Writer's Choice: My Community

          I have always loved blogging.  I follow several people’s blogs and always become inspired to write in my own family blog.  For me, blogging is a way I can share my life and my stories with other people, with very few restrictions and guidelines.  It only seemed fitting that for my writer’s choice piece I would pick my favorite piece that I wrote all quarter.   For this portion I picked my blog on Communities. After moving here from Alaska, it has been a little lonely of a start to find some people that not only understand what I go through but also can relate in a very personal way.  In this piece, I wanted to show how the fact that we are military wives and share the loneliness and separation from our families brings our community together.  Our community has lots of challenges and I spoke about a few of those challenges I personally have faced.  On the same hand, I also talked about the positives I have learned, like when I said, “Being a part of this group has taught me about friendship and comradeship and how to be supportive when the rest of the world is against you." 

Military Wives are a Community

          Some military wives have their husband gone for more than half of their married life.  We move all over the world, making roots down wherever we go to only be uprooted again a short time later.  We make friends as we go and cling to those relationships when it feels like we can’t even get out of bed.  Those relationships are sometimes of other military wives.  Military wives are a community, one of like-minded women who have been in your same shoes many times before.  These women have many jobs: mother, father, home-maker, bill payer, coach, teacher, boo boo fixer, punisher, and fix it lady.  All these things bind us together and help define our group.  We are a unique community, which endures matchless obstacles and trials being a part of the military life.  It is not for the faint of heart or the weak of spirit, but for the strong and independent souls that have no problem taking on the world on their own.  I became a part of this group 5 years ago when I married my husband and have learned so much in that time.  I have learned that I am stronger than I ever thought I could be, pushing myself to handle things that most people would give up on.   

           I remember a specific lesson about handling things I wouldn’t normally thought to handle on my own.   I was babysitting a friend’s cat and lost him in the house somewhere.  After endless hours of searching all over and fearing he got outside into the blizzard we were having, I decided to do a load of laundry to get my brain thinking about something else for a bit.  When I went to turn the dryer on, I heard a loud hiss and a horrible sound of scratching, clawing, and metal scraping coming from behind the dryer. Just as I turned off the dryer, a large orange fluff of fur leaped from behind the dryer, and racing out of the laundry room.  The cat was behind the dryer and was startled to death when I turned the dryer on.  He effectively sliced through my dryer lint tube, with a huge load damp and needing to be dried.  While I am no handy woman in the home improvement department, I managed to go to the hardware store alone with my son, ask the man behind the counter how to fix the tube, gather the parts, and went home and powered through the 3 hour long process of replacing the sliced dryer tub.  I did this all without my husband, a.k.a handyman’s help.   

          Other than changing a dryer tube I also learned lessons about shoveling 5 feet of snow to get out of driveway in the middle of a blizzard, and being a single mom who never gets a break.  Being a part of this group has taught me about friendship and comradeship and how to be supportive when the rest of the world is against you.  It is a wonderful community that I have the privilege of belonging too.