The Long Way Home
One Mom’s Journey Back from War
Jessica Scott
Copyright (c) 2013 by Jessica Scott
All rights reserved
Portions of this book originally appeared on www.jessicascott.net online.
Cover design courtesy of Shawntelle Madison
For more information please see www.jessicascott.net
The Long Way Home
One Mom’s Journey Back from War
Jessica Scott
Contents
Foreword
Coming Home
Prepping for Command
Company Command & The 4th Deployment
The End of the War
Other Books by Jessica Scott
About the Author
Foreword
In 2009, I kissed my children goodbye and deployed to Iraq.
I thought deploying would be the hardest thing I'd ever do.
I was wrong.
Coming home from war is not an event, not a solitary moment on the parade field. I never knew what it would take to walk through my front door and become a mother after a year away.
This is my story of coming home from war. Of kissing my children and learning to be their mom again. Of taking command of my company and growing up from a smart-mouthed lieutenant to more thoughtful commander. Of being a wife at the end of the war.
A mom. A soldier. A writer. A wife.
If you’ve been following the journey thus far, thank you for joining me again. If you’re reading it for the first time, I hope you enjoy.
COMING HOME
2010
Unprepared
December 27, 2009
WHEN YOU GET HOME from deployment, the Army sends you through all this reintegration training. Some of it is worthwhile, a lot of it is a waste of time and even more is a check-the-block exercise. I understand the intent behind it, but frankly, I didn’t need or want most of it. There was, however, one class that I really got a lot out of and it was taught by the chaplains. They discussed reintegrating with your families and I paid attention because honestly, I’ve been worried about reuniting with my kids.
They talked about expectations and reactions and how you and they are different now than when you left home. I knew all this but still I paid attention. There was a lot of anticipation within me about seeing the kids and getting my family back together.
I thought I was prepared.
So when we’re in the middle of a busy rest stop in New Jersey last night and my youngest starts crying out of the blue, I wasn’t prepared to hear why she was upset. She had real, painful tears, the kind of crying that sounded like her little heart hurt. When I asked her what was wrong, she sobbed, “I don’t think you love me.”
It was not a fake cry. It wasn’t a cry for attention. And I had no idea how to react. Instantly, I started crying. In the middle of a rest stop, with people wondering what the heck was going on, I was trying to get my oldest’s coat on her while trying to get my youngest to understand that I did love her and I had missed her.
My husband freaked out when he walked up and saw me and our youngest both in tears. My oldest rested her head on my shoulder and told me she knew I loved her. But none of that helped until I could make my youngest understand.
It was a brutal episode and one I did not expect. They tell you about the babies not knowing you or your grade school kids wanting to talk incessantly but nothing prepared me for my three year old’s confusion and true heartache.
It’s better today. She’s back to normal and so am I, but the pain from last night lingers. So today, I’m hugging both of them more and telling them I love them. I’d already been doing that but apparently, it wasn’t enough to make up for a year of no hugs and no up close “I love you”s. The web cam was good but it wasn’t enough.
I don’t know if I can ever make up to either of them for being gone. I don’t know what else is coming.
And I don’t know that I’m prepared to deal with it.
The Unexpected Mommy Box
January 4, 2010
IN DAVID FINKLE’S THE Good Soldiers, Finkle describes a “Bad News Bucket,” an emotional coping cache that, once filled, puts a soldier near the breaking point. According to Finkle, who heard of the idea from General Petraus (I believe), soldiers need good news in order to drain the bad news they carry around inside them.
When I read Finkle’s description, I thought, this was it exactly. There were days in Iraq where I simply couldn’t handle anything else, that I was barely holding on and needed to get away and pull it back together so that I could continue.
I did not expect this once I returned home but apparently, I have my own version of the bad news bucket: the Mommy Box. I discovered very early on in my deployment that I needed to stay busy in order to keep my mind on the tasks at hand and not sit and mope about my kids. They were happy, they were healthy, and they were in my mom’s more than capable hands. I didn’t need to worry.
What I was doing, apparently, was shoving everything inside the Mommy Box and closing the lid. I shut those emotions down and ignored them.
Except that sometimes, the Box got too full. Like on my oldest’s first day of school. My husband and I both agree that the hardest day on this deployment was missing that event. Birthdays we could recreate. Anniversaries, we would ignore. But the first day of school is something we can’t get back and we don’t get a do-over.
But having put everything aside for the duration, I fully expected to come home and simply go back to normal. I did not expect to be crying the first weekend back with the kids every day for four days. It seemed like I couldn’t stop.
And I also discovered that drinking makes the Mommy Box even harder to handle. Apparently, alcohol unleashes the flood of emotions that I’ve still got boxed up inside me.
