One thing that we don't talk enough about is toxic leadership in the military.
Journalists write of battlefield wounds and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. We thank service members for their service on Memorial Day and on Veteran's Day, and people post images on social media of Arlington National Cemetery, and of soldiers decked out for combat, wielding guns.
Yet as a military spouse, I have met many men and women who have served in the military, whose greatest challenge in serving is not an enemy combatant from another country, but a fellow soldier who makes lewd sexual comments to them or uses homophobic and misogynistic threats to intimidate them into performing better on the job. ​Public jokes at parties regularly compare men to women in order to put them down (like by giving PMS or menopause medication for men who cry easily), or put female officers down for their capacity to get pregnant. None of the command leadership speaks up.
My husband's last commander issued a vague threat that something bad might happen to our family, if I refused to come to his house for dinner and receive a public lecture about good behavior when we first came to this command. While I didn't come to his house, we felt powerless and on edge until he left for another post, because there is no way to hold commanders accountable for unprofessional or threatening conduct without fear of direct retribution. The process for filing complaints with the Inspector General requires that service members list their rank, gender, and race on the application, so the higher up and/or the more of a minority you are, the more likely it is that the person against whom the complaint has been filed will know who you are when they read what has been written about them.
Even run-of-the-mill procedures to check against abuse of power make it hard for people to give honest feedback on military leadership. A woman I met who served in the army, who is also black, told me that she felt she couldn't reply honestly on command morale surveys (surveys that essentially assess how comfortable people feel with command leadership) if she also indicated that she was a black woman in the demographic section; she was the only black woman of her rank in her platoon.
Why has our government allowed the military to function with little (if any) recourse for safely reporting abuse? Why do we thank troops for their service and express blanket gratitude for what they do, without showing interest in what dangers our service members really face, and asking what we can do to help?
​With baited breath, I follow news of intelligence investigations into ties between President Trump's campaign and Russian officials. On his security clearance, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn failed to disclose payments he received from the Russian government for an appearance on Russian state news during 2015. He then lied to the Vice President about a conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador during the presidential transition period, and waited until months after the fact to disclose lobbying his firm conducted on behalf of Turkish President Erdogan.
In May, journalists produced evidence that Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, discussed the creation of a secret back-channel for him and other members of the Trump team to discuss Syria and other national security issues.
In a recent round of questioning by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Attorney General Jeff Sessions refused to provide a direct, yes or no answer to any of the inquiries about whether he met with Russian officials during 2016.
These lies and omissions are astonishing. The intelligence community has confirmed that Russia meddled with our election process – a cyberattack that some have compared in size and impact only with the September 11 attacks. The urgency for everyone involved in the Trump administration to cooperate with investigators to prevent further attacks has never been greater.
As a military family, my husband and our children endure regular encroachments on our privacy. We are required to disclose each and every one of our close relationships with individuals in countries that are deemed to be security risks to the United States. For me, this is key, because I have lived, worked, and traveled in such a setting.
When my husband deploys, we cannot email one another without people in his command having access to our emails, particularly if the use of certain words flag the computer system to sensitive or "upsetting" subject matter that could ostensibly harm command morale.
Finally, everyone from my husband to random Tricare personnel to airport officials remind me that my behavior, my way of dealing with conflict, and even the way I dress reflect on the military and could impact my husband's job.
The effect of all of this is to make me feel as though I have no private life. The military has big, grabby hands and they require everyone in military families to be transparent about their social relationships.
That the Commander in Chief, his own family, and his team are unwilling to be forthright, honest, and transparent about their own relationships with foreigners is not only hypocritical; it undermines the values of accountability, transparency, and respect for national security that are central to military life. The President and his team's actions make me far less willing to abide by the vague, ever shifting and remarkably intrusive security protocols that intrude on my life.
Over a year ago, I posted a letter I wrote to Michelle Obama's organization, Joining Forces. I detailed many frustrations my family and I had faced obtaining basic health care - frustrations such as a months' long delay enrolling our newborn in Tricare, and in receiving accurate information on the prenatal care available to me as a military spouse. As I was bounced from representative to representative on Tricare's call center, one woman threatened to report my husband to the Pentagon because I snapped at her when she told me that I did not need a breast pump because it was my choice to work rather than stay home with my son. Throughout these experiences, I had no information on where I might file complaints for unprofessional and demeaning treatment by Tricare and its many contractors.
