Positive Change - Are you Resistant to It?

Military Spouse Appreciation DayMilitary Spouse Appreciation Day is a day set aside to honor the spouses who support our troops. The military spouse is a part of the US armed forces just as much as the service member and has a tough time also. The spouse faces pressures which are just as intense as the pressures that the service member  specific day which has been set aside is the Friday each year before Mother's Day.

The day is the result of President Ronald Regan's first speech and proclamation on May 23rd 1984, which recognized military spouses as a part of the armed services and their service as a valuable part of the readiness of our armed  military could not function without the commitment of the spouses.

The military places so much demand on the service member that the spouse has to work as the other half of a team. The spouse usually has to put their own career on hold because the military causes the family to have to move around so frequently. Many spouses wind up having to be homemakers so there usually isn't a second income for the family.

Combine this with the fact that service members usually don't make a lot of money anyway and you can see how many military families live in a constant financial  custom for this day is that whoever is president will usually commemorate the day with a speech and a proclamation. As far as I am concerned this should be done even though it doesn't adequately recognize the spouses for their service and  military community is a close knit group out of necessity. Spouses generally rely on each other during and between deployments. The fact that the military family has to move around so often forces the spouse and the family to learn to depend on others within the military community.

Deployments are the biggest enemy of marriages in the armed forces. Long deployments exacerbate any small problems or miscommunications that the family may have been having all along. The remaining spouse has to be both a mother and father to the children and may have to fend for the family alone for long periods of time.

The primary breadwinner may not be able to contribute to the things which have to be done because they may not even be able to communicate with their families for very long periods of time. I have seen cases where the children didn't even know their parent because the parent had been away for such a long period of time. The military is a self contained community and does its level best to provide everything that the family needs for day to day survival but there simply is no substitute for a two parent home.

I have also witnessed situations where a troop arrested a foreigner who couldn't speak much English at all only to be deployed overseas and have to leave the spouse to fiend for herself. Many times the proper paperwork needed to give the spouse power of attorney had not been filed or was lost. In the case of the families of lower ranking enlisted troops many times the family is just barely surviving. Sometimes the free housing that the military does offer is the only difference between life and death for the military family. Riceland Enterprises