Stages Of Deployment In Military Families

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Military families go through so much when someone in their family is deployed. Imagine having someone you love gone for months at a time, it puts stress on the whole family. There are three main stages of Deployment: Pre-deployment, Deployment, and Post-deployment. In pre-deployment you prepare yourself for getting deployed or having to deal with the person’s absence that is getting deployed. In my experience it was hard to prepare because, there’s not a lot you can do to prepare yourself for that situation. With pre-deployment you know that it’s coming up faster and faster but you don’t know what to do. In this stage many families try to do a family trip or a gathering of sorts for bonding. We would do this in my family, we would all go …show more content…
Deployment of a family member in the military effects people and families in different ways. This stage is by far the hardest and most difficult. Deployments can vary from three months to a year. My dad was lucky and never got deployed for longer than six months but not everyone is that fortunate. Many Military spouses experience yearlong deployments. Extended Deployment can be difficult for Military families whose spouse is in the work force. This is an especially difficult time for spouses who work and have young children. My mother didn’t work so we as a family didn’t struggle with that aspect of deployment, but there were families that we knew who had a really hard time. When my dad got deployed my grandparents would come from the United States and stay with us for the first couple months to help my mom. It was very common to have relatives come and help while a spouse was deployed. It was hard for my family because, my dad was gone from August to January so he missed a lot of the holidays. When my dad was deployed the first time over thanksgiving we started a gratitude tree to help remind us what we were grateful for. Doing that helped my family cope with my dad being gone because; we could focus on things that we were grateful for. We continue that tradition to help us keep the spirit of gratitude in our hearts. The best part of deployment is when you get to see your soldier again after such a long time. It is such an emotional time when you see them step off the airplane in their military