I ultimately learned through my husband that we could phone a separate agency of Tricare North itself in order to file any complaints about Tricare. He and I did so, to no avail. Since I had no way to record the full name of the representative who spoke with me disrespectfully, all the phone representatives from the regional complaints office did was assure us that there was no reporting mechanism to hold service members accountable for their spouses' behavior. Our efforts only resulted in more wasted time on both our parts, and anguish for me.
I recently heard from another military spouse, Saundra Gilbert, who also encountered difficulties with Tricare, such as weeks' long delays in transferring her family between different Tricare regions after a military move; subsequent refusal of both her former and new Tricare office to pay for medical bills; and Congress' refusal to hold Tricare accountable for reimbursing military families in a timely manner, in addition to many other issues.
One issue that I believe is of special importance is the fact that military family members have no way of knowing how to file complaints on their own, independent of a service member. Saundra, an Army spouse learned from her multiple conversations with Senate, Tricare Congressional Liasons and her husband, that Congressional law forbids militaryfrom distributinginformational pamphlets on how to file complaints within Tricare, without the approval of commanding officers. However, it is procedure that if issues cannot be resolved with Tricare a military dependent may issue a Congressional inquiry or place a direct phone call to local state senators for resolution. The irony is that Senate passes the inquiry to Tricare liasons for them to determine if the issue should be resolved. I would be curious to know how federal policymakers justify that rule – is there some sort of security threat posed by making health care systems for military families accountable to the people they are supposed to support? Is this policy set up to fail in order to save taxpayers money?
Unfortunately, this issue of lack of information and accountability for family members is endemic to military culture. The fact that children and spouses have no voice of their own is a glaring problem in that they are often the ones running the show: a friend of mine recently spent weeks trying to learn the details of her family's new posts, only to be ignored by the detailer because they wanted to speak to her husband directly. He, unfortunately, was deployed. Regardless of whether or not a service member is deployed, any military family member directly affected by decisions as intimate as health care or the details of a family move should be able to contact the military and its contractors with questions, and have them answered in a timely, respectful, and accurate manner.
Below is a letter that Saundra wrote to Wisconsin Senator Baldwin in April 2017. Fantastically, Saundra comes from corporate America, where she spent decades working on streamlining programs for a Fortune 500 company. Her letter is an excellent example of citizen advocacy detailing how Tricare can better support military families. After experiencing a series of more problems with Tricare, Saundra expanded her improvement solutions to include the below operational ideas.
Possible Solution - Create Tricare Umbrella Team for Transitioning Families that experience medical issues in transition. This team is responsible for working with regional Tricare plans to ensure payment of all bills are resolved when the family is in transition and that all addresses in medical billing match DERS.
Possible Solution - When a soldier or family member is diagnosed with chronic illness or disability, a Case Management Team should be established and an individual Case Manager should be assigned to manage preapproval and insurance payments.
Issue - Forms and Required to Resolve Issues are not Available to Family Members. Additionally, not all programs are made public to all service members and family members.
Possible Solution – Create an online chat or Phone Support Help Desk due to the Soldier being unavailable or because of duty assignment or deployment. This system can also have an option to inquire for information about unknow programs for assistance.
Issue - Issues are not resolved timely when brought to Tricare's' attention.
Possible Solution - Develop a more effective Issue Escalation Process limiting the number of times that Tricare can reject the claim without requiring the issue to be escalated to the next level of management for issue resolution.
Require Executive Level Engagement after a certain level of failure of resolution.
Issue - When Insurance is still pending with Tricare, Tricare does not provide the solider or family notification of billing concerns or issues. Family is notified when the medical facility has exhausted all avenues of working with Tricare and turns the billing over to the patient.
Possible Solution - Require that Tricare become more proactive in the payment process notifying the patient of the payment issues as well as contacting the medical facility for medical requirements to process payment.
Issue - "Congressional Policy" doesn't always make sense and Tricare is the final decision on whether they should pay or not despite escalating to state Senate leaders. Now, Defense Health System only re-evaluates change based on what Tricare leadership brings to the table.
Possible Solution - A help desk should be set up to take the "Congressional Policy" issues that don't apply in theory. These issues would be escalated to Congress in order to review rather than relying on Tricare to raise the concerns of the users. This help desk could be part of the National Healthcare Reform Committee and their staff or DOD's Defense Health System.
