Late last year I took part in a Canadian Forces Women’s Influencer Event and it gave me an amazing insight into the opportunities in the Canadian Forces and some of the amazing ladies who are taking advantage of them. At the final dinner, one of the presenters, BGen. Cadieu, took advantage of the setting and presented me with his Commanders Coin. I had no idea he was going to do that, and it was incredibly kind of him to recognize me at the event, even if entirely undeserved. When he gave it to me, he spoke about the importance of the family unit when it comes to the military, and he took the time to emphasize how vital he felt it was for the military to recognize and support military spouses and families. Trevor is a friend and someone I’ve known a very long time. I have so much respect for his opinion so to have him take time to do something like that meant a lot to me. It was a really key moment, to have what we do commended, not just for me but in general for families, because we know I’m just there as one of many. While it feels nice of course to be recognized for something I spend a lot of time on, the real truth is I’m not some special unicorn. All the military families in the country are doing the same things as I am. I write shit down. Only difference. Weeks later the base paper wrote about this Women’s Influencer event. And a photo was in the paper of BGen. Cadieu presenting me with the coin. I’m referred to as “one of the women.” At a Women’…
Let me start by sharing this. Never, not one time, have I ever considered enlisting in the CAF. It’s not a career for everyone and it’s not for me. The women who make up the CAF amaze me every time I meet them, they’re phenomenal in their strength and perseverance. That being said, I see the CAF from my own perspective as a spouse of a member and also one that spends a great deal of time working around and interacting with other military families. I went at this conference from an odd direction: knowing a great deal about the Forces but only from one side. Definitely the outside. I’m nowhere near an actual member. So when I was invited to the Woman’s Influencer event by the Canadian Forces Recruiting Center Prairies and North, I was not totally sure how I ended up there. But there I was, living at the base hotel and starting bright and early after breakfast with a FORCES 101 class. I was laughing, because I’ve taught Canadian Forces 101 classes before at the MFRC, but this was different since it was geared to recruitment. What made it particularly interesting, however, was that our presenter was one of our recruiting center hosts, Sgt. Jamie Brown. Sgt. Brown is an Infantry soldier with a number of overseas deployments, one who is clearly passionate about her job and the opportunities she feels it has given her. The sense of pride that she showed during the presentation gave more insight than any of the actual slides. It was obvious that the CAF had made a profound and positive impact in her life. In fact, all of our hosts for the event were the same…
Tonight I watch him shine boots. We traveled 4 hours for a Remembrance Day service because this year we will spend the time at the home town of one of his fallen brothers. We have to wait until midnight tonight before we head to bed, one of his squadron brothers and his family are staying where we are so we will wait for them to arrive with beer and quiet thoughts. Early tomorrow we will all get up and Dh and his mate will dress and prepare and we will stand with them while they remember. Very little is ever as heartbreaking. So tonight I watch him shine his boots. I know tomorrow some of you will sleep in. Or get groceries. Or watch Netflix. And I’m not even mad, because freedom is freedom and no one can make you Remember. I know some of you will go to a service but just wait impatiently for it to end and then get about your day. I was you once. Some might even object to the entire idea. As is your fought for right. Tonight, however, I’ll watch him shine boots. And tomorrow, some of you might thank him for his service. Or buy someone like him a drink, or a coffee, or dinner, though that’s not what it’s about I know that feeling of just wanting to do *something.* Or even more importantly, maybe you’ll just try your best to remember and honour. That’s the best I can do, too. Honestly, your presence and your compassion and the way you teach your kids what freedom costs? That’s beautiful. So tonight, I’ll watch him shine boots that are already shiny. Thinking of those phone calls…
