Oh, what joys PCS season brings. Truly, who doesn’t love packing up and moving every 2-4 years?! Packing up your whole life and relocating only to do it again and again and again. It truly does put a big smile on my face. And don’t even get me started on the crippling stress of it all; the goodbyes, shipping pets, hotel stays, and unsettled feelings that encompass the grand ole’ PCS move. Joking aside, ask any military spouse about the PCS process and I can almost guarantee a similar sarcastic response.
I used to love moving and I found the whole process exhilarating but 11 years and two kids later, I’ve lost that loving feeling. For me, it’s not just the logistical or financial aspect of a PCS that overwhelms me, but the “aftermath” when the dust settles, and we’ve made it to the next duty station.
I’m talking about the seismic shift to life as we know it; finding a new balance, routine, and a new “normal” overall. Finding new friends, new schools, new neighborhoods, new jobs, and more depending on what corner of the world we’ve been shipped to.
PCSing is so much more than simply packing boxes and hopping on a plane or loading up a U-Haul. There’s a massive emotional and mental aspect that affects everyone involved, whether they’re 2 feet tall or 5 feet.
Granted I’ll be honest, my 5-year-old and 2-year-old seem to be handling things better than I am since we made the big hop across the pond back in January. However, our move looks slightly different than our typical change in stations. We moved in with my parents for two months, I had a new baby, and my husband left for two months. My daughter started a new school in the middle of the year, jumped into ballet, and is thriving.
To be completely transparent, I’m an emotional, stressed, and hormonal mess who’s struggling to adjust to living back home with my parents and solo-parenting three kids. But it’s fine. I’m fine.
Any move is such an adjustment, and every family has their unique circumstances that make the situation more challenging, and everyone handles change differently! Simply put, it’s hard. And I’ve never actually stopped to think about what exactly those circumstances are that make finding a new “normal” and adjusting so difficult until recently.
It is like starting over and building a new life everywhere you go and when you sit with that and think about it, that’s a lot to have to do every two to four years. I think about civilian families who have lived in the same town or city for decades, I grew up living on the same road for 20 years. There’s simply no way a military move doesn’t affect an individual’s mental and emotional well-being and this simple fact is what makes finding “normal” at every new post that much harder.
Everyone eventually finds their footing and settles in. It may take a year or so, but we all get there and when we do, we thrive because that’s what military families do.