I can sit back and pretend that everything is fine now that we’re all home, having hauled the entire family back from the diaspora, but that would be lying to myself. I’m not fine but I am one hell of a lot better now that I’ve got my family back together. There are still a slew of emotions inside me that I still have to handle and I’m sure they’re going to leak out, a little at a time (because I’m not drinking anymore, but that’s another post).
The Mommy Box was set in a corner for an entire year. Now, I guess, it’s time to clean it out.
Banning New Year’s Resolutions
January 8, 2013
I’M NOT ONE TO start the New Year off by saying I’m going to loose fifteen pounds by February 15. It’s never happened before and I’m not sure why I would think starting now is anything different than on December 31st.
But I am a big fan of goals and I’m an even bigger fan of attainable goals. So this year, I’m setting goals and I’m telling y’all about them so at the end of 2010, I can come back and let you know how I did.
Last year, I didn’t really have any goals, other than come home from Iraq and landing an agent. I managed to do both, except that the agent part didn’t really stick. So I’m on the agent hunt again, and that’s okay. And making it home safe and sound from Iraq is an extra bonus that’s a whole ’nother adventure in and of itself.
This year, however, is different. This year, I want to get an agent who really wants me and my body of work as a client and is willing to say “here’s what we need to do, let’s go.” I hope the book I’m working on now will be the book that gets me out there.
This year, I will be better at being a mom. Granted, last year, I had no time to be a mom, other than an absentee one, but this year, I’m going to focus on what’s really important: my kids. I don’t get that time back and they need me more than anyone else does.
The only other thing I’m going to do
is keep reading. I’m absolutely positive that I won’t have the same amount of time to read in the States as I had in Iraq, but I’m not going to give up the passion I was able to rediscover this past year. There are books I’m simply dying to read that are coming out soon and I’m going to read them, not just stick them on my book shelf!
So that’s it. Those are my goals. You might notice I did not put sell a novel on there. I can’t control that. I can’t control if I land an agent, but I certainly hope I do. So we’ll see how it goes.
Does Social Networking Work: Part One
January 11, 2013
AH, YES. WHY ELSE would editors and agents tell authors to get a web page even before they begin querying? Why else would it be one of the first things that publicity departments tell authors with books coming out to do?
But the biggest reason social networking works is because of me.
Not me, me. You, me. The millions of mes out on the net, cruising Facebook and Twitter and Myspace. Maybe you learned about a new author from a friend’s recommendation on Facebook. Maybe you see an author’s comments on Twitter.
But when I was walking through the bookstore yesterday, I was busy scanning for author’s names I knew. These are authors I hadn’t even heard of before I hopped online and decided to reach out to the writing world. Authors who would have been just another name on the shelf now stand out to me. I turn the books of authors I know, of books I love, so that the cover is facing forward on the shelf.
There is also an aspect of loyalty. I remember authors who have sent care packages and school supplies to Iraq. I look for their names.
The name is what matters. The author behind it and the books the author is hoping you’ll buy. This book or that will come and go, but building a brand is what social networking is all about. Building a name so that when a million other mes go to the bookstore, your name is what they’re looking for, either consciously or unconsciously. When they see it, there will be a flash of recognition, followed maybe by a flash of a purchase.
But social networking works. It creates online word-of-mouth but it creates something more: name recognition. Maybe you’ve exchanged tweets with an author. Maybe you simply commented on someone’s Facebook wall because they were having the same kind of day you were.
But social networking works.
Knocked Up
January 11, 2010
YOU KNEW IT WAS only a matter of time before I posted on the controversial pregnancy policy from MND-North’s commanding general of punishing soldiers who get pregnant while deployed. Of course I can’t keep my mouth shut.
First, a disclaimer: I am not questioning this general’s decision. He has smarter people than me advising him and coming up with their recommendations on his policies.
Second, I completely understand where he’s coming from. In his public statements, he says that in the coming draw-down, he needs every available soldier to successfully command and control the battle-space he’s been assigned.
I partially disagree with this assessment. Anyone who has been in the Army for a minute knows that there are folks who get the daylights worked out of them versus those who skate by and who take more time and energy to herd than they can ever possibly contribute to the team.
I do not agree that punishing females who get pregnant is a message that we want to send to our women in the Armed Forces. We make up less than twenty percent of the force. The last number I saw was something like thirteen percent. In my brigade, we had less than thirty females on rear detachment who were pregnant. We had two in my company redeployed from Iraq because they got pregnant while they were deployed.
Full disclosure: in 2003, while in PCS status from Korea back to Fort Hood, my husband and I found out we were pregnant. We lost that pregnancy and a subsequent one. After the second miscarriage, once the doctors cleared me, I was going to go back on birth control. We’d planned on trying again when Iraq ’04 was over. Except that wasn’t in the plan. We somehow managed to get pregnant with our firstborn two weeks after miscarrying the second time.
