A good Article to read

This morning was NOT my finest moment to put it mildly.I felt exhausted even after I got six hours of uninterrupted sleep.I think my body is so use to living off of four or five it felt sluggish from the extra sleep. I smashed my finger in the sliding door about 5:45AM which made me almost throw up. I burnt my palm on bacon grease around 7:00AM, I should have just called it a day at that point. But nope I got all the kids but Jeremy out the door & settled in with one more glass of coffee when the phone rang. It was my mom so I thought we could chat about the summer plans we needed to get firmed up for the kid's visit to TN as well as mine.
Somewhere along the way we got sidetracked into talking about the boys & how they are affected by my husbands deployments. I should have just changed the subject & moved on, but I didn't.Instead my well intentioned mother started in on me about how she felt the boys needed to see my husband everyday on SYKPE so their behavior/attitudes would be better while he is deployed. At first I was calm & tried to explain that for my youngest seeing his dad everyday isn't the best thing. He sometimes goes off to school & has a really bad day. Instead of listening to my words & saying something like " I can see where that might be hard, you know your child best. So I am sure you can help him through another year w/out his dad.". I heard " Amanda you know that can't be true!! He needs to hear from his dad & what his dad expects from him while he is away, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH". I immediately went into defense mode, my voice became rather squeaky, & tears started. I told her she had NO IDEA what my kids & I are going through with all these deployments . How dare she try to tell me what my children need when she isn't here living in this house.I told her I was going to hang up before I said anything else that might hurt her feelings, but I was pretty sure I already had.I love my parents they are my biggest supporters during all these deployments, but today was apparently not the day to tell me how to raise my boys no matter how well intentioned .
 Now not only am I still crying at a drop of the hat , I feel like I should call and apologize but I can't bring myself to pick up the phone.I am going to chalk it up to a sort of icky day gone really bad & possibly PMS-LOL. 
Anyway this link is to an article a friend posted on Facebook I found rather helpful & oh so TRUE!! If you have been through a deployment, are going through a deployment or just know of someone who is in the military it is a good read. It might help your feelings get validated that your not a crazy insane military spouse- there are others out there feeling the same as you. It may also help you civilians understand what we can be feeling at any given moment. Her Voice, Her War  the jest of her article is : What I knew about Deployments and Military Life . Go give it a read & hopefully it helps you out in some way, it sure helped me out today.

 

After multiple deployments, even the strongest wives -- the ones most likely to volunteer -- are at the end of their ropes.