Sarah, a new Army spouse, wrote in to express the frustrations of leaving her civilian career and adjusting to new way of life.

I asked Holly Scherer and Kathie Hightower, the authors of  "Help! I'm a Military Spouse I Get a Life Too,” to share some wisdom to help Sarah with her adjustment to the military.

They offered encouragement in the Jan. 11 Spouse Calls.

Both Kathie and Holly sympathized with Sarah’s frustration as a new spouse.

"I did a lot of complaining rather than looking for solutions, not the best approach,” Kathie said of her early experiences, “It took me awhile to figure out how to look for the possibilities, possibilities that I now firmly believe are available in every assignment.”

Holly said she was a young wife frustrated with military life when she and Kathie crossed paths.

“When I met Kathie, she’d already spent time researching how to approach military life differently. When I shared how I was feeling about this lifestyle she was pretty blunt with me...”

Kathie told Holly that if she was unhappy with military life, she had had three choices:
1. Get a divorce.
2. Convince your spouse to get out.
3. Figure out how to change your approach to make it work.

“We realized since then that there is a fourth choice that some spouses take, ourselves included for a number of the early years,” Holly said.

That choice, she said, is to “be miserable, complain, make your spouse miserable too...oh, yes, and hang out with other negative spouses ... There’s no doubt the only thing you get out of sticking with this choice is more misery! Certainly not a choice of how I wanted to continue living my life.”

Kathie and Holly agreed that one of the best things about being a military spouse is that we are not alone.

“Reach out to others, like I did with Kathie, you do not have to do this by yourself,” Holly said.

Military life definitely has its challenges, finding friends, maintaining a career, enduring separations.

“Holly and I spent years researching these challenges,” Kathie said.

“First off, what makes people happy and how can I apply that information to this challenging military life? How can I pursue my own dreams while I support my spouse’s service to our country?”

The authors discovered in the course of their research that many military spouses not only survive the challenges, but they thrive on them.

“We interviewed thousands of military spouses and asked: ‘If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you marry someone in the military?’ Holly said the “overwhelming majority” responded that they would marry someone in the military again.

“This is not an easy life. Most military spouses will be faced with and overcome more challenges in a short amount of time than most civilians will ever have to face in an entire lifetime,” Holly said.

“You will grow and be able to accomplish things you never imagined. But the good news is you are not in this alone. Look around, there are other military spouses out there who feel just like you do, and are looking for positive ways on how to make this life work for them.”

Another experienced military wife, Diana, wrote an excellent reply to Sarah. See it in the Jan 18 Spouse Calls.

You can also Click here to go to Sarah’s blog post, my response and Diana's.