I was mortified. I was also treated like shit by a couple of key leaders. The female officers I worked with were absolutely amazing in their support. The major who was the Deputy OIC at the time walked in on me sitting in my office at 0600, bawling my eyes out and was horrified. When I told her I was pregnant, she said, “That’s it?” She thought that for my extreme reaction, my husband had been killed or wounded in Iraq.
Some of the men, on the other hand, were less than supportive. The Sergeant Major of my section sat me down and told me that when I miscarried this one, I would be on the first thing smoking to Iraq. Not only did this man, this leader, tell me that I was a disappointment to the team, he told me he was pursuing action against me for deliberately getting pregnant to get out of a deployment. It didn’t matter if it was harsh or untrue. I could not defend myself because I agreed with him. I was a disappointment. I was that girl—the one who got knocked up right before a deployment.
Fast-forward to 2010. I spent half the 2009 deployment in Iraq in mortal fear that my birth control would fail and I would be sent home again, head hung low in shame, pregnant again. Ask my husband. I was neurotic about it.
When one of my soldiers turned up pregnant, I defended her. Shit happens. She got pregnant while she was home on leave. She was still part of the team. She was still a soldier. She had decisions to make but she was still one of us. I slammed an NCO who tried to make her feel bad for getting pregnant.
When another NCO in our company said that one of our females was making up postpartum depression after a miscarriage to get out of deploying again, once more I spoke up. I asked him if he’d ever miscarried. He said no and I told him I had. Twice. Both of them were emotionally devastating. I told him to wait and give her the opportunity to get her head back in the game, then bring her out.
She deployed. She was welcomed back. And no one dared say a damn thing to her about her miscarriage or her reaction to it.
Here’s the thing. No matter how much we try to regulate pregnancy through policy, which is what this general is trying to do, at the end of the day doing, this policy unfairly targets females. Yes, there are absolutely women out there who get pregnant to avoid deploying. I won’t deny that. But statistically, there are also significantly more men who use injury or illness to get out of deploying. Who have family problems. Who go to the First Sergeant and say “my wife is going to leave me if I deploy again.” Why are their excuses shrugged off (as a matter of policy), when females who get pregnant are targeted?
There are a myriad of reasons why soldiers can’t deploy. Most of us will do so. Most have already done so. My unit’s response to my pregnancy in 2004? Put me on orders, regardless of the fact that my leaving did nothing to help their deployable numbers. It was the best thing they ever did for me, but I still carry that shame of missing that deployment around with me. I was that girl. And I am sure my reputation with many of the officers and NCOs I worked with then will never recover from that. Five years later, I still feel the scarlet letter P emblazoned on my chest.
I’m hard enough on myself over that. I do not need some Sergeant Major telling me I’m a piece of shit for not deploying. I do not believe that punishing these soldiers with a local letter of reprimand or with an Article Fifteen is a solution that will result in lower pregnancy numbers. Both are punishments that do not follow a soldier but still have the stigma attached to them, and yes, both can be documented on NCOER and OERs, which then do become a matter of permanent record.
We as an Army must find a way to allow our women to serve without fear of reprisals for something that, even if they are taking steps to prevent it, can still happen. No-sex policies don’t work. I remember sending condoms to a friend in Iraq because she couldn’t get them at the PX. Now, that was a smart policy decision. No sex and no condoms because, hey, you’re not supposed to be having sex. And we wonder why there was a rampant STD problem over there.
So instead of p
unishing women—even married women who are deployed with their spouses—let’s look at making our females, yes, even our pregnant females, part of the team. Let’s figure out a way to put our arms around them and say, “Okay, you’re on Rear-D but I need you while I’m downrange. Here’s how you can help the team.”
What about the argument that says you should plan your family around the deployment. Really? We’ve been on deployments since 2001. The First Cav has deployed every other year since 2004. When are you supposed to have a family? And what about those dual military couples out there who are on opposite rotations and who get less than six months together before one of them ships out again? When are they supposed to have a family?
I understand that the family and Army is a difficult life to juggle. I do not believe that me being a female makes me any less reliable or more reliable than my male counterparts. I do not believe that me being a mother makes me less of an officer. My beliefs are quantifiable because none of my previous supervisors have ever remarked on it, either formally or informally. My ratings have been in the top ten percent of officers and NCOs in the Army.
I will do my best to serve my commander’s needs. I will also do my best to make sure that my children’s needs are met.
Punishing me because my husband and I decide to have another baby is not the right answer. It sends the wrong message to our soldiers, male and female. It targets a problem with a solution that is an excessive amount of force. There is no right time to have a baby in the Army.
And you know what? The Army will replace me. My family can’t. (FYI, Mom, I’m not pregnant.)
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