heystephcraig

Hey friend! 🩷 One of the hardest parts of this lifestyle isn't the deployments or the moves themselves. It's starting over, again and again, when it comes to your people. You finally find your group, the ones who get it without you having to explain, and then orders come through and you're building it all over again somewhere new. It's exhausting. It's also one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Here's what I've learned about making friends in this world, eleven years and multiple duty stations in. Find your version of SLAM When we were stationed in Italy, I found a group called SLAM, Sweat Like a Mother. Every morning we worked out together, then walked to get coffee and headed to the playground with the kids. Some mornings I felt like I was back in college, just surrounded by friends all day long. A lot of us weren't able to work because of SOFA status, so we had the time to build something real. Those mornings weren't just exer...

Hey friend! 🩷 There's a moment every military significant other knows. The one where he sits you down, or calls, or just says it plainly, and your whole world tilts a little. Deployment is coming. Sometimes you get months to watch it loom over you. Sometimes you get days. Either way, that first wave of news hits heavy, and I want to talk about what that's really like, because I don't think we talk about it enough. The first time I wasn't even a wife yet. We'd only been dating about six months, and I had just moved in with him. A week later, I found out he was deploying. I did not handle it well. I cried. I felt heartbroken. I genuinely felt like my world was over. I was so new to this life that I had no idea deployment news could feel like that, like the floor dropping out from under you. Looking back, I was grieving something I didn't even have language for yet: the version of our relationship I thought I was starting, suddenly on pause before it even began. E...

Hey friend! 🩷 Here's a secret nobody tells you before your first deployment: it's okay for this season to be good. You're not betraying anyone by building a life while he's gone. You're showing him, and yourself, that you can thrive. Here's how I actually do that. Get through the goodbye first The lead-up to drop-off is almost always the hardest part, harder than the deployment itself. I give myself full permission to feel that build-up without trying to fix it. Once he's gone and I'm through that first rough week, something always shifts. I find my footing. It gets steadier from there, every single time. Set attainable goals This is the biggest shift I've made over the years. I stopped thinking of deployment as something to just get through, and started treating it as time I could actually use. This deployment, I gave myself three goals: Home: I'm updating and painting our bathrooms Fitness: I'm 60 pounds down, and I'm working toward ...

Hey friend, I'm Steph! 🩷 I've been a military spouse for almost 11 years. I'm also a mom of two little girls, a Michigan girl through and through, a Bravo TV fan girl, and always counting down the days to my favorite time of the year Fall!  You can usually catch me in a comfy lounge set with an iced coffee.. guaranteed! Here's why I'm here. When I first became a military girlfriend, I had no idea what was going on. The acronyms, the unwritten rules, the way everyone else seemed to know things I'd never heard of. I still remember the first time he did a layout for the field. I was shocked. I had no idea how much stuff they have to pack, and every single item had to be accounted for. Then there was the time he had me try an MRE. Never again , lol. Those small moments taught me how much I didn't know, and I wish someone had sat me down back then and said, "Here's what to expect, and here's what actually helps. " So I'm doing that for you....