Preparing For Our Village
We've all heard the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child." And for those of us with children, we've realized that the village usually doesn't just show up at our doorstep anymore. We may have an incredible village where we live, but many of us as military spouses have discovered that our village lives states away, if we have one at all.
I am incredibly close to my family and blessed that my parents can travel often to help. On a bad day, I know my parents are just one flight away. They own their own business, meaning they can work from anywhere, so it can be very easy for them to come to Oklahoma for a few days. But this doesn't help when I have a last-minute village need because they are still a plane flight away. And they do still have responsibilities back in North Carolina. Flying out on a whim isn't necessarily feasible and often isn't really the best solution.
I saw an Instagram reel (it was probably originally a TikTok, but I refuse to download another app, so I just wait the two weeks for them to become reels) the other day that talked about how we have to financially prepare for our village. (Watch it here.)
The creator talks about how people need to plan financially for their village. She says, "A free village is no longer realistic, but that doesn't mean we should have to do it alone." This means financially planning for things like a nanny, housekeeper and meal prep. Especially during a deployment, we take on things outside our usual labor routines. If we can financially prepare to delegate some of those responsibilities, then we can make our lives easier. I know that finances are a touchy subject, and living on one income is getting harder and harder, which many military families have to do. I don't have a great answer for this question because it is a very personal and specific matter in each person's life.
I do know that the imminent danger pay, tax-free income and any other additional payment incentive that a service member qualifies for (all of this is dependent on the location, mission, classification and length of time for the separation) can be used to help ease this burden. In a perfect world, that extra money could be saved, but that is rarely the case. While that money may be designed to pay our spouses for being stationed in an area with active fire, it is often used to maintain quality of life, which goes for both the one away and the one back home.
When my husband deployed, it was the middle of July, which meant that our yard would still need a lot of maintenance. I'm very grateful that my neighbor volunteered to do that for me, but I was prepared to hire someone to come in and take care of it. I could have taken on the responsibility of mowing, but I didn't want to spend all those hours doing it, especially since it was something I really didn't like doing.
Thriving in deployment means having some time to think for ourselves. It means having space to breathe in our lives, often making room for a village. Maybe we hire a nanny to drive our kids from school to practice and back home. Maybe we hire a housekeeper to come in once a month to keep the house from getting too dirty (I know that I tend to put off cleaning for way too long so that it takes twice as much time to clean than it would have if I stayed on top of it in the first place). Maybe we get a meal planning subscription, saving us time from going to the grocery store and easing the mental load of figuring out what is for dinner every night of the week.
As military spouses, we all end up in the same boat. And I am a firm believer that a rising tide raises all ships. We should have a better system at every base to plan meal trains, schedule carpools and help each other handle the not-so-fun stuff that we all have to do. We need to make the effort to show up for one another. Our community is uniquely designed so that we can be the village that we need. But if that is not happening in your area, then help make the change, and until it happens, we can plan to pay for our village until we find it.