I would like to say THANK YOU to a wonderful friend, Maria Elena! Maria is a dear blogging friend, a fellow Army wife, and my blogging mentor! Not only has Maria been an inspiration to me about blogging, but she also has been an inspiration to me when it comes to my husband’s deployment. Maria featured Recreate and Decorate on her beautiful home decor blog, Our Home Away from Home. Please check it out, she did a wonderful write up on me! And sent me much needed traffic!!! Maria has shown me so much guidance and I want to Thank her for all of her help!
Maria is a retired ARMY wife, but once an Army wife, always an army wife! As soon as she read the words “my husband will be deployed” she immediately made contact with me. She has so much wisdom and experience with deployments, she knew exactly what I needed to hear! She knew the feeling in the pit of my stomach, she knew the anxiety that almost takes my breath away, and she understands my fear for my husband’s safety! She understands it all! Thank You Maria and I pray that God Blesses you!
We are pretty new to Florida, we decided that we are going to stay in the area for as long as possible (10 yrs- fingers crossed) if my husband retires after 20 years, therefore we chose to buy a home in an area that is not as transitional as a military community. We wanted to be in a community that Hayley and Gabby will be able to graduate from High School with the same group of friends. We chose a very lovely community and I love the area, however connecting with people, has been a huge challenge! We have met only a few military families that live in our community. Most families that live here are the “originals”, meaning they bought their home here 12 years ago when this community was being built. They have a circle of friends already and we all know that it just takes TIME for a newcomer to enter those circle of friends! This has really opened my eyes as to how much we do rely on the Army community, and how much my Army sisters mean to me! Sometimes I laugh and say ” I think we must have 2 heads or something” because most people here just don’t understand me or my military life. Please don’t get me wrong, I have met some wonderful people and have made friends with some really great women, who I am trying very hard to teach Army life 101 to, and I think they are ”getting it”, maybe, at least one is, maybe two! I am very grateful for their friendship and I know I can count on them to help me out! But it just is not the same. I do not think I can even describe it. Army friends just KNOW how I feel, they just FEEL what I feel, and the connection is very real. I will forever be grateful to those special friends that I have met along the way!!
I am very grateful for Maria, she has a way of calming my fears, even if it is just through emails! I am so grateful for her blog, that is what connected us to begin with! I am so used to continuing my Army friendships online because one of us ALWAYS moves away that blogging and connecting with wonderful people through my blog is not strange to me!
Once again THANK YOU Maria for your support! That’s what friends are for!!
I stopped by from Maria Elena’s introduction to welcome you to the blogging community, Wanda. Best of luck, and hope you enjoy it. You’re certainly off to a terrific start!
Thank you very much! I do appreciate your kinds words and your visit.
Wanda
Thank you, Wanda! You know you just made me cry! LOL
I am very glad to be here for you! Yes, I will always remember what it feels to be the wife of a soldier and to feel sometimes very alone in this world. I know this blog is going to be such a help to you while your husband is gone. I hope you get a lot of visitors and get to make lots of new friends. It will help make the time go faster. Enjoy your weekend with your husband and your girls! Talk soon!
Hi Wanda!! Thanks for emailing me today – so glad you found me!! As Army wives we have to stick together!!
Love your post here! Oh boy…. I completely agree and have been through this before as well. It’s tough moving to a community where a lot of people have established lives and relationships. (We are living in a community like that right now, we have usually lived where there are many more military members and I find it tough and often lonely here myself). In that situation, a lot of people are just not interested in making new friends, I guess they find that their ‘circle’ of friends and family is full and complete, unfortuneately it’s just a fact. It’s hard as a military family to break through that mindset. I have found a lot of support while blogging, so I hope that you do too. Your friend Maria sounds amazing and its great that you have found a friend and mentor in her!! I wanted to let you know as well that I tried to reply to your comment that you left on my blog, but couldn’t because you are a “No Reply Blogger”…which means that when you leave a comment on a blog, that blogger can’t reply back to you. Don’t worry though, its easy to fix in your profile settings. You can read how to fix this here at Turnstyle Vogue blog:
http://www.turnstylevogue.com/2012/02/replying-to-comments/
Hope this helps! I am sure when you fix this you will get more traffic back to your blog and help develop your network in bloggy land!
Good luck to you and your family through your hubs deployment, been through a few of those myself (the last two were deployments to Afghanistan) and it never gets easy. Keeping busy, (but not too busy!) is a great way to help deal with it. I am sure your blog will be a great outlet for you as you go through the separation. Hope you keep in touch and if you are ever having a ‘bad’ day, please email me! Military wife support is.the.best!! Take care – Heather
THANK YOU Heather! Lonely is a very good word to describe how it feels here somedays! I started this blog right in time, I think maybe a few days after I started working on it, my husband found out he was getting deployed! Timing was perfect! I am sure it will keep me busy. Thank you for the comment!
I am using wordpress and apparently there is no way to fix me as a No Reply Blogger unless I am commenting to a wordpress blog! Frustrating, I will have to make sure I leave my email when I comment, thanks for tracking me down!
Wanda
Oh gee – too bad all these blogging platforms weren’t integrated better!
Heather
How do you like wordpress? I have been thinking of making the switch
myself…but won’t be able to do it right now, since we are moving in
July. Looking forward to it actually, since this posting hasn’t been that
great, unfortuneately for a lot of reasons. I also ‘liked’ you back on FB
so I can follow along with you there too! Anyway, glad to be able to chat
with you!! Hang in there!!! And remember…..Army wives put the ‘ah!’ in
Hooah!!!
This is so sweet.. =) It’s so good to know that there is someone who can understand and comfort you.