My 2 year-old son and I are down at the waterfront in our town. He knows Daddy is away but he is trying to work out where he's been these weeks. It's occurred to me to bring him to the bay each weekend so that he can talk to him. I buy him a glazed donut from the local bakery and he throws pieces of it into the water to Daddy, like you'd feed a duck. I explain to him that every time we are near water, we are connected to Daddy.
The other day, my son points at the sailboats moored in the harbor.
"Daddy? Inaboat?!" He points excitedly to the sailboats in front of us.
My son is quiet for a moment. I explain, "Daddy is in a boat under the water. Where we can't see him. He's playing a big game of hide and seek."
"Daddy!" he shouts. I imitate him.
"Daddy," he whispers again, still hiding partway behind his stroller. I imitate his exact tone and volume. He has always liked playing games with his voice.
On we go, until we both start to laugh.
The next week in school, he learns about whales and other local fauna, and he learns that whales swim under the ocean. Our story about Daddy turns into a story about how Daddy is playing hide and seek under the ocean, and the whales are playing too. I hear him telling himself this story sometimes as he falls asleep at night. Of course I don't have to explain who Daddy might be hiding from or looking for – it's all a beautiful fantasy, as it should be for a little boy who just misses his father.
The next week, the US bombs a Syrian airbase. North Korea holds a military parade to show off its new submarine-based ballistic missiles, and President Trump warns that the US will take military action to stop Pyongyang's military escalation. I say to my son as we stare at the TV coverage of missiles being paraded through the streets, "The people who run our country don't always agree with the people who run other countries. And they don't always use their words. Sometimes they fight." He looks at me, serious.
At some point, I will need to explain to him that Daddy would be part of prosecuting a war, and that we would be too, by extension. We will have to deal with that moral ambiguity. But not now.
I understand people who want their children to be proud of their parents' service, and who tell them patriotic stories about sacrifice, honor and love of country. I myself don't feel comfortable doing this, any more than I would feel comfortable with my family telling my children in vague, entirely positive, lofty terms about my job. In my heart, there is something exploitative about this – like these discourses of honor and service somehow function to recruit little future soldiers in addition to serving as the way that families cope with loss. In any case, it is only a half truth.
So, I am happy that my little boy has a more childlike story to tell about his Dad. Strangely, this story feels so much truer than the patriotic ones. Most important, it makes us laugh, and in so doing, it helps us to get through the long days.
We recently learned that it costs US taxpayers more than $145,000 per day in security expenses to house Melania Trump separately from President Trump, in New York's Trump Tower.
When my family and I made our last navy move across coasts, an infant in tow, quality childcare was not available at our new post until three months after our move, making it extremely difficult for me to keep my job. Yet I didn't have the option of living separately from my husband in order to ensure I could work and our son continued to receive good care. The government would pay neither for me to stay in our old home, where we had a support network and a good childcare center for our baby, nor for a nanny in our new location. The child care center on base had a waitlist of 11 months. Paying our rent for a few more months so that I could live separately from my husband would've cost the government about $7,500 in total.
As my baby and I waited for a week in our old home for our new home to be ready, sweltering amidst stacks of boxes that the government-contracted movers had yet to pick up, the government would not reimburse us for a hotel room. Doing so would've allowed us to have access to a usable kitchen, furniture, and a well ventilated space. This would've cost us about $3,000 in total.
Taxpayers must pay tens of thousands for one day of Melania and Trump living in luxury in the Trump tower, but they do not pay to allow for a decent standard of living for the families who directly serve our country.
To be sure, if we paid for every military service member's family to weather these changes in basic comfort, the expenses would add up to more than $145,000 per day. But the expenses accrued in maintaining the unnecessary first family residence in New York, combined with the extensive travels of the Trump family, many of them unrelated to governing, would certainly cover at least a large chunk of military childcare and housing expenses that we take on as a matter of simply following orders.
Anyone who voted for Trump on the basis that he would "put America first" should contend with the fact that we have a giant double standard for the way he and his family live, and the lifestyles of people who must put America first every second of every day.
Leading up to this deployment – my first with two babies, while living 24 hours of travel away from my network -- I sought support from various family members and professionals.
