Let's take the guesswork out of military life! Join me, along with hundreds of other military spouses, and grab your copy of Modern Military Spouse today. It has everything you need to survive the ups and downs of military life! After reading this book, you will be able to... - Prepare and navigate PCS moves, military homecomings and military deployments easier. - Understand terms, acronyms and abbreviations all in one convenient location. - Gain instant access to over 22+ printable checklists. - Learn how to navigate getting an education and managing your career as a military spouse. - Build a budget that will work for your military family, using our step-by-step guide for finances and a downloadable spreadsheet. - Learn the keys to nurturing a military marriage that will survive the challenges of military life. - Help your child through military life using key resources and best tips for parenting military kids. Here's what's included: 14 comprehensive chapters 20+ printable documents and checklists (Including deployment, PCS, marriage, and resume). Receive a link in the book to download the printables. 3 bonus sections (Including acronyms, abbreviations, and terms) What you'll learn: When You Don't Have a Ring What to Do When Your Service Member's Gone Preparing for a Successful Military Marriage Creating a Budget That Works Hitting the Books Military-Style Military Proofing Your Career Building a Strong Support Network Becoming a Good Military Spouse Navigating Military Life with Kids Step-by-Step to PCS Moving and Living Overseas Using Social Media Safely Complete List of Resources for Spouses Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Terms Defined And more! "Jo, JD, and Lauren did the hard work for all of us! They took an overwhelming amount of confusing and out-of-date information for military spouses and turned it into a fun, modern book. This guide helps you understand military life and find the resources you are looking for." - Jen Pilcher, Founder, MilitaryOneClick.com "Finally! A military spouse handbook that I can recommend to new spouses! This book is the friend I wish I had when I was a young Navy wife. I wouldn't have felt so alone, so unusual and so un-military if someone would have given me Modern Military Spouse along with my dependent ID. Modern Military Spouse is a mentor, a drinking buddy, and a confidant for today's military spouse." - Michelle Volkmann, managing editor, NextGen MilSpouse

The trouble with most etiquette manuals is they're too long. Now there's a shortcut. 64 EASY ANSWERS ABOUT ETIQUETTE FOR THE MODERN MILITARY SPOUSE provides a quick and convenient guide at your fingertips. The Frequently-Asked-Question format allows you to glance at the table of contents and consult the section you need, or read the book in one sitting if that's your style. This modern manual covers social etiquette, as well as customs specific to military culture, such as what to do during reveille, retreat, and national anthems of foreign countries. Arm yourself with knowledge and step into military life with confidence.

Based on personal interviews with military spouses, as well as current articles and statistics and studies from the Department of Defense and Rand National Defense Research Institute, this book provides an objective look at America's military family in the 21st century, and explains how the military is attempting to improve family life. Following the Flag discusses both the problems and perks of today's armed forces families. It particularly looks at the military family since America has become involved in peace-keeping missions in Africa and combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Studies on family stress connected with deployment (depression, divorce, domestic violence) are presented. A special focus is the families of the National Guard and Reserves who are often unprepared, emotionally and financially, for family members to be called to duty. In addition, the book provides current information on nontraditional military families. These include female military personnel married to civilian males, who many times must place their careers second and follow their wives to new assignments, and families where both spouses are military personnel who can be deployed at any time. Many changes have occurred in the American armed forces over the past three decades. An all-volunteer military came into being after the end of conscription in 1973; women have joined the force in ever increasing numbers; service personnel today are again involved in combat situations around the world; reserve and guard units have been called to active duty. With these developments, the role of military families has changed as well. This book explains what the those changes have been, and what they have meant to the families involved.

Faraway lands, fear, and faith—Ruth paves the way for our story. One day when author and military spouse Jessica Manfre was reading the book of Ruth, she had an epiphany. Ruth is the story of every military spouse. In the book of Ruth, we witness a woman’s brave journey—one of loss, loneliness, and loyalty. A story of love and faith. Does that sound familiar? These are the hallmarks of the military life. While our lives are fraught with heartache and sacrifice, that isn’t the whole of our stories. Ruth is a hero that has gone before us, offering encouragement and strength. Through her, we witness the beauty of hope and share in the healing power of friendship. We discover that even when all seems lost and completely hopeless, we are Never Alone. God is always with us. And He’s leading us through our own story of redemption. He’s restoring the hardships and healing the wounds of despair. He’s transforming our pain and building our trust. Even when we’re wandering in a faraway, foreign land, He is not lost and has not lost us. Join Jessica in studying a story that was meant for you. Jessica explores topics like the fundamental need for connection, the clinical mental health implications of loneliness, preparing your heart for loss (she writes from experience), friendship, and much more. This resource is for every military spouse who desires to strengthen relationships, live in authentic community, and walk with God.

