Introduction

I find it very interesting that my adventures start with the movie, "I Don't Know How She Does It" as the in-flight movie.  That seems to be the phrase I have heard the most while at home.  Working as an intern or a resident in the psychology department for 45+ hours a week and going home to make dinner, clean the house, bake cookies, make the boys pjs and play in the praise team at church.  I am a Mom.  That part of me has been known by everyone around me.  When others are teased about their adventures outside or within work, my punch line always has something to do with my kids.  It is only fitting that my newest adventure of deployment would start with a movie to show me just how much others are feeling that as well in the civilian sector.  It's nice also to see things end well despite the rough patches.

Is it really that different for a man to be deployed as it is for a woman?  I can never be both.  Well... maybe with a little reconstructive surgery it is possible, but not desired that is.  I tried to look for information on other military moms making this work.  I found that the shelves are pretty empty.  Here I am trying to prepare my family and myself and the only reference I found was about a psychologist who had young twins at home when she deployed (Kraft, 2007).  Her method of handling the separation from her kids was to turn that part of her off.  She couldn't allow herself to be Mom while in a deployed environment.  That just didn't seem like a viable answer to me.  There are moments, especially when standing outside security at the airport trying to say goodbye or getting things ready for the boys before I left where I wished I could wall off that pain and not feel it.  That pain is there because I am Mom, it's a part of me and has to be felt in order to not regret any part of this trip.  Tears and all outside of TSA security check points.  It shows my boys that Mommy can be sad about this, too.  I am not super human and I can feel pain just like they do.  I don't need to be Super Mom, but just who I am...where ever I am.

This is the story of my adventures; however corny this may be to some.  This is a mother's journey through deployment as a method to make sense of the hard times and possibly give a sense of hope (or just reality) to some other military moms out there as well.