, "she is one brave woman." 

The fact that Chantelle was willing to take on the daunting, unfamiliar role as the spouses' club president AND she had a 6-month-old child was truly inspiring to me....I came to find out after the meeting that she has three more children at home (umm supermom??) Her courage motivated me to get involved with the club as well and I aided in their publicity/marketing efforts for the rest of the time we were there. I can tell you that I'm beyond happy I did - it allowed me to be involved, give back and meet other amazingly strong women. 

I wanted to share an article with you that Chantelle wrote recently for SpouseBuzz.com on her struggle to find friends and I hope that you find comfort in knowing that this is something we all go through (even the supermoms). I found this article to be a real and genuine portrayal of how powerful friendship can be....and how sometimes a little risk and boldness can make all the difference:  

I suspected there was a problem when every morning on the way to preschool my four-year old son kept asking, “Mummy, where are all your friends?”

“I don’t have any yet,” I would reply.  “But I will soon.”  I had been married ten years, but this was my first time living in the United States. I carried on with my daily routine of taking the kids to school, grocery shopping etc. and I became progressively lonelier. It was almost as though I expected friends to come and find me, but how would they? I rarely even went on base. I wasn’t a member of any groups.  I didn’t work here and I hadn’t met any wives of my husband’s co-workers.

My son decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.  He stopped a complete stranger in the street outside his preschool one morning and said, “Excuse me. Will you have coffee with my Mum? She doesn’t have any friends.”

Ashley was also a military spouse, her baby was due within days of mine, and our preschoolers were in the same class.  Ashley assures me now that it wasn’t out of pity that she agreed to have coffee with me; she was just as lonely as I was.

“Do you ever wonder where all the other spouses are?” Ashley asked me one day.  “How are we supposed to meet people?”  The strange thing was, until that point I had never really thought this through. I mean I had wanted to meet other military wives, but in reality, where would I find them? 
We met three other military spouses who shared the same thoughts.  Together we set up a spouses’ club on Goodfellow AFB in Texas.

When I say this changed my life, I truly am not overdramatizing. We all started the spouses’ club because we wanted to find others to socialize and have fun with. Somewhere along the line–amid the brainstorming and the meetings over coffee and the official paperwork–there was a transformation in all of us. Gradually we would meet women (and sometimes men) who were vulnerable, needed advice, needed support, were lonely and we all related to them because we had all been there.

Meeting those spouses always made me think of when we were based in Italy and I was pregnant and sick with severe hyperemesis and was placed on bed rest.  My husband was about to deploy so we moved house and I prayed. Within days women I had never met before offered to take me to doctor appointments, helped me take care of my one-year old and seven-year old, and figured out how I would get to the hospital when the time came to have a baby. 
In the forming of the spouses’ club I wondered, what if those women had not decided to take care of me? Would I have asked them for help? Would I have known where to go? And the answer was a resounding no.

When my son forced Ashley to become my friend, something in me changed forever, because I once again was shown how the kindness and support a military spouse can show to another.  The friendship this lady offered me gave me the strength and the confidence to reach out to others and to offer friendship and support.

Now if you ask me what does success mean to me? It means knowing that those around me feel able to ask me for help.  It means knowing that I do not turn my back on people who are vulnerable.  And, yes, it means having friends to socialize and have fun with! 
So don’t wait for friends to come and find you.  Don’t wait for your four year old to step in with a save. Take a deep breath and take a chance, because it might just be well worth it.

XOXO,

Whit