Time Away

What is the most challenging aspect of military life for your family? Sure there are lots of really great things and some more difficult aspects but is there something that stands out as especially challenging?

For our family, it is the amount of time that Daddy has to be away from home. He deployed for 14 months the day I turned one month old. Add R&R to the mix and that means in the first 14 months of my life, I saw my Daddy for 46 days. Although it wasn't easy, it also wasn't that difficult. When you're a baby, your mommy provides most of what you need. Sure, Daddy missed me but to be honest, in the first month of my life, he was so busy getting ready to deploy that we didn't get to spend a whole lot of time together anyway. In 28 short days, we didn't have the opportunity to form a close bond.

Fast forward to now. I am almost 3 and Daddy and I have had time to form a very close bond. We love to be together, play together and spend time with each other. It makes time away from each other very difficult on both of us. Since arriving at Fort Carson, Daddy has spent part of each month in the field, sometimes being gone for entire months at a time. This "high-op tempo" looks like it will continue for another year or so and when extensive amounts of training lead right into a deployment, it changes a 12 month deployment into 24 months of separation from your family. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand that field time is drastically different than being deployed but they do have one thing in common: time away from family.

Has your family figured out how to manage time away from each other? Does the in and out of the field add extra pressure to your family? What are some of the things your family does to make time away from your Soldier a little easier?