Diary of a soldier's wife and mother.

Hi, I am an Australian mother of three and Early Childhood Teacher.  Back in 2007 I was married to a soldier, our daughter was 5 and son 14 when he went on his last tour.  He'd been on two tours before for 6 months since before we were married.  I will share parts of my diary from different times he went away, in the hope that other mothers and wives of military men might find solace in my story and some tips on dealing with feelings and children diagnosed with A.D.H.D on your own.  I will give an exert each week when I have time.

Sat 12/01/07
"It's like daddy is dead", said a little voice from the backseat of the car as we drove home from daughter's prep class on a Friday at the end of her first week at school.  The words hit me in the back of the head like a lightning bolt.  This was the way my daughter was expressing her feelings towards her daddy's leaving to do a six month stint overseas with the Army.  He had left a few weeks earlier and previous to this she had a very tight bond with her daddy, who although worked long hours and had been away before for a few weeks, was her hero.
 I held back tears and tried to use words that would soothe my daughter and explain why she may be feeling this way, but it wasn't easy.  "Jeez, this is hard!" I said to my mum later.  Although I knew it wasn't going to be as hard for me as it now was for Amber 'daddy's girl', as I had done this before when I was working, studying and caring for my young son, who had been diagnosed a year before with ADHD and Dyslexia.

The army issue booklets for families for when a loved one goes away describe the feelings you may have as if you going through a grieving process with different stages: sadness, frustration, anger and finally acceptance.  I'm not sure how my senses have survived three doses of this, but I am not unlike many women and men around the world every day who's partners go away with the forces and in comparison my job at home is nothing compared to what they deal with every day as well as missing home.

My next blog will outline a time in my life when I was home with my young son and the time before Jarrad goes away and then managing his second tour overseas.  We had been together only 10 months and living together for 6 or so.