Beyond the Article - The Daily Stress Weighing on Military Spouses

(Expanded Article)

As the clock slowly scrolled from 9:01 pm to 9:27 pm, I became more and more anxious with each minute. My husband, a Naval aviator, wasn’t deployed. He was just on the flight schedule. I know he told me he would be landing at 9 pm. Sure, flight schedules can change, but he usually texts me if there is a delay. My panic worsened with each passing minute. And in an instant, he walked through the door as if nothing had happened. It was only then that I realized I had been holding my breath.

As a military spouse, I don’t know how many hours or days or weeks of my life I have spent in a perpetual state of tension. It’s not surprising, nearly everyone I have met in the aviation community knows of at least one person who has been killed in a crash: I went to a Bible study with Betsy. I am friends with Landon’s widow. And those are just the people I know personally. I tried not to think about them, but no matter how well I suppressed their stories, my body had internalized the fear. Even when my husband was in a crash that left his helicopter without rotor blades, I went about life as if nothing had happened. For the better part of his military career, I spent my life with my jaw clenched, shoulders near my ears, on edge, and had no idea what I was carrying until my health was impacted.

The stress the military community holds is not just related to our proximity to deployments or combat zones. It is woven into the fabric of everyday existence.

It wasn’t until I sat down with a friend for coffee, years after my husband stopped flying, that I found out I wasn’t alone.

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

“It hit me really hard about a year after he got off active duty,” Samantha Daniels, CNAS NextGen Fellow and veteran Marine Corps spouse, shared as we sipped our coffee. “I wasn't expecting that.”

Daniels and I first connected because I had just moved to the area and we had similar professional backgrounds. After we got to talking we realized we had both been through the same, all-consuming combination and fear and worry that subconsciously shaped years of our lives.

“Sometimes when I'm driving, I'll notice that I was gripping the steering wheel in a death grip,” she said.

I, too, had similar revelations. I would often catch myself with my shoulders knotted at work. Eventually, my jaw began to hurt from remaining tensed for hours. My wake-up call happened months after my husband’s final flight as a naval aviator when I, run down with stress, was told I had contracted mononucleosis or “mono” a month after our change of duty station. I had mentally hit my wall, and my body paid the price. I have since discovered that Samantha and I were not the only military spouses carrying stress.

Air Force spouse Christine Hinrichs had already been a military spouse for 10 years when COVID-19 hit as she was about to move with her family to a new duty station. She knew how to handle the movers. She knew how to research a new area. She was prepared. But it took their belongings three months to arrive and instead of being able to turn to friends to blow off steam, she was deep in quarantine.

“The day that our goods finally arrived, I started having a lot of pain and itching,” said Hinrichs. When she developed a fever, she tried to go to see the doctor on base but couldn’t get an appointment for three or four days. When she finally went to the ER, she was told, “This is the worst case of shingles I have ever seen.”

Shingles is a painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox that reawakens in the body. Studies show that increased stress can trigger the disease.

“The mind and body are so interwoven that, while you might not be consciously thinking it, your body can be actively responding to it,” shared Dr. Courtney Barber, the 2024 AFI Military Spouse of the Year, Psychologist, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. “In physiological terms, no, there is no difference in how our body responds. The body remembers and reacts accordingly when activated. It typically doesn’t differentiate between the trigger that may ignite the fight-or-flight or stress response. It will innately respond, often with or without our conscious permission.”

Go Beyond the Article

As a Marine Corps veteran who served for 14 years, turned Marine Corps spouse, she was not unfamiliar with being stationed in dangerous locations.

“I'm in a bunker with my daughter and my dog, and you can hear the booms of the intercept outside our window, which was terrifying,” said Hensel.

As a Marine Corps veteran and military spouse, when Liz Hensel found herself in Israel during a time of intense conflict, facing unprecedented challenges with her family, she relied on her training. She was ready to “adapt and overcome.”

“We have to take care of the mission,” said Hensel. “That's just how my brain works. So when we found out that we were coming to Israel, it was very different in that, in the fact that now my kids are involved.”

Become a paid subscriber to read more of Liz’s story and the stories shared by other military spouses that did not make it into the article…