Over a week of deployment done now but blimey it feels like it was the longest week ever. I find being reflective on the week that has past and looking back a little emotional because you realise being strong can be exhausting then I seem to sob through writing each post.

Deployment is such an emotional journey isn’t it

I was pretty broken at the beginning of this week and kept having to hide in my bedroom to have a little cry because I really don’t want our daughter to see me upset, she’s a teenager, she’s doing her GCSEs, she needs to feel like I’m here to catch her when she wobbles. She has actually been a ray of sunshine for me this week making me giggle at times when I felt really empty and sad…..don’t worry she is a typical teen and the rest of the time I’m picking up her wet towels off the floor and being a personal taxi service but there were real moments of lovely this week with her.

It just so happened that the end of last week I had to go away for work with the charity to speak at a conference in Harrogate about service children in education, the distraction was probably quite welcome and it broke the cycle of being sat at home intermittently crying. I was prepared for the speech, I was prepared for the workshop I was delivering but I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel hearing lots of people speaking about military life and the affect that can have on our children.

I stood up to speak in front of 130 people and I got emotional.

I did manage to compose myself and deliver the speech I wanted and everyone was very lovely to me afterwards. What it made me realise is while we are going through a deployment or separation period it is always bubbling under the surface, we just become really good at suppressing those feelings and emotions, someone said recently “we are like volcano’s waiting to erupt” that is how I feel right now. I’m walking a tightrope of emotion and it could just be a sad song playing on the radio and I feel that wave coming up within me.

Outside of the deployment it’s been a strange week because my husband was promoted…great, looks like a posting is on the cards…..not so great, looks like a 6 month tour then straight into 10 months married unaccompanied because of schooling….really not so great. All the decisions, all the what ifs, all the scenarios, yet I am on my own with no answers and unable to regain any kind of control, my brain is frazzled with overthinking it all.

I am desperately trying to tell myself; what will be will be and we will all be ok in the end

Finally got an address for my husband so could send out a parcel of a few things I had been collecting up, of course I couldn’t find a shoe box anywhere so it ended up having to be shoved into a cat food box I had to dig back out of the wheelie recycling bin! Dutifully weighing on the kitchen scales as I went to make sure it didn’t go over 2kgs!!!

What I have been reminded of is the people we surround ourselves with is really important to how we cope, quality over quantity. I received some beautiful cards, messages and flowers with words that mean so much from the ones who mean the most and one of my neighbours popped in with a bunch of daffodils “because I know you hate Sundays when he’s away” so special and those people will get me through and be my rocks, some live near and some live far but you can still draw strength from those people. I have come off Facebook at the moment too, I just feel I need to not be seeing what everyone else is happily doing with their family Sunday afternoons and everyone I need is very much in my every day.

This; the blog and the Little Troopers community is also very important to me and has been such a support, we really are all in this together and if you have lived and breathed this you totally get that feeling in your tummy you just can’t explain. So thank you from me to you for helping me through this week and I so hope these blogs and my daily deployment diary over on Instagram is helping you. Have a good week!

Lots of love, Louise xxxx

p.s My husband sent me a picture of the pillowcase I gave him in his room on tour, I blogged about it before deployment HERE