I asked the one local psychiatrist who accepts Tricare for advice on returning to antidepressant medications after the birth of my second child. His reply: "I won't treat you unless you sign a document agreeing to follow any of my recommendations during your husband's deployment." He added that these recommendations might include "involuntary inpatient treatment for psychosis." I replied: But I don't have any history of psychosis, and have never required any inpatient treatment before. It didn't matter, the psychiatrist answered: "I've seen many navy wives who fall apart during deployment, and I need to know that I can stitch you together if need be." How scientific of him. He's met me for 10 minutes, he doesn't know me from a hole in the wall, and I must be like all of the other navy wives he has met. I walked out of his office.
My well-meaning in-laws expressed concern over the "heavy responsibilities you will be bearing," and offered to come entertain my older child for a few hours so that I could go for a jog and work on my graduate coursework. This, they say repeatedly in front of my toddler, in a tone that suggests he is a burden and not one of my favorite companions. This, despite the fact that they trashed our home during their Christmas visit two weeks after my second baby was born, and had to be cajoled to perform minor tasks such as changing my older son's diaper or emptying the dishwasher. My in-laws added that it must be "devastating" for Sam and I to miss our upcoming anniversary during deployment and that they hoped I would hold up okay.
She gives a short little laugh, wishes me well, and hangs up.
For me, deployment is not about falling apart, or being overwhelmed by children. It is not about pining away for my husband (I miss him, but it's the everyday companionship I miss, and not his presence on certain dates that I have learned to give minimal weight to). In fact, there are aspects about his absence that make life much easier (fewer people to pick up after, fewer boat-related dramas to absorb at the end of each day, and less stress for the children and I, who never know what time he is going to come and go). And there are other aspects which are hard (no adult to talk to at the beginning and end of each day, more housework and chores to do with two babies in tow, worsening back pain as a result, and no one to advocate on my behalf when Tricare doesn't reimburse or new orders come that don't work for our family). Deployment is about intense physical and emotional stress and isolation, but it is also about renewed calm.
And it is also about realizing new forms of resilience. In fact, one of the most empowering things I have done this deployment is to return to practicing aikido, the martial art. For me, aikido is about finding balance, presence of mind, strength, and flexibility in the face of power and uncertainty. I practiced for three years and stopped after I started dating Sam, when I would jump at every chance to meet him whenever he was free. Then I spent five years working demanding jobs and having kids. Now I realize that aikido was exactly what I needed to hold my ground amidst constant changes in our life as a couple together, and to maintain my identity as an individual (not a "navy wife") regardless of where we are in life.
What I am learning is that deployment is a different thing for every spouse, and every spouse is entitled to deal with it in her way. So please: Ask me what it's like for my spouse to deploy. Recognize the strengths I bring to the whole endeavor. And ask me what it is you can do to help. In-patient psychiatric treatment, constant telephone check-ins by strangers, and visits during which you monopolize time with my precious babies, are not help for me. In short: listen to me if you want to help.
My husband's new boat captain is the kind of guy who revels in the unlimited power he holds over those in his command. He sees military spouses and children as extensions of his wider command, and he interprets this not to mean he should care about their well being, but that they should do his bidding.
Which is why, when I was sick with a stomach bug last week, at the same time that our baby son had a temperature that would not go away, he refused to let my husband take a day off or even leave work before he had completed his usual 14-hour day.
On one particular day last week, when both my son and I were particularly ill, Sam repeatedly asked the captain if he could leave early to care for us. He had finished everything on his desk for the day, and had arrived at work by 4am that morning. Come 5 o'clock, Sam approached the captain for the last time and said, as he had several times before that day, "Is it okay if I leave early? My wife and son are really doing poorly." And the captain replied, "Yes, you can go. As soon as you do x, y, and z." Which kept Sam on the boat until after six o'clock.
Meanwhile, I was hugging the toilet bowl. My feverish baby boy was crying because he was eating alone and could hear me being sick in the next room. And given that we just moved to the area and know nobody, there was nobody but my over-compromised husband to help. The rage and the anguish become too much sometimes.
What gets me the most is this: Sam has no entitlements for sick days or paid family leave. Whether he gets to leave the boat at all lies entirely at the discretion of his higher ups. The Family Medical Leave Act is yet another national regulation from which the military is exempt. The unspoken assumption is that spouses - wives, really - are the ones who will shoulder the burden of caring for their families. This is not only impossible, but it is so deeply unfair.
And to top it all off, today - one of our last Saturdays together in a long while - Sam had to spend the entire day on the boat filling in for the captain, who needs to care for a sick relative. I think that next time I see him, I won't even say anything, not even hello, to avoid even giving him the dignity of being acknowledged.
