When my high school sweetheart, Jeremiah Johnson, told me he wanted to join the Air Force, I had a mixture of emotions: pride, excitement, support, love… abandonment, anxiousness, doubt, and fear. W hile emotions are fickle and fleeting, they can seem all-consuming when in their throws, but because the greatest of these is love, I made the decision to stay committed to the man I love. He joined the Air Force, we got married, and we haven’t looked back since. Two kids, 18 years, and four enlistments later, we are still enjoying our life journey together. This journey has taken many twists and turns, including detours and delays for my own professional advancement.
The demands of being a military spouse and mom are often incompatible with the desire to have a professional career, and this incompatibility first made itself evident after the attack on 9/11. I can remember the morning of 9/11 vividly. At that point in my career, I was still in school at LSU-S majoring in education, and Jeremiah was well into his first enlistment with the Air Force. That 9/11 morning I was going to my Tuesday math class when news of the attack broke on the radio. I got out of my car a bit stunned and confused, and I went to class not knowing how the world was changing. After class, I returned to my car and turned the radio again. As the story was unfolding, I began to realize the seriousness of the event, and as a young Air Force wife, my thoughts immediately turned to thoughts of, “What will this mean for Jeremiah?” I quickly drove home and woke Jeremiah up. As was common, he had worked a night shift the night before manning the Barksdale flight line. When he got up, we turned on the TV and together we watched reports detailing the attack on our nation. It was in that moment that the realization sank in. My era of wartime wife began.
Thankfully, Jeremiah returned safely from all ensuing deployments, but there is one deployment in particular that was especially hard for me. In 2002, Jeremiah left for one of his tours, and two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant with our first child, Jacob. By the time he got home, I was over halfway through the pregnancy. It was not long after Jacob was born that I realized the responsibilities of being a military spouse and mom had to take priority over my own professional progression. In the fall of my senior year at LSU-S, I resigned from classes in order to focus all my efforts and energies on my family, which by that point was about to again increase to include our daughter, Anna. Taking a break from my professional path to focus on my family was a wonderful blessing, but admittedly, it was a major blow to my goal of being a first generation college graduate and high school teacher. It was important that I take time to prioritize my responsibilities; it wasn’t my time to push for professional progress, but I knew eventually my time would come. At that point, I promised myself that no matter how long I had to wait, I would return to school, complete a degree, and have a career of my own.
Our military adventures soon took us from Barksdale Air Force Base to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, TX. When our children, Jacob and Anna, were old enough to go to school, I started back to school myself. The education office on Sheppard AFB was a source of information and support, and they understood what it means to be a military spouse who desires to have a personal career. Despite the setback of losing many course credits when transferring, I made good on my promise to myself to finish a degree. It took support from Jeremiah and the military community at Sheppard AFB, but with those support mechanisms (and lots of prayers and coffee), I was able to finish. After graduating with my bachelor’s degree, I went on to teach in a high school whose population was predominately military children. I even continued my own education to finish a master’s degree, but just as our roots were taking hold, it was time to move again.
The Air Force brought us full circle back to Barksdale AFB where I again had to redefine myself as a professional in the field of education. While my first ambitions were to be a high school teacher, I have since discovered a knack for helping others advance their professional careers. As part of my current job, I now get to help other military spouses, as well as active duty service members, navigate professional advancement while managing the responsibilities of military affiliation and/or parenting. I get to do this through the Barksdale Education Services Center where I work for Northwestern State University. This is the very same type of education office that helped me regroup and achieve my college graduation goal at Sheppard AFB. Because I have been on the receiving end of this type of support, I understand how valuable and necessary it can be. I am able to empathize with the military spouse, droopy-eyed parent, or later-in-life learner and I love that I get to help others along their educational and professional journeys.
Since shifting from teaching high school to working in higher education, I have continued to feed my love for learning. I have surpassed my original personal goal of obtaining a bachelor’s degree to include finishing a second master’s degree and a Doctor of Education degree. There have been many, many moments spent struggling to find a balance between being mom to Jacob and Anna, wife to Jeremiah, employee to my employers, teacher to my students, and graduate/postgraduate student to my professors. It would be a lie if I said it was all easy or always pleasant. I have often reminded myself that anything worth having is worth working for, and each of these responsibilities represents a labor of love.
It’s always interesting to look back on experiences to see how far you’ve come and the things you’ve overcome. Having experienced the compounded responsibilities of being a military spouse, mother, educator, and student has prepared me to help others plot their own paths to success while juggling competing duties.