Deployment can be tough on families, especially when staying in touch is hard. Communication helps ease the pain of your spouses absence, so most military family’s have many ways to stay in contact despite miles of distance. If your spouse is deploying for a long time, try doing a few of the following to keep communication strong.
Private Blogs/Emails
Blogs are great because they can be customized to be accessed publicly, or privately by select few people. Emails are a great because they’re instant – from your outbox to their inbox in no time. Both serve as wonderful ways to stay in touch when schedules don’t coordinate, when plans flex and when it gets tough to make same-time communication work. Both parties can write to each other on their own time, whether it be the middle of the night when the other is sleeping, or first thing in the middle of the day on a lunch break. No matter what, there’s no limit to how much or how little you write, and you can include pictures, videos, and a number of other things for them to enjoy.
FaceTime/Skype
When your spouse is in a location that conveniently has a strong Internet connection, FaceTime and Skype are wonderful ways to be together without actually being together. Phone calls these days have given way to face to face communication – a dream come true for deployed soldiers and their spouses holding down the “home fort”. This type of communication is key for young children, who adapt to the return of their parent faster and easier having seen their face many times.
Letters
It doesn’t matter what year it is, there’s nothing quite like snail-mail. Even though we do live in an age where – quite frankly – snail mail isn’t necessary, there’s something uniquely special about it… the personal nature behind it, the surprise of it, the romance of it. Even if you do have the ability and convenience of staying in touch via today’s wonderful technologies… we urge you to utilize regular postal mail on a regular basis.
There’s nothing that will put a smile on your spouses face more than hearing their name called as mail is passed out, or walking to the mailbox to find a personally addressed envelope to their beloved. Send pictures, spritz your perfume on the paper, write beautifully… writing letters is an art – one that is much more appreciated when there’s great distance between you.
Thankfully, we live in an age where technology has made deployment easier than it used to be… days where months of waiting went by before a handwritten letter (the only communication that’s been had), makes it into the hands of an eagerly awaiting spouse. Deployment is hard, no matter what way you look at it; the great news? Between handwritten letters, Skype and FaceTime, blogs and email… you should have no problem at all exchanging regular words and sentiments across the oceans that separate you.
