SITS Girls Back2Blogging Day 2
Tuesday, September 14: Re-upload a post you wish more people had read and explain why it was important to you. Thank you to the SITS sponsors who are are making this Back2Blogging Challenge go…It has been thought provoking: Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances.
I wrote this a while back after there was a dust up on another blog about what exactly constituted Operational Security (basically what you should and should not put on the internet/publicly announce regarding military matters). It is so very, very sad that there is so much truth to the stereotypes about groups of women being catty and petty with each other. Both the stereotype and the reality keep us from tapping into the power of a group of strong, confident, supportive women.
Multiple blog posts in the milspouse corner of the blogosphere have recently brought up an interesting point.
As a community of military spouses, why aren’t we more kind to each other?
The blog posts I read approached it from several different perspectives.
As members of the military community (and spouses are members of the larger community), we experience all the challenges of adulthood with the added layer of military life.
Chatting with a new military wife not long ago, I told her that my number one advice to any new wife (or any wife who happened to ask my opinion), was to make full use of the resources available: FRGs, FRCs, ArmyOneSource, Army Community Services, and the various other agencies that exist in order to help. The other major benefit with many of those services is that you meet other military spouses.
Another military spouse understands that it is not just another business trip. They understand how important it is to have an hour to yourself, even if you just sit quietly at Starbucks. They laugh at jokes about TA-50, tuff boxes, and how the military gear seems to mysteriously multiply once it’s on the living room floor. They understand that a formal dress can never really match blues (only a man would put that color combo together!) but some dresses clash. The military spouse understands the stab of fear when a plain colored sedan pulls up to the curb.
There is solidarity in having made the choice to love someone who has offered to sacrifice their own life.
All of us occasionally have a bad day. The hope is that on those days, our fellow military spouses will be understanding and supportive. Now, I’m not saying we should be doormats for each other or let idiocy continue without saying something. I’m talking about a spouse making a mistake, or not knowing a rule, or making an uncharacteristically critical comment. It happens to the best of us (of which I am certainly not one).
Unfortunately, we are often not gentle with each other. People can be critical, judgmental, impatient, and unforgiving. When you consider the stresses we live with, it’s amazing that we have the capacity for kindness that we do.
But if we are not kind and gentle and understanding with those who make a mistake, how do they learn? How do we learn to trust the support of the military spouse community if it’s not on our hard days- which are so rarely the good ones?
I’m not going to ask you to think of this the next time you start to snark at someone. I just hope it makes you think for a moment about those who have been kind and gentle with you in those bad moments and how much that helped you.
How wonderful to give that to someone else.
