The First Time vs. Now: How 11 Years Changed the Way I Handle Deployment News


Hey friend! 🩷

There's a moment every military significant other knows. The one where he sits you down, or calls, or just says it plainly, and your whole world tilts a little. Deployment is coming.

Sometimes you get months to watch it loom over you. Sometimes you get days. Either way, that first wave of news hits heavy, and I want to talk about what that's really like, because I don't think we talk about it enough.

The first time

I wasn't even a wife yet. We'd only been dating about six months, and I had just moved in with him. A week later, I found out he was deploying.

I did not handle it well.

I cried. I felt heartbroken. I genuinely felt like my world was over. I was so new to this life that I had no idea deployment news could feel like that, like the floor dropping out from under you. Looking back, I was grieving something I didn't even have language for yet: the version of our relationship I thought I was starting, suddenly on pause before it even began.

Eleven years later

Fast forward to now. I've been through this enough times that I'm what you'd call seasoned. When he told me about this deployment, it still wasn't good news. It's never good news. But I didn't crumble.

It's strange, how used to something you can become, even something that was never supposed to feel normal. Our whole relationship has required us to be apart more than most couples ever have to be. This time, my worry wasn't really about me. I knew I'd be okay. My worry was for my girls, ages 5 and 2. My oldest is at that age where she understands more, where she has a sense of time now, and that made this deployment feel different in a whole new way.

What actually changed

Here's the part I really want you to hear: it's not that deployment news stopped hurting. It's that I learned how to hold it differently.

The first time, I leaned on my people. I had a group of Army wives, and we did everything together: concerts, hangouts, movie nights. I also started working with a personal trainer, and honestly, I got the most fit I'd ever been. I was on fire, lol.

This time, my life looks different. I have two little humans depending on me, so I can't disappear into a friend group the way I used to. Instead, I've learned to build my own structure. I set myself real, attainable 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 use deployment as a time to focus on myself, not because I don't miss him, but because it gives me something steady to hold onto while so much else feels uncertain.

If you just got the news

If you're reading this because you just found out, I want you to know both reactions are okay. The falling-apart reaction and the seasoned, steady reaction, and every single thing in between. You are allowed to grieve it, and you are allowed to already be planning how you'll grow through it. Both were true for me, just at different points in this journey.

You don't have to have it figured out today. You just have to take the next step. That's actually why I built my Deployment Prep Kit. I wanted to give families a checklist and a guide that could have made it easier on me back then, the documents you need, the conversations to have, all of it in one place so you're not figuring it out alone at 2 a.m. like I was. More on that soon.

Tell me in the comments: was your first time hearing the news different from how you handle it now?

XO,
 Steph

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