Personal Narrative: My Experience With Military Relocation

Everybody that knows anything about the military lifestyle knows military families move often. This means you will be forced to meet new people; hence, making new friends. Being “forced” to make new friends causes you to be more open-minded. Many of the people you meet at one base you keep in touch even

Growing up as a military child and living all over the world, I was afforded many

With every organization comes a degree of change. The Marine Corps is no different. With a rapidly changing world, we must strive to sustain the transformation and remain true to our ethos. Across the Marine Corps the culture of each unit is different, with sustaining the transformation as our tool we can make each unit better for new generations of Marines. Marine Raider Training Center sustains the transformation by holding quarterly promotion panels to ensure deserving promotions; however it fails to sustain the transformation by not welcoming new Marines to the unit appropriately, I will build a Welcome Aboard package to sustain the transformation for my Marines.

Have you ever thought to yourself “today could be the day I lose everything and everyone I care about?” As a military child I was use to moving but never did I think I would move to a whole new country. Moving to Japan was exciting, yet scary at the same time. I was excited to learn a new culture and language, but scared I wouldn’t fit in. Living on a military base I was surrounded by other military children and of course many Americans. I had an amazing first 2 years in Japan but all of that suddenly changed.

Welcome, in the following paragraphs the strengths, weaknesses, and available avenues of improvement for my first essay will be discussed. The rubric remained vague in the tone for this document so I chose to peruse a more personal approach. In the military after Action Reviews (AARs) are highly valued and carry the connotation of honest, and blunt, reflections of the affiliated action. My MLA formatting was weakest amidst strong overall writing capabilities.

In September of 1993, my mother, Pamela, was stationed in Kuwait. After a few weeks of deployment, she was informed that she was pregnant and would have to return to the states. In April of 1994, in Fort Lee, VA, she met her husband, Richard. A month later I entered the world, and she was given a choice; leave me with a family member and return to Kuwait, or be discharged from the Army. Having already left behind one child she chose to be discharged as well as to settle down and have a family with Richard. Three years later they welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world, and the next year a baby boy. To people on the outside looking in they were a perfect family, but looks can be deceiving.

Being raised by a Military family is what had to shape me the most growing up. With my Dad gone overseas, I was strictly only raised by my Mom. However, there was another contribution to what has shaped me to who I am today as well. Since we were Military, we were moved from Texas, 1,158.4 miles away to Georgia. This impacted my growth in the fact that my Mom, my Sister and I, were alone. All of my extended family lived here, scattered throughout Texas.

My army career was right on track. I had been in the army 3 years at this point, coming up on 4, and already had completed air assault school, been awarded my expert infantry badge, and had one 15 month deployment under my belt. I was assigned to the scout platoon sniper section and was waiting for a sniper school packet to get final approval from the company commander. I had been studying for the sergeant promotion board for months. I knew that study guide like the back of my hand, I knew whatever question I was asked by the command sergeant major I would have an answer for. I went to the promotion board that morning and blew it out of the water. My dress uniform was perfect. No one was able to find a single deficiency. The soldiers creed

The aspect that related to me the most this week was the chapter on relocation. My relocation was actually pretty self-centered in that I wanted to be close to my family after having a child. I remember growing up in Kankakee and coming back for a year after undergraduate studies and having big dreams for the city of Kankakee, but none of these dreams were involved with my decision to move back. When Perkins opens up with the chapter of relocation there is a statement that stood out to me in regard to this matter. “Of the three R’s that anchor the guiding philosophy of the Christian community development movement, relocation is clearly the most distinctive and troublesome.” (Perkins, 75) Relocation to the Kankakee area was easy, because

Military families move an average of every two to three years, which means approximately 500,000 military children change schools every year. ( website 4). Some changes in moving to different duty stations for children are; a change in housing, friends, schedules and routines, teachers and schools, and activities. That is a lot of change these children have to go through every two to three years. All of this change is caused to have mental health problems compared to children who don’t ever have to move(website 4). Moving around can cause children to have depression and anxiety. Military children can feel anxiety over new schools and whether they'll make friends, in addition to their grief at being separated from old friends.(website 5). The

I joined the Marine Corps looking for a challenge. I wanted to open doors for a new career and longed to have a positive impact on the world around me. Looking back five years later, I realize I found all that I originally sought, but I’ve also found something profoundly satisfying and meaningful that I never knew I was missing.

Growing up, as per most military families, we were constantly on the move. I learned to make friends quickly as well as readjust to new school systems and climates

Deployment and Reintegration is one the greatest challenges military families and children have to face on a daily basis. When a family member deploys or reintegrates within the entire family, it not only affects the service member but it affects the entire family. It can often lead families and children with a negative mental health and wellbeing. Bello (2015) reported that most families and children (80.5% required less than one month to adjust to the return of their deployed parent. In this finding, the families and children were quick to adjust to having their family member back in the home. The findings are interesting because when compared with another family, the findings are drastically different. Boberiene (2014) found that three out of every four families feel that reintegration after the first three months is the most stressful phase of a deployment. This is because the family experiences many emotions while the member is away. In the first statistic, families and children didn’t require as much time to adjust to reintegration as much as the families did in Bobriene’s study. This shows that all families and children handle reintegration differently and some may require more time than others. The situation in Boberiene’s study is similar to what Chandra (2009) had said about families and children, she stated that the number of months for deployment had a huge impact on how children handled reintegration. Although reintegration may seem like a joyful and positive

I have spent my entire life as a military child. When you move every three years, and take at least a year to begin making friends, you tend to spend a lot of time alone. By the time I finally had a few good friends, it would be time to move again. Each move brought a new home, new neighborhood, new school, new church, new scout troop, and more old friends left behind. By the time I finished the fifth grade, I had been through three elementary schools and

It all started in 2012, I was only a mere 12 year old. I found out I would be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, my moms job was transferring and I would be moving in just a few short months. I was terrified, I realized I would be starting a new school where I knew absolutely no one, having to start all over again, but most importantly I would be leaving my best friends, family and everything I had ever known. It’s a scary thought especially since I had never even moved houses before. I spent the next few months stressing out and slowly saying my painful goodbyes. My last day of school was the hardest of all, I slowly went around to all the people I grew up with saying goodbye, knowing i’d never see the majority of them again. I moved only a few days after that. I spent the majority of that summer in my new house with no friends, crying and freaking out about starting at my new school. It wasn’t until a few weeks before school started that I made my first friends on my new soccer team.