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is T. and I am the wife of a US naval submarine officer and a new mom. I struggle to balance keeping my family happy and healthy, with continuing my career.
For this reason, I appreciate your work to make careers more feasible for military spouses by relaxing professional licensing requirements as spouses move from state to state, for example. Although I have been able to continue in my full-time position after a cross-country relocation this past month, my family and I continue to lack fundamental services and resources sorely needed by military families, including those with stay-at-home parents: lack of access to health care, child care, and compensation for relocation expenses; lack of basic respect for military spouses and children; lack of information on the rights and entitlements of military families; and lack of access to recourse in cases when the government and the many private contractors to which it outsources responsibility fall short of their commitments. I plan to devote the next years of my career to advocating for better treatment for military families, and I would appreciate guidance from you, as an experienced advocate on many of these issues, as to how to do so.
No access to information or recourse, regarding assignment decisions: In fall 2014 I left my life in New York City to join Sam in Virginia, where he had been assigned to two years of an office job. Shortly after I gave birth to our first child, a boy named M., Sam received a call from a military detailer letting him know he would leave his post six months early, spending those months away from his family training for his next command. He was also told that this command would be located in Washington State. This meant that three months after M.'s birth, I would effectively be a single working mother. To keep our family together, I would need to move away from my job and our friends and family on the east coast. While Sam trained on different bases and submarines for months, I was the only person caring for M.
Sam had told the detailer that my career and our childcare support network were all located in the northeast. He disclosed that I suffer from a chronic medical condition, and require the support of family, friends, and my doctor to care for our family in his absence. We requested a placement in Groton, Connecticut. Washington State was last on our list. Despite the fact that Sam was ranked at the top of his nationwide cohort of officers during his last command, and would have capably executed any job, he was given his last choice of placement. I recognize that placement of service members must be determined first and foremost by national security needs. However, the government should also understand that it will retain good service members more easily if it balances these needs with that of their families.
Most critically, Sam was the only family member able to speak with navy officials regarding our placement preferences and was the only one to receive notice of the navy's decision. I neither received information in writing notifying me of the placement nor did I get the names and contact information of those making these decisions that impinge on my family life and career.
The military has no difficulty reaching me when personnel need things from me: names and contact information of friends and colleagues of mine who may pose security threats due to their nationality; and volunteer work for my husband's command, to name a few examples. However, I have never been contacted with information that I need in order to manage the stressors of military family life.
Lack of adequate childcare. In Virginia, Sam and I planned for his six-month absence. We located a daycare facility that would accept an income-based childcare subsidy for which all military families living far from a military base are entitled through the Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN) program. However, the MCCYN program had designated this facility as eligible for subsidies only for military families of deployed service members – not those who are absent for training purposes. An MCCYN representative said that we did not qualify for the $400 monthly subsidy, despite the fact that Sam was as absent and unavailable as he would have been if deployed. Because I lacked adequate childcare, I routinely turned down opportunities that would have allowed me the chance to advance in my own career; as well as medical appointments to help me recover from a birth injury.
Likewise, when we tried to line up subsidy-qualified childcare in Washington State, we only found childcare facilities near the base and far from the graduate program I plan to attend. My husband works hours that are too long and unpredictable for him to assume responsibility for daycare pick-ups and drop-offs. Therefore, the provisions afforded to our family are useless.
Lack of access to information on health care; lack of specialized health care; and lack of respect by military healthcare officials. During and after M.'s birth, my family and I have been unable to get clear and consistent information on the services available to us under Tricare Standard, the military insurance system for which we pay extra in order to choose providers in the community. For example, I spent 10 weeks of my pregnancy gathering required documents in anticipation of being approved for coverage for an urgent medical treatment that would have mitigated risks to my baby's health and my own, after an administrator at Walter Reed Medical Center told me that I would receive coverage for this treatment. I learned very late that I would not. After this several-month delay, we paid $14,000 of out-of-pocket expenses that we took from our retirement savings, to obtain a service to which military families receiving the basic insurance package are entitled.