We know that a supportive family is the key to a person's success. It is fascinating to read a history of military wives that begins to give them the credit they deserve for service to their country and their families. "Patricia Schroeder U.S. Representative, Colorado" "Campfollowing" opens an important page in history for the military and for the role of women in the military. The women described in this book were not only devoted wives and mothers who brought a few of the comforts of home to forlorn military outposts, but they were also nurses who cared for the sick and wounded, as well as soldiers who fought bravely next to their soldier-husbands. They served their country with great love, dignity, and honor, and they deserve this long overdue recognition. I believe this book will be both an inspiration and a model for present military spouses as they follow their loved ones throughout the world or wait patiently at home for them when they are apart. "Timothy E. Wirth U.S. Senator, Colorado" Campfollowers themselves, Betty Alt and Bonnie Stone have collected published and unpublished memoirs, diaries, and letters and have conducted personal interviews to present this comprehensive history of the military wife from the Revolutionary War through the post-Vietnam years. The first work to concentrate on the unique hardships and rewards known to these women, this book considers both the traditional and modern roles of the military wife, with particular attention to her place as second in line to her husband's career and the military establishment's reluctant acceptance of her as integral to the success of its mission. Resilience and flexibility, loneliness and companionship, and danger and loyalty are all components of the military wife's life described in these revealing pages. The chapters are organized chronologically, outlining the experience during peacetime and war, stateside and overseas. Throughout, the focus remains on the strength of this sisterhood as it copes with separation and fear by fostering its sense of community, and faces the indifference of the military by constantly asserting its identity. This look at the many different facets of life as a military wife, described from a personal perspective within a historical framework, is a thoughtful analysis, a complete chronicle, and a true adventure with all its joys and perils.

This volume presents a fresh look at the military spouses in Shakespeare’s Othello, 1 Henry IV, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth, and Coriolanus, vital to understanding the plays themselves. By analysing the characters as military spouses, we can better understand current dynamics in modern American civilian and military culture as modern American military spouses live through the War on Terror. Shakespeare's Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare explains what these plays have to say about the role of military families and cultural constructions of masculinity both in the texts themselves and in modern America. Concerns relevant to today’s military families – domestic violence, PTSD, infertility, the treatment of queer servicemembers, war crimes, and the growing civil-military divide – pervade Shakespeare’s works. These parallels to the contemporary lived experience are brought out through reference to memoirs written by modern-day military spouses, sociological studies of the American armed forces, and reports issued by the Department of Defence. Shakespeare’s military spouses create a discourse that recognizes the role of the military in national defence but criticizes risky or damaging behaviours and norms, promoting the idea of a martial identity that permits military defence without the dangers of toxic masculinity. Meeting at the intersection of Shakespeare Studies, trauma studies, and military studies, this focus on military spouses is a unique and unprecedented resource for academics in these fields, as well as for groups interested in Shakespeare and theatre as a way of thinking through and responding to psychiatric issues and traumatic experiences.

The American military’s public international strategy of Communist containment, systematic weapons build-ups, and military occupations across the globe depended heavily on its internal and often less visible strategy of controlling the lives and intimate relationships of its members. From 1950 to 2000, the military justice system, under the newly instituted Uniform Code of Military Justice, waged a legal assault against all forms of sexual deviance that supposedly threatened the moral fiber of the military community and the nation. Prosecution rates for crimes of sexual deviance more than quintupled in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Drawing on hundreds of court-martial transcripts published by the Judge Advocate General of the Armed Forces, Policing Sex and Marriage in the American Military explores the untold story of how the American military justice system policed the marital and sexual relationships of the service community in an effort to normalize heterosexual, monogamous marriage as the linchpin of the military’s social order. Almost wholly overlooked by military, social, and legal historians, these court transcripts and the stories they tell illustrate how the courts’ construction and criminalization of sexual deviance during the second half of the twentieth century was part of the military’s ongoing articulation of gender ideology. Policing Sex and Marriage in the American Military provides an unparalleled window into the historic criminalization of what were considered sexually deviant and violent acts committed by U.S. military personnel around the world from 1950 to 2000.

Essential information for servicemembers' wives and families Benefits, resources, and sound advice for a quality life in the service This book covers all the information a service wife needs to survive and prosper, including advice for coping with periodic separations, tips for managing a separate career, discussion of living overseas, information on raising a family, and details on the social aspects of military life.

"The" handbook for improving the lives of military spouses

Epic poetry and tragic drama provide us with some of richest ancient Greek depictions of women who are married to soldiers. In tales of the Trojan War, as told by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, we encounter these mythical warriors' wives: Penelope, isolated but resourceful as she awaits the return of Odysseus after his lengthy absence; the war widow Andromache, enslaved and displaced from her homeland after the fall of Troy; the unfaithful and murderous Clytemnestra; and Tecmessa, a war captive who witnesses her partner's breakdown and suicide in the aftermath of battle. Warriors' Wives compares the experiences of these mythical characters with those of contemporary military spouses. Emma Bridges traces aspects of the lives of warriors' wives--mythical and real, ancient and modern--from the moment of farewell, through periods of separation and reunion, to the often traumatic aftermath of war, to consider the emotional, psychological, and social impacts of life as a military spouse. By unearthing a wealth of contemporary evidence for the lives of the often silenced and unacknowledged partners of those who serve in the military, and by examining this alongside the ancient stories of warriors' wives, Warriors' Wives sheds fresh light on the experience of being married to the military.