All the doctors, the nurses, the blood draws, the ER filled with sick children including our own would have destroyed him if he hadn't steeled himself against it. But, one look at me would have knocked down that stoic wall he worked so hard to build, protecting him from the reality: our baby is sick, very sick, and we can't fix it.

If you needed an affirmation about the lifecycle of intolerance, this experience proves something: it is taught.

During my time as an army wife, many conversations started this way. A non-military spouse, especially during times of deployment or when facing a big transition, would say these things. 

I’ve struggled with how our choices will affect our kids in the long run, and like any mom I dwell on the various ways I may or may not have messed them up.

With much of today’s media coverage of the military being graphic and somewhat scary for kids, Burleson believes providing positive opportunities to meet service members is important for establishing a healthy sense of national pride.

I am the child of my mom. I came here through her, and long ago she carried me, and she looked at me with hope. She held my neck so that it wouldn’t break, she fed me, and she sang to me.

I realized that I’m not me without them—all the women who have been and will be in my life. The women who’ve known me since childhood, for many years, or for just a few months. The women who’ve shared laughs, clothes, drinks, rants, insecurities, tears, hand sanitizer, and evites.

The following day, the eight-year-old, the most sensitive of our children, asked if we were getting divorced. I thought back to the awful things my kids had witnessed, the ugliness between the two people who love them most, and felt awful and guilty.

You’re a big boy now, people say. You don’t need to crawl into bed with Mama in the middle of the night anymore.

Stay the night in my ex’s house? At the invitation of his fiancé?