There’s a saying, it can come from the mouths of anyone towards military families. It’s not new, no matter who says it. “You knew what you were getting into.” When I look at this photo I’m reminded of what I *knew* I was getting into. I knew I was marrying the love of my life. I knew he wore a uniform. Every day. Which I appreciated, because he looked good in it. I knew there would be moves. And absences. Peacekeeping. Exercises. Courses. I knew I’d agreed to for better or for worse, and figured that meant every day wouldn’t be rainbows. I knew those soldiers with those swords had traveled to our wedding, booked hotels and put on those uniforms all for a teenage kid that was new to their unit but was now one of them. And 0.5 seconds after this photo was taken when the sword smacked my butt and they all said ‘welcome to the Corps’ I knew I felt pretty special. I’ll tell you what I didn’t know. I didn’t know our country and my husband would go to war before our first anniversary, to a country I’d barely heard of. But even if I had, there’s no way I knew how to really understand that cost. I didn’t know what reintegration would look like the 1st or 4th time. I didn’t know that way your heart fills your throat when a phone call ends in a rocket siren. Or the pride that would grow in me for the National Anthem. All the research and marriage preparation courses in the world couldn’t have taught…
Apparently today is National Dog Day. Well we have dog. His name is Trooper (because of course it is.) When we went to the shelter, we told the kids “we will take a long time to find the right dog for us so don’t get your hopes up.” But Trooper, he had just come up for adoption that day, after being found months before rooting through dumpsters downtown. And he just sat there, while the rest barked around him, and watched us. He looks like a Border Collie. Maybe a bit like a Burmese…. Eh, he’s a dog. I only hoped Dh would be kind. He’s not a pet person, and neither am I, really. I worried how it would go over. About 6 months in, he said “you know how some veterans get dogs to help them reintegrate from war?’ And I said “yes…” Not wanting to go all social work-y and ruin the uncharacteristic moment of sharing. He said “I can see that.” And then we said nothing else, and he took Trooper to the park to throw the ball until he was too tired to make it home. And 5 years later, they’re still a team. Trooper herds my kids. He follows Freckles, and sleeps in his bed. And he loves Dh. He has gotten under his skin, and he is sometimes exactly what is needed when I even I didn’t know what to do. We rescued a dog. Sometimes, though, dogs save us…
Since I spend a huge amount of my time speaking, listening and interacting with the Canadian military family community (more than any sane person not employed to do so really should), I hear their voices. I hear anger and complaints, hurts and frustrations. Sometimes they’re worded well. Sometimes they come out like a snarl. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to see what’s really wrong. There are so many great ideas. So many smart people with amazing stories and struggles and insight into improvement. Sadly, most of them won’t be heard. Friends in the military community…. we need to use our voice. And not just in the “bitching about everything” way because, while that’s cathartic and every likes to scream at a brick wall now and again, it’s not really getting us anywhere. We need to use our voice to make for change. We often seem to underestimate the power of our words. I mean, She Is Fierce was just me, writing crap on the internet. Suddenly, it was noticed and I’m all of a sudden painting my nails in the uber to speak in front of the Governor General…. We all have unique stories that everyone can learn from. That’s the beauty of storytelling. But our voices get hidden a lot, and sometimes it’s because of how we use them (myself included). 1. Sometimes we let our anger overpower our reason. We all know that when we are approached with a douchy tone, even if they have a point we tune the person out, or get angry back. This happens when we do the same. Sometimes we have legitimate complaints, but we are too busy yelling curse…
So I have this 9 year old. He is the surprise youngest of his 2 siblings and has all these fancy letters, ASD, ADHD, SPD, SED…. it’s like soup, really, and sometimes it seems like it overshadows him. But thankfully he has a BIG personality. He loves music and police officers. They are his jam and part of being autistic means he has a lot of time.to dedicate to focusing on those things. Most of all, he loves classic rock. Jethro Tull. Bon Jovi. The Beatles. Def Leopard. Santana. Rolling Stones. But his absolute favourite? Queen. He loves Queen. He knows all their names and where they are from. He knows every word of their songs. Which album they’re on. When they were recorded. And he adores Freddy Mercury. So much that he dressed as him for Halloween last year. Last night at ROGERS PLACE I took him to see Queen with Adam Lambert. He was so excited, he was talking about it for months enough his siblings were going crazy. And he decided to wear his Halloween costume, too. I took little Freddy for dinner and Starbucks and out to a concert. I don’t get one on one time like that much. And I loved every minute, because my kid is f@#$’n cool. Little Freddy was stopped every few minutes by someone wanting a photo. He was in heaven striking poses. He may be Instagram famous soon, he must have taken a few dozen. (Bonus police officer autographs for his book didn’t hurt, either!) Then a concert employee came up to us out of the blue with a handful of unsold floor tickets and asked if we wanted two. We went from section 205 to only 15…