Our dealings with Tricare Standard have also been fraught with disrespect, lack of professionalism, and sheer bureaucratic incompetence. During May 2015, I called Tricare Standard's customer service line to inquire about coverage of breast pumps. The Tricare Standard representative asked me why I needed a pump, and I informed her it was because I planned to work and needed to pump breast milk to send with my baby to daycare. This representative told me that if I were going to go to work, I could pay for a breast pump. At this point, I told her most insurance companies covered breast pumps and that it was none of her "damn" business what I did with my income; this was about a basic standard of care. The representative threatened to refer me to a disciplinary committee and that my husband's job would be at stake because of the "rude" way in which I had spoken to her. She then hung up on me. Upon calling Tricare Standard again, Sam and I later learned that no such disciplinary committee exists. However, we also learned that we had no place to file a complaint about this representative's unprofessional behavior, which cast me not as a person bearing rights and responsibilities, but as an accessory to my husband and his career.
After our son M. was born, it took Sam and me approximately 12 weeks to register him to be covered for prescription drugs under Tricare Standard: When M. was 11 days old, he needed medication to be treated for thrush, a painful but common mouth infection. At the pharmacy, they told me that M. had no prescription drug coverage, despite the fact that we had immediately filed the necessary documents to enroll him in military health insurance. We had to pay for the medication out of pocket. We each called the Tricare Standard hotline a total of six times, only to be told that our son was registered with the system, and to learn upon arriving at the pharmacy that his prescriptions would not be covered by Tricare. Sam made multiple visits to the office of the Pentagon Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS). When M. was nearly three months old, Sam finally learned that someone had entered M.'s middle name incorrectly into the DEERS system, a detail that should have been easy to fix, except that no one at the Pentagon DEERS office or the hotlines we called was able to diagnose this problem for us. Moreover, as M.'s mother, I myself had no access to personnel or information to resolve this problem on my own. The hotlines provided to me by the pharmacist were all automated and did not help me to resolve the issue. Had Sam been underwater on a submarine, our baby would have continued without prescription drug coverage.
Requirement to pay for military social events and military relocations; arbitrary separation of service members from their families. During each of Sam's commands, he has been informally required by commanding officers to pay hundreds of dollars on mandatory social events such as dinners out with his crew or fellow trainees. Most recently during his six months of submarine training, Sam paid approximately $200 for lunches and mandatory restaurant dinners on weekends. I could have used this money to pay for three afternoons of babysitting in order to catch up on missed work and go to doctors' appointments. If Sam had not been required to attend these events, he could have come home most weekends to be with us and help care for M., including several weekends when I was ill and needed his help. Mrs. Obama, I would like you to try and imagine being short on cash and childcare, exhausted, ill, and alone at home with your children; while your long-absent husband must dine out with colleagues on your family's dime. It felt demeaning and dehumanizing to me.
During December 2015, Sam had no training or command responsibilities. He could have spent the month at home in Virginia caring for his family and preparing for the upcoming cross-country move. However, the navy required him to physically report to the Washington State base each day. He made repeated phone calls to Pentagon authorities about this. Ultimately, he received their discretional intervention and Sam spent three weeks of that time in Virginia. However, we paid out of pocket for Sam to fly to the Washington military base, "check in," and receive face-to-face permission to spend the remainder of December at home. This cost well over $1,500 in travel, room, and board expenses, as well as an additional week when my son and I could have had a father and husband at home during the holiday season.
Finally, the navy has been unwilling to pay for necessary expenses related to our cross-country move. For example, we were ineligible for either of our small cars to be shipped to our new duty station. In addition, while our furniture was in transit, I spent over a week living in an empty apartment on an air mattress and a pack n' play with my baby, because the navy would not reimburse us for a hotel room. We paid to rent a car for over a week while we waited for my car to be shipped; while I drove our baby to daycare and myself to work in one car; and Sam drove to the base in the rental car. To be sure, the navy did afford us over $3,000 in discretional expenses, but this did not cover the many basic expenses incurred in preparing for and executing our move.
Lack of information allowing us to plan our move. The Pentagon failed to notify us as to when our movers would arrive until a week beforehand, though we told them two months in advance when we wanted to move. After we received the date, they changed it twice, notifying only my husband each time, not me. My husband, sick with worry because he is the one who must constantly relay the navy's bad news to me, delayed notice further. Because of this lack of notice, I had to place everything on hold—work commitments, childcare arrangements, plans with friends and family, and even basic things such as doctors' appointments. Most egregiously, the military would not provide us with a guaranteed delivery date for our belongings. An officer from the base at Fort Belvoir informed us that the latest date our belongings would arrive would be two weeks from when they were shipped. However, the shipment could arrive early, as well, before my husband could make his way across the country. Should that happen, and he was not two hours away when the truck showed up, our belongings would immediately be placed in storage rather than at our new home. We would then be responsible for moving our belongings on our own dime. I asked this officer why this is the case and he explained that the navy contracts moving services to a series of private companies who move a handful of families at a time; and that there is no process for ensuring when moves will be completed.
