A Letter on the Village That Isn't Quite There Yet
My Dearest Friend,
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being the only parent on duty, even when there are technically two parents living under the same roof. For more than a week now, Beloved has been leaving for work before dawn and returning long after our children have gone to bed. We get perhaps thirty minutes together at the end of the day, just enough to exchange the necessary details of our lives and remember that we are, in fact, married to one another before he heads to bed and I turn back to whatever still needs doing. A few hours later, he's gone again. There is no deployment countdown on the refrigerator, no TDY return date circled on the calendar. He's home every night, but only long enough to sleep before work calls him away again. And somewhere between the grocery shopping, soccer practices, gymnastics classes, meals, laundry, and a leadership course that occasionally requires me to be awake and on camera in the middle of the night, I've found myself doing what military spouses so often do... figuring it out because there isn't much choice but to figure it out.
Bean, meanwhile, has decided that sleeping through the night is entirely overrated. Growing pains have found her crying into the dark several times a night, and I've found myself measuring sleep in ninety-minute increments, if I'm lucky. Beloved is exhausted too, of course. His days are impossibly long, and neither of us is particularly thriving in this arrangement. We're simply getting through it, passing one another in the narrow spaces between responsibilities, trying to offer whatever small kindness we can manage before the next alarm sounds.
And the strange thing is, I've done harder things than this.
I've parented through deployments and lengthy separations. I've managed months alone while pregnant and so violently sick that twice-weekly trips for IV fluids became part of the routine. I've handled illnesses, emergencies, and the ordinary chaos of raising children without another adult coming through the door at the end of the day. I know how to do hard things. So why does this particular season feel so much harder?
I think it's because I've gotten used to knowing I don't have to do them entirely alone.
At our previous duty stations, we had people. Not simply acquaintances or friendly faces at school pickup, but the kind of people who become so thoroughly woven into your life that you stop thinking of them as a separate support system. They're simply there. I remember one assignment when Beloved was away and I became suddenly, violently ill. What we initially feared might be appendicitis sent me to the emergency room, leaving Bun with neighbors across the street. When I finally made it home in the middle of the night, they didn't simply hand him back and wish me luck. They told me to leave him sleeping, that they'd take him to preschool in the morning. And when they checked on me the next day and learned I was still struggling, they picked him up again, kept him another night, and made sure he got to school the following morning. There was no elaborate negotiation, no feeling that I'd overstepped by needing more help than originally anticipated. They saw what our family needed and stepped into the gap.
Years later, when an emergency surgery left me in the hospital with an infant who needed to remain with me, we had people who could take Bun overnight without hesitation. That's what a village really is, isn't it? Not simply having friends to meet for coffee or invite over for dinner, but the quiet assurance that when life becomes more than you can manage, there are people who will help carry it. People who know your family, love your children, and don't treat helping as some extraordinary favor. It's simply what you do for one another.
And after seven military moves, I know something about building that kind of community. I know it takes time, effort, and a willingness to show up when it would be easier to stay home. What I hadn't fully appreciated until this particular season, though, is how vulnerable it feels to be back at the beginning. Because every move resets more than our address. We pack our belongings, say our goodbyes, and begin again somewhere new, but we cannot pack the neighbor who would take our children in an emergency or the friend who recognizes the exhaustion in our voice before we admit we're struggling. Those relationships don't disappear when we leave, but their practical presence does. Some of the people I love most are scattered across the world now, and I know they'd answer if I called tonight.
But they cannot come across the street and take Bean for three hours so I can sleep.
We're still relatively new to this overseas assignment, and I can feel the beginnings of something good. There's another mother who has invited us to meet at the park, whose family is navigating its own version of these impossibly long workdays. I'm not quite comfortable asking her to take Bean for an afternoon so I can nap, especially when she has a little one of her own, but I can say yes to sitting together while the children play. And then there's the friendship that began over hotel waffles shortly after we arrived. Weeks of messages and attempts to coordinate schedules eventually turned into a spontaneous invitation to come over the very next day. She brought her children, our older boys became practically inseparable, and somehow five hours passed while we sat and talked and kept an eye on the younger ones.
