Disclosure: I received a PDF Copy of Journey Through Deployment to facilitate my military family book review. Regardless, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. Please view my Disclosure Policy for more information.
Kathryn, the author of Journey Through Deployment, has been a helpful resource for many military families on her blog Singing Through the Rain. When I heard she took all of that wonderful support and wrote Journey Through Deployment, I was excited to read it. Although my husband is now a Disabled Veteran, I knew there would still be so much value in this book. We made a lot of friends during his time in the military, and I knew this could be a great resource.
Here is the unusual thing – my husband was an Infantry Mortarman, but he never deployed. I know, that’s not typical! He started his career by going straight from Basic Training to The Old Guard at the Arlington National Cemetery. Because there is only one company with his MOS (his job in the military) they can’t deploy because nobody can replace them for the funerals, special ceremonies, etc. He got cancer while he was there. Then it came back and he had to have chemotherapy, which wreaked havoc on his body. That lead us to where we are now.
Regardless, I am connected to so many others that experience it or are about to experience it, and I love that there is such a great resource available. It has also helped me to realize how to best support them as well! Journey Through Deployment is so thorough from the feelings you may have when your spouse gets the deployment orders all the way to reintegration. I love that she has included not just her own personal experiences but those of other military spouses as well because experiences will be different and some will be the same.
In Journey Through Deployment there is also support and tips on how to help your children through deployment as well. I think this is so important because deployment affects the whole family. It covers all of the ways it can affect the family including the spouse that is deployed. It has information on how to prepare everyone for the next *however many months* they will be deployed from important documents, family finances and ways to prepare the children. I was impressed by all the details.
Journey Through Deployment also touches on the hard stuff – the emotions and the overwhelming feelings. It offers encouragement from many military spouses and offers suggestions for coping. I love that it includes prayer and turning to God because we can go to Him with everything. Yes, everything.
Are you getting ready for a deployment and wish your friends and family could better understand the ups and downs you experience on a daily basis? A Journey Through Deployment offers a chapter written specifically for them to help them understand your family’s needs during this time. I was so excited about this chapter because it better helped me to understand our friends’ needs as well!
Although I can’t relate to everything in A Journey Through Deployment, there were still things I could relate to. She talks about when Murphy’s Law of deployment strikes, which apparently applies to Basic as well. Our daughter was a baby and had to go to the hospital, the pay was messed up but I didn’t have a POA (Power of Attorney) because I didn’t even know what that was (which was quite a disaster), and I found out our son (who was 2 at the time) is on the Autism Spectrum.
All I could do, though, was put it all in a letter since they allowed no phone privileges for the first six weeks straight. So although we didn’t experience deployment, I would have loved to have a resource like Journey Through Deployment to offer advice and support during that hiccup. If you are new to the military life, don’t wait until you have deployment orders to check out Journey Through Deployment.
Overall, I would definitely recommend Journey Through Deployment for all military families. It isn’t branch specific so families of all branches of the military can find it helpful. Plus it is just so thorough as I mentioned. There are so many topics covered in every area. I was really impressed by the layout and the personal touches added by including tips and information from other military spouses.
You can purchase Journey Through Deployment on Amazon and Kathryn’s blog Singing Through the Rain.
About the Author:
Kathryn is a young Air Force spouse who has a passion for other military spouses. She served one year as a Key Spouse in her husband’s squadron; helping military spouses in the unit get through deployments and checking in on them to see how they were doing. She also started an online group for the spouses at her base to ask questions, make friends, and get information about the area around the base; planning events that spouses could attend to meet and make new friends.
She started blogging seriously in 2009 and found that her blog was the perfect place to write about her experiences as a military spouse and to encourage other spouses going through similar situations.
In 2011, when her husband deployed, she realized the need was great for encouragement in the area of deployment and set to work blogging her way through that first deployment. Since then, her posts have been featured on MilitaryConnection.com, MilitaryFamily.com, SpouseLink.org, FaithDeployed.com and many other sites as she continues to pursue encouraging military families.
Kathryn currently resides at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia with her husband and two children. When she is not writing or blogging, she enjoys spending time with her family, going on date nights with her husband, making new friends, and reading a good book!
Connect with Kathryn on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram.