Well the cat’s out of the bag now. I have no life. I have no identity and I have nothing more to do than to over identify myself with the career choices of my husband and son. I have received my first negative comment via email from someone who thinks I need to “get a life” and stop hiding behind the identities of my guys. OK, then.
Let me break it down for you. Here’s the deal — you will either understand this or you won’t. I can’t change your understanding. I can only offer you information to help you gain insight into my choices, but I can’t make you gain perspective. Perspective comes through an experience that causes a shift within your own mind that allows you to see things that maybe you weren’t able to see before (or see them differently in some cases).
It’s a similar concept of leading a horse to water. I can give the horse the information, such as “here’s the water and you should drink it and this is why.” Until the horse tastes the water for himself, has an epiphany, or he becomes so parched that the misery makes him realize that drinking the water is a good idea, then his perspective is more than likely not going to change. Something must happen in order to prod him into taking the information provided to him — which is hypothetical and unobserved, and acting on it and experiencing it, and therefore replacing unobserved information with something provisional and empirical. So, you may gleam something from this, and you may not. Ultimately for me it’s a response and an airing out of the thoughts the note provoked. Nothing more, nothing less.
First and foremost the accusation that I somehow lack an identity due to the fact that I choose to have a public blog about my husband and my son, who are both are soldiers, is an interesting allegation to bring against me. I am not quite sure how anyone could come to any hard and fast facts about the identity, or the lack thereof, of an individual based on a public blog. You may be able to have glances into the preferences that an individual has, but the Internet and blogging is ultimately a uni-dimensional world that leaves us with little more to judge another by outside of words, pictures, maybe some video and music they choose. I am far more complex than my blog would allow for me to communicate. Trust me, and ask my husband!
With that said I think that there are also many reasons why I do identify and align myself so closely with my soldiers. I actually identified myself as Mr. Hooah!’s wife when he was better known as “Mr. Polymer!” I would have started a blog about it, but to be honest I don’t think that I would have had much of a readership. The truth of the matter is he went to work everyday, played with chemicals, and came home. He didn’t glow in the dark and there were no explosions (fires are another story, but that may be blog fodder for another day). I don’t think that a blog entitled “Knee Deep in the Polymers” would take off, so I simply did not write it up. I was still his wife, and he very much identifies himself as my husband. It’s nice that it works that way, and it makes for a good marriage.
As far as my son goes, I have always over identified with my kids. I can’t help it. I still do it to this day. I am Mike’s mom, I am Emma’s mom, I am “his mom,” or “her mom,” and I have even been known as “the cookie mom!” I have been a mom for over 22 years now. I am a professional mom. I have been a mom longer than I have been a social worker. I love being a mom. I guess being a wife and mother is the main crux of my identity, but it’s not my identity because I couldn’t find another one to posses! I don’t align myself with my family because I am so pathetic I couldn’t find myself in the real world. This is the real world for me. Isn’t it ironic that if I were to choose a career path, such as my path in social work, and throw myself into my work and become the best in my field, that somehow I would have an identity, but doing the same thing at home and with my family leaves me rendered as someone who sadly needs a life. I do, by the way, have a CV that would knock your socks off. I am more impressed with my family though, so that is why I focus on this topic.
Actually if “getting a life” comes with a paid vacation then I may put a resume in for one!
I am proud of my guys. I am proud of our Military. When my guys joined it affected me in every way. It made me proud, it made me scared, it made me cry and it made me feel dread and joy intertwined. This is not something you will ever understand for yourself, until you personally and deeply love a soldier. I never felt it all like that before. I feel it now, and this is now my perspective. Until this war ends the only experience I have in this military life is loving two soldiers, deeply, who are serving during a time of war. I can’t tell you how it feels to have them in garrison with little to no concern that they will be deployed and face combat at some point. I hope one day I will get to gain that perspective!
Identity is nothing more than a concept regarding the way we comprehend ourselves as humans, as dynamic beings and as beings with an interpersonal bonding to those whom we love. When the ones we share that bond with have a job that puts them at risk everyday — significant risk at times, then it does have a deep affect on those who are in that supportive role. We all deal with it in the best way we know how. Some deal with it in ways that are adaptive and some maladaptive, but regardless we do the best we can with what we have. I do not have my husband here or my son, but I do have our home and my other children, and I have this computer and this blog. It’s how I process my stress, fears, frustrations and anxieties that pop up from time to time. It’s not my identity. I am only a blogger for a couple of hours in the evenings, but I am wife to Mr. Hooah! all the time and mother to “Marvelous Mike” all the time. It never ends, it never stops, and that is the identity I have chosen, proudly.
Tags: Army Mom Posts, Army Wife Posts by Claire
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