At one point, she joked that she'd signed up for a grand European adventure without realizing how much of it would involve parenting alone while our husbands worked impossibly long hours. I laughed because I understood exactly what she meant. It wasn't quite the adventure either of us had pictured, but sitting there together, surrounded by children who were perfectly content in one another's company, felt like a small piece of the life we'd both hoped to find here.
I don't want to pretend these new friendships have already become the village I miss. They haven't, at least not yet. We're still learning one another, still discovering whether an easy afternoon might eventually become the kind of trust that allows for a phone call in the middle of the night. And perhaps that's what has felt so heavy lately. Not simply the work of doing everything myself, but knowing that if I reached the point where I genuinely couldn't do it anymore, I don't yet know who I'd call. There are people who would probably help, kind faces and promising friendships I'm grateful for, but there's a difference between believing someone might be willing and knowing, without hesitation, that you can ask.
I've lived on the other side of that difference, and I miss it more than I realized.
Still, I can feel the edges of a village beginning to take shape. A conversation at the park. A friendship that started over waffles. An afternoon that stretched into five hours because nobody was in a hurry to leave. I keep thinking of it as approaching the city limits of a place I haven't quite reached. I can see the signs now, the lights in the distance, the first outlines of somewhere that might eventually feel like home. I know what a village looks like once you've made your way inside, and I recognize the beginnings of one forming around us.
I'm just not there yet.
The Lesson
I think one of the quieter lessons military life keeps teaching me is that independence and community were never meant to be opposites. We spend so much time learning to be capable, adaptable, and resourceful that sometimes we begin to measure our strength by how much we can manage without asking anyone else to step in. And while there's genuine value in that resilience, being capable of surviving a difficult season doesn't mean we should have to survive it without support.
When I look back on the hardest chapters of our family's life, I don't remember only the emergencies themselves. I remember the people who made them bearable. Their kindness didn't make me less capable; it gave me room to be human, to be sick, to be frightened, to need rest, without fearing that everything else would fall apart in my absence. And I think that's what I'm missing most right now. Not someone to solve every problem or rescue me from the ordinary responsibilities of parenting, but the security of knowing that if I couldn't carry everything for a little while, someone would help.
The difficult thing about starting over is that life doesn't wait for us to rebuild that security. The long workdays, sleepless nights, and unexpected emergencies don't politely hold off until we've made enough friends to feel settled. Sometimes the hard season arrives while we're still laying the foundations, and all we can do is acknowledge that we need something we haven't quite had the chance to build.
To the Spouse Still Building Their Village
Perhaps you've found yourself somewhere new again, surrounded by friendly faces that haven't quite become familiar people. Perhaps your spouse is deployed, away for training, or simply working hours that leave you managing most of your family's life alone. You've done hard things before, and you know you'll find your way through this season too. But knowing how doesn't mean you aren't tired, and it certainly doesn't mean you don't deserve someone to lean on.
You might miss the people who knew your children, the neighbors who could step in without hesitation, or the friends who recognized when you were struggling before you found the words to admit it. And perhaps the hardest part is knowing exactly what you're missing because you've been fortunate enough to have it before. I hope you'll give yourself permission to acknowledge that loss without mistaking it for a failure to adjust. Starting over is difficult, even when you've done it many times.
But I hope you'll also leave room for the small beginnings. The invitation to meet at the park, the conversation that runs longer than expected, the person who remembers something you mentioned in passing and checks in a few days later. Those moments may not yet be the safety net you need, but they may be the first threads of one. You don't have to rush them or demand more of them than they're ready to give. And on the days when you're too exhausted to make another plan or introduce yourself to another room full of strangers, you are allowed to rest. Building a village shouldn't become another measure of how well you're managing military life.
You may still be somewhere outside the city limits, looking toward the lights of a place you hope will someday feel like home. And you don't have to pretend the road isn't long simply because you know where you're trying to go.
