Dear Mollie,

I am an Army girlfriend and my soldier is returning from Iraq in October. This is our first deployment! Do you have any tips, advice or information on what I can except? Is there anything I can do to help make his adjustment easier?

-- US Army Girlfriend

Dear US Army Girlfriend,

Excellent question! Best advise I can give you is don’t come out of the shower with a towel on your head.

Ok, joking aside. The best advice I can give you is to not have to have high expectations. The "reunion" phase of the deployment cycle can be the hardest because you both have changed and it can be difficult getting back into old reunites. Don’t bring up anything negative or upsetting for the week. Like, "This hurt my feelings when you wrote me an email that said blah blah blah."

Let him get settled to being back in America before you blast him with nagging. Also, don’t push him to talk about what he did or saw. Let him come forward with that info in his own time. I tried to have as much of my husband’s favorite things around to make him comforted. That could be foods, drinks, Netflicks of his favorite shows, anything like that. Expect him to be a little tired and maybe with drawn, but really every one is different. I found it was just easiest to follow my husband’s lead. Take your time and just enjoy loving each other up!


Semper Fiesty!
Mollie

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