On the designated move date, one set of contractors arrived to pack our boxes, and left those boxes in our apartment for 48 hours while we awaited the next company to actually move them. The boxes covered our air conditioning vents, and we slept with our baby in a house that was sweltering hot and lacking in ventilation. M. woke up constantly during the night because he was uncomfortable and anxious, and there was nothing I could do to calm him. This was all because the navy was trying to cut costs rather than provide us with a streamlined and swift move by one company.
Sam drove one of our cars out and made our new (indefinitely empty) house livable before reporting to his new boat. He meanwhile tried to book a plane ticket for M. and me through the navy, as we had no space in his small car to drive the whole family out together. Though I looked forward to the date when I could join my family, even this date was in limbo: I could not book a plane ticket myself but had to wait for my husband to arrange with military contractors to book the ticket. I was lucky enough to keep a friend with an extra car seat on standby to be ready to take my son and me to the airport, while I waited for my husband to receive information on the date and time of our flight. She in turn took half a day off from work to deliver M. and me to the airport.
Twelve unnecessary hours at an airport with an infant. M. and I arrived at the airport after the navy emailed my husband a confirmation from Alaska and American airlines detailing our flight information to Seattle. M. and I arrived at check in two hours ahead of our flight. The American Airlines representative told me that the navy had not in fact purchased our ticket, making our reservation defunct. When Sam called the navy to inquire about the ticket, the representative he spoke with told him that there was no record of the previous representative telling him the ticket had been purchased. We were unable to get on the plane, and subsequently had to pay $500 out-of-pocket to fly out 12 hours later. As a mother of two children, you can perhaps imagine what it might be like to camp in an apartment with an infant for a week while working full time, only to arrive at an airport and learn you will need to wait a day for two red-eye flights, at your own expense.
Mrs. Obama, as I begin this new tour of duty with Sam and M., I will volunteer with the command's "Family Readiness Group" because I want to connect with like-minded spouses interested in advocating for change. Yet, in the context of Family Readiness Groups and other military organizations, these women's critiques of the way the system is structured are often silenced by commanders and spouses who accuse them of undermining morale. I will not participate in the usual activities of planning holiday celebrations and organizing care packages for troops. A competent and accountable military bureaucracy would do far more to make families "ready" for the rigors of military life, than would party favors and care packages.
Spend money to move each family individually; guarantee arrival and delivery dates for military families' belongings with sufficient notice, and ensure that these delivery dates occur before the service member in question must report to duty.
Pay all reasonable moving expenses, including car shipments, flights, rental cars, and accommodations while family members wait for their belongings to arrive.
Work directly with service members, spouses, and children to ensure that move and flight dates meet everyone's needs, within reason.
Work to ensure 2-3 days of mandatory paid leave for military spouses who must move their families as part of a service member's new assignment.
Do not make service members pay for their own social events when these social events are mandatory.
Refrain from separating military service members from their spouses and children in cases when they are already on extended absences, and no national security reason exists for maintaining family separation.
Follow through on the military's promise to provide affordable, accessible community-based childcare in all circumstances, but especially when service members are absent for months.
Allow military families access to the same quality and choice of health care available to other federal employees, including specialized health care.
Establish an effective way for families to file complaints when they cannot get clear information on health care or face disrespectful behavior; register their family members for Tricare; or obtain the same standard and range of services as other federal employees.
Make information on military decisions accessible to all family members affected by these decisions, and not just the service member. Give military family members a forum to contest decisions that are unmanageable for them.
Provide clear, accessible, and up-to-date information on the rights and entitlements of military spouses and children.
Are you addressing any of the above mentioned issues, either on your own, along with Dr. Jill Biden and your policy team at Joining Forces, or in conjunction with community groups interested in similar issues? If so, would you please let me know what you are doing?
Do you have additional suggestions for how to go about addressing the problems I name above?
Which of the abovementioned policy goals are most feasible from your perspective, given the current political climate in the US?
Do you have plans to continue your advocacy for military families following the end of your husband's presidency? If so, in what ways?