Today, we’ve been married 16 years. And I love to take photos of us as the teenagers we were compared to the adults we’ve become. Photos of the wedding next to photos of the last mess dinner. Photos of us happy together then, and now. Good times then compared to good times now. But those photos tell such a small part of our story. I think it might be because, for maybe the 4th or 5th time in our marriage, you are home this year, but I find myself looking back this time without the rose-coloured glasses I like to put on when I reminisce. There are so many moments that the pictures don’t show. And I find myself a little nostalgic for the moments we didn’t photograph. Not because I would ever want to repeat them, but because they have made us who we are. Love is sometimes reunion photos and pictures of us laughing on the beach. But love was also 3 months after our marriage, when I was mad because I had given up and gotten a job at a bookstore instead of using my brand new college diploma, and you got on my case for not cleaning up something and I screamed so loud at you I lost my voice and couldn’t greet customers at work. Love was when you came home from your first combat deployment at 20 years old and within weeks we had a baby and moved homes and when your nightmares woke me up for the thousandth time I immaturely and out of pure exhaustion threatened to take the baby and go “home.” Marriage was also that time at 4am when the baby who had fallen asleep to the…
Let’s say you’re at the end of your rope. The dryer died and you have no clean clothes and the baby just threw up all over what you have on, your daughter came home from school with lice and the dog has some kind of gastric distress. You write a quick email to your spouse, who is currently across the world somewhere, casually mentioning that you are hiring someone to fix the dryer and possibly going to also move to Tahiti. Alone. You delete that part and send it off. Later, in the ill-fitting clothes from the late 90s that you found buried at the bottom of a drawer, you are sitting at a mom’s group and you unload on the women sitting around you. The response? “You should feel lucky, when my husband was deployed we didn’t have email.” “Email? We only had SAT phones and my entire family ended up with the bubonic plague and I sanitized the entire place myself while deathly ill.” “I had 5 kids on my husband’s first deployment and we didn’t even own a washer and dryer, I cleaned all our clothes by hand in the tub while nursing our 16 foster puppies and we only communicated via carrier pigeon.” ….sigh. When did we turn life into a competition over who has it worse? I mean, this problem is not unique to the military community. Just ask a table of moms about childbirth. Eventually the stories will one-up each other until there’s at least one mom who gave birth on the side of the road to a 13lb baby while at the same time knitting their onesie and breastfeeding their…
We’ve all received unsolicited advice at one time or another. Sometimes, it’s helpful. Like if you’re headed into a bathroom stall and another lady grabs your arm and says “I wouldn’t go in that one.” Sometimes, it’s like when older female family members tried to convince me on when I needed to resume my marital relations after the baby was born. Just…. just no. Within the military community, we have so many amazing families who have an incredible amount of wisdom and experience, highlighted with their own victories and challenges and the times they screwed up so badly it’s listed in the ‘what not to do’ in the family briefing. And with all that experience comes some pretty stellar advice that you know is worth the time because it comes from years of hard work. This week, some of the military spouses in our community shared their advice when it came to deployments. The experiences of the spouses included is as varied as their suggestions. They come from Air Force, Army, Navy and Special Forces families, from Canada, the USA and Australia. Some have just completed their first deployment, some their 7th. The best part is, none of them are ME! What they have in common is that they wish someone would have told them what they know now when they were first starting out. And so they chose to share here their best advice to families facing their first deployment. It starts earlier than you think: Anonymous: “It’s okay you’re fighting. His brain deploys weeks before his body.” Kim: “It’s totally normal that he’s being a huge jerk…
