If you have moved or will be moving, you know just how stressful this time can be. Moving is so much more than just packing and un-packing boxes. What you leave behind is what will be challenging for you.

Just as you feel like the world is coming to an end, deployment is over. Your soldier is returning home after a long 15 month deployment and all you feel is this bittersweet combination of both joy and stress. Why is that?

Recently, I’ve been getting many questions about how I’ve dealt with deployment. Over my many separations I have acquired some ideas that have helped me deal with my husband being away.

I was an Army active duty spouse for years, as well as Reserve and now an Army National Guard spouse. So I guess I can say that I have had my share of experience with them all. What shocks me is the difference in the way people treat you once they know which branch you belong to. Most of that is due to people not knowing exactly who we are and what Reservists and Guard members do, but even other members of the military can be judgmental.

Even I can’t believe how much this last year has changed me. I never thought in just one year, I would be a different person. It occurred to me with all of the changes I’ve been through, I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone in the military to return home from active duty.

Military spouses on the home front manage many different tasks. We man the household as both mother and father, we quit our jobs to follow our soldiers wherever duty may call them, whatever always seems to break we manage to fix it ourselves, we also seem to manage caring for a household, working fulltime jobs and continue our education. We are the foundations of the military household, we are the heroes on the home front.

When you have engaged in a military relationship, there are many things that need to be considered. One of the biggest challenges you will face is how to feel like a couple when your partner is gone for months at a time. Being in a military relationship for 9 years already I know that this can be an understandably difficult commitment, but not impossible.

Unless you have experienced it first hand, there is no way to describe the way the family members of soldiers feel once their loved one has been deployed. Children in particular can experience immense amounts of stress during deployment.

Within the nine years my husband and I have been together, separations seem to be getting harder. With a handful of separations and one deployment, the fear of another separation is always on our minds. And if you ask a military spouse they will confirm that it does not get easier with time.

After years away from one another, your partner is finally coming home! The excitement is overwhelming, the anticipation is excruciating! Spouses yearn for the moment their soldier returns home, putting their feet back onto American soil.