Reconnecting with family after deployment

Reconnecting with family after deployment

Nicole:

After I had my last daughter, I had to go to Korea when she was 6 months old. And when I came back on my mid tour at the 6-month mark, she was a year. And she didn't know me. She wouldn't come to me. You know and I understood, but it was gut wrenching. Really gut wrenching. I mean I've never been afraid to get on a plane and go anywhere knowing I was going to get shot at, but that felt horrible.

My husband and I both were called to deploy to Bosnia. We were going to be going at the same time. I didn’t realize at the time some of the impacts that were happening with my children, with having to be worried. Because they were old enough to know what we were doing. You know, middle school age.

My daughter kind of became withdrawn a lot. My son acted out a lot. Both very intelligent kids.

At that time they didn’t understand why we were never there. I begin to see that some of those issues were like wow, we are a dual military family. We are always gone. Somebody is always in harms way and that’s stressful for anybody, no matter the age.

My son was diagnosed with ADD around the 7th grade and a lot of that came out in his treatment. Umm… and then my daughter was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the 10th , 11th grade and a lot of that came out then. So, we did do a lot of counseling then, a lot of family counseling.

And now they’re 24 and 22 and they are doing well. They’re both in college and we have a wonderful relationship that I thought we would never get to.