Making the Most of Deployment: My Honest Approach


Hey friend! 🩷

Here's a secret nobody tells you before your first deployment: it's okay for this season to be good. You're not betraying anyone by building a life while he's gone. You're showing him, and yourself, that you can thrive. Here's how I actually do that.

Get through the goodbye first

The lead-up to drop-off is almost always the hardest part, harder than the deployment itself. I give myself full permission to feel that build-up without trying to fix it. Once he's gone and I'm through that first rough week, something always shifts. I find my footing. It gets steadier from there, every single time.

Set attainable goals

This is the biggest shift I've made over the years. I stopped thinking of deployment as something to just get through, and started treating it as time I could actually use.

This deployment, I gave myself three goals:

  • Home: I'm updating and painting our bathrooms

  • Fitness: I'm 60 pounds down, and I'm working toward my first unassisted pull-up

  • Career: I'm building my content creation into something full-time

I write them down and put them somewhere I'll actually see them. There's something about having a finished goal waiting for me at homecoming that keeps me going on the harder days.

Plan things to look forward to

I don't wait for homecoming to be the only thing on the calendar. I book a few things now, while I still have the energy of a fresh start: a weekend away with friends, a trip back to Michigan, a visit from family. Having something coming up every month or so breaks the deployment into pieces instead of one long, heavy stretch.

Rediscover you

Deployment is a strange kind of opportunity. The extra time and quiet can be used to reconnect with the version of you that existed before the schedule got full. Pick the hobby back up. Say yes to the girls' night. This isn't selfish. It's part of staying whole, for you and for your kids.

Rebuild communication, don't just maintain it

Distance has a funny way of making couples better communicators, if you build a routine for it. My husband and I have one that's just ours: I send him a goodnight video every night. Sometimes it's a recap of my day, sometimes I'm being silly, sometimes I'm just showing him something new happening at the house. Every morning, he sends me a song.

It's small, and it's a little goofy, and it's become something I genuinely look forward to. Distance forces you to be intentional, and honestly, some of that intentionality has been good for us.

You're allowed to actually live

If you take one thing from this post, let it be this: you are allowed to have a good season, even during deployment. Set the goals. Take the trip. Send the silly video. You don't have to crumble to prove you love him, and you don't have to just survive this to be doing it right.

Tell me in the comments: what's one goal you're working on right now, deployment or not?

XO,
 Steph

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