FOCUS
with a charity can be healing for
both you and your children. Serving those who are in situations even
more difficult than your family’s can
help put your own life in perspective. However stressful your evacuation becomes, at least you’ll
probably never be sleeping in a Salvation Army shelter with a newborn, as was one young lady with whom I was involved
during our evacuation.
the wake of a crisis and require an
immediate, enormous, wrenching
readjustment of life and perspective
for all parties involved. Rejoining a
family, both in the literal and the
emotional senses, requires a tremendous amount of work and patience.
So be on the lookout for potential new wrinkles in all levels of your family relationships. And if you do run into problems following an
evacuation, see them for what they are, so that you and
your spouse can deal with the issues appropriately.
I fervently hope that no one reading this will ever
be ordered to depart post. But the world being what it
is, the chances of your family being faced with an evacuation are better than ever, and increasing almost daily.
Still, if you are evacuated, know that it’s not the end of
the world — and with a bit of mental adjustment, it
might even turn out to be a rewarding experience.
People will be
sympathetic to your
plight, or, if nothing else,
they’ll be intrigued.
Getting Back to “Normal”
You know how hard it is to readjust your family life
after a spouse has been away for a few weeks or months
on a temporary duty assignment? Well, regaining equilibrium as a family following the separation imposed by
an evacuation is even more complicated.
After all, TDYs are planned affairs that usually last
a set amount of time. Evacuations come suddenly in
