As we close out discussing the issue of military spouse employment, I want to leave us with two reminders: Be brave and be bold. I know it's cliche to say, but it's true. I also know that we frequently need to be reminded of our capacity and qualification when it comes to certain things. I certainly need to be reminded of this often, so if you allow me, I'm going to preach to myself for a moment, and maybe you'll get something out of it too.

While there are a lot of resources when we want to determine our dream job, much of that decision-making will come from our own self-reflection. For those of us that are not ready to reach out to someone specifically for advice in this area, then internal reflection is a great place to start.

You may have noticed that the Monday post about questions we can ask ourselves to help figure out what kind of job we want, did not go up. There are a lot of reasons for that. There are a lot of excuses for it. But the reality is I was not organized enough and backed myself into a corner.

I have been watching Army Wives and find myself increasingly angry at Trevor. He seems to take every opportunity to become an example of the worst way to be a soldier supporting a spouse's dreams. Here's a little backstory for those who haven't watched the Lifetime television show that aired from 2007 to 2013. It tells the story of five military spouses living on an Army base in Charleston, SC. We follow each couple through a series of trials, and the spouses lean on one another when being married to a soldier hurts.

Chasing our dreams and balancing parenting can mean that we have to get creative when it comes to childcare. While the military resources can be helpful, sometimes the best solution is relying on our partner. And when that doesn’t work, we have to get a little unorthodox with our plan.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, the military has made strides to offer better childcare services, and the civilian world has also worked in some ways to lower the costs and increase accessibility for military families. When we think of the ideal place for our kids, it usually has a specific set of values, goals, availability, and cost. A nanny may be perfect for one family, while another would prefer an in-home daycare. Each family is different, and we want to make sure that we create accessibility across all areas. Whenever the time comes to accept our dream job, we need to know there is a plan in place for someone else to take over the responsibility of our kids during working hours. So here are some of the benefits I have discovered when it comes to being a military family looking for childcare.

We cannot accurately address the military spouse employment issues without talking about childcare. Even if we know the exact job we want and have all the tools to acquire it, the point is moot if we don’t have anyone to watch our children. When I was younger, I had a VHS tape of songs by Joe Scruggs, and one of them was called What Do They Do With The Children? It told the story of a child getting lost at a grocery store or baseball park and wondering what they do with the children after everybody goes home. It ends with a security guard or employee helping the child reunite with their parents. But as parents of children now, we are left to ask the same question: what the heck do we do with them when we need to work?

When we talk about a solution to the unemployment and underemployment of military spouses, we need to ensure we find a solution that works for us when the military fails. The Department of Defense, Congress, and the military seem to be attempting to solve this issue. Frankly, they have to in order to properly maintain the all-volunteer force. But we have been in this life long enough to know that we cannot depend on this support appearing anytime soon.

I know that the list of issues affecting the military community that I shared on Wednesday may not seem directly related to dreams. But here's the thing, anything that affects our quality of life also affects our ability to conceive of and achieve dreams. So with that, we will spend the next little bit talking about each of these issues in depth. If there is ever an issue that you feel we don't cover, let me know through the contact form or social media!

With my newfound commitment to focusing on the community that I want to serve, let's talk about the issues actively impacting military families, how those problems affect dreams, and how we can overcome those obstacles. Today, I want to discuss the top issues affecting active-duty military spouses. These ranked as issues for the national guard, reserve, and veteran families as well, but I will primarily focus on active-duty spouses since that is what I am living in right now.

In case it hasn't become abundantly clear to you by now, I am making this up as I go. I'm not making it up in the sense that I am just winging it when it comes to writing. But I am making it up because I am figuring out what I am doing and what I want to be doing along the way. I want you to see that I am in the trenches right beside you. I am figuring out my dream as I go. I start on a plan, realize I need to pivot, allow fear to take over, overcome that and make progress, only to start the cycle over again.

When writing Wednesday's post, I realized that I had overlooked an important aspect of discovering a dream. It's not enough to find the dream. We must then accept it. This topic is tricky because it sounds like something inherently easy and obvious. We think that when we find our dream, it will be a perfect fit. We believe it will feel like the puzzle piece we've been missing all our life. And hopefully, it will, but that's not always the case. When you finally discover a dream (and this is not for every dream), there is a period where you have to decide to accept this dream into your life. It's almost like the dream is standing at your front door, and like a vampire, you have to invite it in. It won't come in of its own volition, no matter how much it feels like it was made for you.

I want to wrap up our conversation on fear (for now, at least) with where I am today. We started the conversation with where I was seven months ago, so it seems right to finish with where I am right now. Fear is still here. It's always going to be here. That's just a fact of life that we have to live with. Even if we stay in our comfort zone, fear will still exist. Our imagination will still run wild thinking about the scary things that lie just beyond our comfort zone. We can fake that what we feel is fueled by ignorance or ego, but that is just a clever mask that fear uses.

I hope yesterday was a great day for all the fathers out there. As promised, that Mother's Day post wasn't just for moms. In many ways, moms can struggle to chase their dreams while balancing the responsibilities of kids, but when it comes to military life, all non-serving parents face the same struggles. We all deal with separations. We all deal with solo parenting. And we all deal with plans changing on a dime. Our spouses are getting to chase their dream of military service, but it can often be hard for the member back home to pursue their dreams. So this Father's Day, let's talk about how the dads can find a way to chase their dreams while their spouses go serve.

Sometimes it is hard to tell when fear is talking to us. We don’t always get that red flashing “do not enter, it’s scary here” sign. We aren’t necessarily talking about the fear that we feel standing outside of a haunted house or staying up all night with the lights on after watching a scary movie (I say this, not from experience, because I am definitely a scaredy cat when it comes to these things so I stay away entirely).

I hope you've taken the time to identify the fear or fears that you're struggling with. If not, I highly recommend reading my previous post on identifying fear because the first step to fixing any problem is knowing what it is. It's tough to help someone get where they want to go if we don't know where they're at first. I want to talk about a few tools to use when fear is holding us back from chasing our dreams. These are some methods that have worked for me, but fear will always be part of our lives.

Fear will come into our lives, and it can exit our lives. We aren’t too young to have fears now. Most of us passed that age a long time ago. Fear can be a very real aspect of our lives. Our every fear is there because we have taken the time to learn it, though. Whether we learned that fear through a life-changing incident like a snake bite or through an ongoing education on poisonous snakes and where they lurk, every fear can be learned and unlearned.