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Confessions of a Military Mom

Facing the joys and challenges of mothering a soldier

By Claire Shackelford

I may not wear combat boots, but I am a combat-boot loving woman. My husband and son wear them, and so you can keep the designer boots and the cowboy boots … I’ll take the combat boots. I think the happiest moment this year, for me, is yet to come. That is when I will see all four of those combat boots on the floor in my home.

I can just see the boots empty and waiting for tired soldiers’ feet to fill them again. One set of boots will have been through the challenges of training, while the other pair may still have sand in them from a very dangerous, distant and ancient place.

When the boots are off, the feet get to tend to the family. In the meantime, I am slowly, but surely, understanding the permanent structure changes that are happening to our family. I am finding the wife role to be overwhelming at times due to the massive amount of new information I am learning. I know it will all sink in eventually, and we will settle into our new structure and expectations as a military family.

But I am still trying to figure out my role as a military mother. This role is much harder to grapple with and, as I talk with other mothers of deployed soldiers, I am hearing the same thing from them. How do moms deal with the fear, anxiety and stress of a deployed son or daughter? We are normally not nested within the supportive environment of a military base where we are met with empathetic glances while we wait to send those care packages over to the one destination where no mother wants her loved one to be. Instead we are often left to come to terms with a grief that is like no other grief we have ever encountered, and we carry this grief in a civilian world that often (although not always) does not understand it.

Grief is a very primitive, but complex, reaction to change—and the more difficult or tragic that change is, the more intense and complicated the grief becomes. Most mothers of grown children can relate to the difficulty of having an “empty nest.” Even if our children are healthy, well adjusted and successful adults we still grieve when the change in our family occurs. Our roles change, our identity becomes cloudy and suddenly women who were once confident in their abilities are doubting everything they do and say. When your child is deployed to a combat zone like Baghdad for the first time, you are dealt a grief like you have never known before.

I have always tried to not take my family for granted, and I know that none of us have any guarantees. But it is different when you know the child you carried, birthed, nurtured and raised could be just an inch away from a bomb. On one hand I am dealing with a fear unlike any other, and on the other hand I am more proud of my son now than I have ever been. Fear and pride combined like that add a strange twist to the mix of emotions that I have gone through over the past year.

Mothers are important to deployed soldiers. If the soldier is unmarried, often his or her mother becomes the primary source for morale and support. I know if my son were engaged or married, I would see my role in his morale differently. I would focus on keeping the morale of his fiancée or wife high so that she could in turn give him the support he needs. As it stands now, for us at least, I am the one who takes the calls, writes the letters, sends the care packages and communicates with family and friends. I would never complain about holding such a privileged position, but I don’t know if people realize how much soldiers’ moms do to support their solider, the troops and the mission.

A mother will happily send a care package, attend to business, and support her soldier as much as she possibly can. It is a joy and an honor to serve my son this way while he is away serving our country. That part is not a burden. The burden lies in the bond between mother and son. The pain comes from the deeply ingrained images of that soldier when he was a child. When he was sick and helpless and you were the one to carry him, hold him and tend to him. The pain and fear comes from the deep and intense love that you have for him—the love that only grows with time.

So, what’s a mother to do? Here are a few things that I have discovered along the way:

• Brace yourself for pre-deployment stress. You will start grieving before your soldier leaves.
• Stay away from the news when you are in a heightened emotional state.
• Keep yourself busy, but plan ahead so that you make yourself busy with healthy things instead of succumbing to impulsiveness when you need to distract yourself.
• Before deployment, you need to work up the courage to talk to your soldier about anything that is troubling you in your relationship with him. You need to have a clear conscience. Do this in a way that is not burdensome to your soldier. He needs to stay focused on the challenge ahead of him.
• Seek out and find people who can support you. Be sure you tell them you are not looking for a good debate on the war.
• Acknowledge that you are only human and you have limitations.
• If you feel that your health is being affected by the stress (high blood pressure, insomnia, etc.), you need to see a doctor. Do not allow your health to suffer. Your family needs you and your soldier will need you to be healthy and ready for him when he comes home. Knowing you are taking care of yourself is very important to his morale.
• You are a mother and guilt comes with that job. Stop it. Stop it now! It is time to sort out the real responsibilities from the imaginary guilt we often carry around. You don’t need burdens that serve no purpose. So you didn’t tuck him in one night when he was 5 … let it go!
• Do not allow your imagination to take over when you haven’t heard from your soldier in a while. When I don’t hear from Mike for a period of time I always remind myself that no news truly is good news. He will contact me as soon as he can. Many things may be keeping him from calling.
• Journal or blog if you like to write. If you are not a writer, then find another way to keep notes about what you are going through during tough times. Also, make a note of what you found to be the most or the least helpful.
• When you hug your soldier good-bye, be sure you hold him tight. Then whisper in his ear, “I will pray for you with every breath. I will think of you with every thought. When you come home safe to me, we will celebrate like there is no tomorrow!”

CLAIRE SHACKELFORD is knee deep in the Army! Her oldest son is an infantry soldier and is deployed to Iraq. Her husband joined at an older age and was injured during the last half of Officer Candidate School. He has chaptered out to rehab the leg he broke during training. She has four children and holds a master’s degree in social work, but she is currently a stay-at-home mom.