Would it be possible to meet with you, Dr. Biden, and your policy staff to discuss advocacy opportunities available to military spouses interested in the abovementioned issues? I will be on the east coast this upcoming May, and I would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and your staff.
In closing, the bureaucratic and economic hurdles we have encountered reflect a system that is deeply sexist and toxic to American military families.
A fellow military spouse and I are working to collect the stories of other spouses with similar concerns, including spouses of enlisted personnel. I can only imagine the hardships families with less resources face in a hierarchical and status-obsessed military culture, if Sam and I have difficulties obtaining services given his rank, our graduate educations, and our salaries.
For strategic and ethical reasons, I believe that military policies towards families should be oriented towards making military spouses equal partners in major transitions.
I am eager for your collaboration and guidance on how to move forward.
Sam has begun two years of "shore duty," during which he will allegedly have a 9-6 office job rather than being assigned to a boat. We have been waiting for this since the beginning of our relationship, as a time of respite from the long hours and frequent absences that Sam's last tour entailed. As we waited this past fall to learn where Sam would be working next, the navy changed his job placement three times, to three different locations in the city where Sam is being transferred. If we had already gotten housing, this would have meant that we could've been screwed.
How do families manage when these sudden changes in plans happen? How do you live your life knowing that making big decisions is often counterproductive? There must be plenty of instances when people purchase or sign leases on new places, times when their families give up jobs and pack up their lives, only to learn that the service member is going to be working somewhere else. The wife of an officer on Sam's last ship had this experience; she gave up her job to move with her husband upon his transfer, only to learn that he was being sent overseas. After this, she resolved never to move for him again, and they have managed a long distance relationship and childrearing for years. What is so crucial to national security that a family needs to be moved pointlessly, so many times after already signing over the next several years to a city and job placement not of their choosing? At least, if it is so crucial, they deserve an explanation, which is rarely if ever given.
Then there is the question of timing. We are currently waiting to hear when Sam will be expected to start work—another matter that they have been completely unresponsive about. Sam has written several emails to the guy whose job placement he will be taking over, and heard nothing in response. Needless to say there is no one at the top managing things to make sure that everyone is informed of their work start dates with enough notice—ironic since there are obviously people at the top making strategic decisions about what the navy needs, where and when. We could learn tomorrow that Sam must report for work the next day, in which case we would need to cancel our wedding planning appointments and he would need to leave my apartment, where he is currently staying, to settle in his new city a few hours away. In the military, I've gotten the sense that my life and relationship is shaped by a totally capricious and unpredictable entity that is certainly not god, but that sometimes seems similarly powerful and difficult to figure out.
I suspect that as Sam begins several years of shore duty, there will be other, less obvious challenges to contemplate, such as how, now that he is home, to lead a life that incorporates some of the survival skills and pursuits that I developed while Sam was gone. I started going to yoga three times a week. I was cooking elaborate vegetarian meals for myself, and feeling healthier than I was when I was eating heavier meals with Sam when he was home and bowls of cereal when we lived in different cities and I was trying to pack in work obligations during weekdays in order to free up time with him. I began to write, including this blog but also returning to other academic projects that I had abandoned. I had a clean, pristine apartment.
These are pastimes that I don't want to say goodbye to now that Sam is home. Continuing to pursue this balanced life is difficult, because now weekends and most free time is a compromise when I am either away from home with Sam, or he is in my tiny apartment, filling it up with his things, his presence; and I have to summon my own willpower and sense of independence in order to go to a yoga class or meet a friend after work. Not that Sam contributes to this. In fact, it has always been Sam's insistence that I lead my own life both while he is gone and at home. It is me who wants to maximize my time with him, to be home early for dinner; to spend mornings chatting with him over coffee rather than writing; and to take fewer weekend visits with friends in order to spend more time together.
Shore duty, I suppose, will entail the challenge of finding this balance of my-time interspersed with our-time. Because, I've learned, the issue isn't just that navy life is unpredictable and you need your own forms of stability outside your relationship. Rather, in my efforts to make navy life "work" for us, I've begun to think of everything I do as a survival skill rather than just something that needs to be a part of my life regardless of what my partner does for a living. I realize the pastimes I name above have become just as much a part of military life as Sam's readiness to follow orders whenever they come up.
The task of shore duty is getting myself back into a mind frame when I do things because they are important and I want to, not because I "need" them during this or that part of Sam's career. The difference is subtle, but it is real.