By: Julie Williams
As I look back it seems I have been juggling or struggling for my whole life. Growing up as a middle child of what appeared to be average capabilities compared to my siblings, I constantly seemed to struggle with fitting in—in life, in school and even in my own family. In high school the thought of going to college was never important to me. I never had the best grades or cared that much for that matter. I really only enjoyed school as an outlet from being stuck at home in my dull life. But grades, education and college never made it to my priority list. However, upon graduation the need set in to move forward with my life, and I struggled once again to determine where I would go, what I would be and what I might accomplish in the years to come.
In desperation to get out of my home life and avoid college, I signed a five-year contract with the United States Army as a military police officer. Again, perhaps due to my own insecurities, being a woman in a typical man’s world or simply being young and naive, I struggled to fit in. I felt unvalued in my job, unwanted among my peers and unappreciated among my colleagues and superiors, and so I turned to heavy drinking, partying and random bouts of mischief, which nearly cost me my career but nonetheless changed my life dramatically. I took my reprimand, went on and moved forward but struggled to remain clean and sober and instead lived the life I wanted, not necessarily the one I thought I deserved.
Within a year I met the man who would eventually become my husband—a military man, single father and raising his four-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. I struggled with the desperation within myself of wanting to be married and the uncertainty of whether I would be a good enough mother and wife.
And yet we were married September 2008 and became an instant family. I juggled being active duty Army myself and getting to know and raise a daughter who was also juggling being sent from our home to her biological mother’s on a regular basis. After being a military police officer for almost two years we had our daughter Jlynn. I was then trained to become the armor for the unit working 12-plushour days, all while being a military wife to a man who was gone more than he was home. I must confess at times it was more than a “Calgon, take me away” moment. I was beyond overwhelmed and exhausted from the juggle.
As my five-year contract with the Army began to come to an end, I knew I would be separating from the military permanently but struggled again as to where I was to go from this point. In December 2011 we started the process to have our forever home built in the local area near my mother-in-law. I felt that if I had support, help, guidance and even an adult to converse with once in a while my life might have a chance of getting on the right track. In May 2012 I moved to Charleston with my two daughters to be close to my mother-in-law. My husband was still stationed at Ft. Stewart at the time, but in October 2012 he got out of the military, joined the Active Reserves and took a full-time job at Boeing. Within two months I started as an at-home dispatcher, which I worked for a little over two years. Then I sold jewelry through a home direct sales company August 2014. I thought my life was well on its way to allowing the family life I’d hoped for to blossom. I felt like my life should be coming together, but as time went on I was still struggling to balance the work-wife-mother thing.
With the support and assistance from the military I was able to get some PTSD counseling for transferring from military life to civilian life. Through that support and the socializing and accountability of meeting other work-at-home moms through my direct sales, I was able to adjust and actually felt I may have a purpose in this world. In September 2012 I enrolled in a local college to obtain my associate’s degree in network systems administration and then went on to another school for a bachelor’s degree in network security. My husband has been gone on Active Reserves deployment since May 2015 and is due back by the printing of this story. He has five years left on his Active Reserves contract. The struggle is still rough, but with the support of my mother-in-law, the care of friends and the fact that my husband’s unit has a family readiness group that offers monetary support through emails and phone calls as well as paid family time before, during and after each deployment for a family-based workshop/retreat that includes activities and programs for members and their children and additional support when he is deployed, I have a new outlook on this struggle.
The juggle is real. The struggles are too, but throughout all the struggles I have endured in my life so far and the juggling of military wife of a deployed husband, managing a household, running two small direct sales businesses and going to school, I have to say that I think having my military training and being a veteran myself makes me more empathetic to my husband and his job. It has also given me an “I can’t give up!” attitude. I have to remember my warrior ethos: I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.