Editor's Note: Military Spouse Appreciation Day is today. In observance, the 1st Infantry Division Post is featuring a story about Sarah Young, a military spouse of 11 years. Sarah and her husband have three children and have survived five deployments and five moves.
FORT RILEY, Kan. -- One day before her 30th birthday, with a 1-month-old in her arms and less than a year since she had said, "I do," Sarah Young bid her husband farewell on their second deployment as a married couple. She didn't hear from him for several months.
"We spent our first year of marriage basically apart," the military spouse recalled.
When her husband returned, they moved to their first permanent change of station as a Family.
"I don't know what everybody else's first PCS felt like, but oh my stars," Sarah said, her lilting Southern drawl stretching out the words to emphasis the humor in the situation. "Faith is putting all of your junk in a truck and watching it drive off."
Reintegration can be a wonderful, yet stress-filled time as Soldiers and Families get used to one another again. On top of that Sarah and her husband, Maj. William Young, executive officer, Division Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, were essentially newlyweds when he redeployed, with a new baby and a PCS that took Sarah farther away from her parents than she'd ever been.
"It was just a tough time," Sarah recalled. "Basically, I just decided that I was going to make it work ... I sat down and decided that I had to just put up or shut up. Then I kept going."
That drive to keep going helped the couple grow closer and stronger, but topsy-turvy times still lay ahead.
When the couple was trying to get pregnant with their second child, Sarah had a timeline all planned out. However "Mother Army," as she calls it, had a different timeline in mind.
The Army's timeline found Sarah traveling from Fort Huachuca, Ariz., to Fort Bragg, N.C., about eight months pregnant and with an 18-month-old toddler, while her Soldier remained behind to finish out a school session before joining Sarah at his new duty station.
Sarah stopped every three hours on her doctor's orders, walking five times around her car with her first child in tow.
"That was how I taught (my oldest child) to count to five," Sarah said. "Then we would get back in the car and keep going."
Again, she kept going, kept moving forward, all the way to North Carolina.
"Did I mention it was hurricane season?" she said laughing.
Hurricane Frances was her welcome mat, wreaking havoc on the area.
"It was a mess. It was an absolute mess," she said.
Sarah's war stories from the homefront continued to rack up. With her husband still in Arizona, the loan for their house, the one that Sarah had just moved into solo, fell through.
"Sweet mother of all that is holy, are you kidding me?" was her response.
Another house became available three doors down, and Sarah, just back from the hospital after delivering the couple's second child, watched as her husband and a few friends moved all of their possessions down the block.
"Welcome to my Army life," she said with a laugh.
Today, Sarah said she can laugh about it, but the stress of multiple deployments, moves, raising three kids -- all two years apart -- and having her husband gone much of the time ate at her. And she at it.
"I spent way more time than I should have face down in my cookies," Sarah said. "I don't mean that figuratively."
Sarah had a wake-up-call when she applied to participate in a military spouse fashion show and wrote her measurements and weight on the form.
"I looked at it on paper, I'm like 'Oh my gosh, I weigh this, and I wear this. Oh my gosh,'" she said. "That was it. I was done."
Sarah started examining her eating habits and making changes. As weight started coming off, Sarah started looking at her mental habits as well, at how she dealt with upset, frustration and worry.
"I started learning how to deal with all of that … It turned into a whole other barrel of monkeys. I unearthed a lot of junk," she said.
Yet she kept going.
That drive helped her navigate through more rough patches, she said. She sought help, got on medications, opened up to trusted friends, continued replacing bad habits with healthier ones and eventually got off medications. None of it was easy, she said, adding that she often battled feeling like a failure as an Army spouse for needing help.
"I learned more about myself, and I learned how better to deal with things," she said. "And, I think it's important as we grow -- it sounds so corny, but it's really true -- as we grow as military spouses, we learn how to deal with things differently."
Odd as it may sound, Sarah said she became grateful for the hardships.
"I'm grateful for having had all these different steps," she said "I was exactly where I needed to be in exactly the right spot every single time."
The hardships helped Sarah find a sense of identity beyond being a mother and a spouse, she said.
As she stretched her boundaries and explored new arenas, she discovered running. Her husband had tried to get her to run, but she always balked at the idea, she said. Then, she noticed a neighbor running. Very slowly, the idea began to spark something in Sarah, she said, and she tried it.
"I've never been a runner," she confessed.
When she started running in March 2012, Sarah couldn't run two miles. But, once again, she kept going and started signing up for races as motivation.
Sarah recalled one of her first races, when her friend took off like a shot at the starting line. Sarah, not a fan of crowds, panicked. She could barely breathe as the other runners zipped past her.
"I really didn't know what to do," she said. "I just had to figure out how to regroup and keep going. If you think about it, that's kind of what we have to do on a regular basis."
Sarah picked a total stranger out of the crowd and kept pace with the person all the way to the finish line.
Today, Sarah has three half-marathons under her belt, plus the Army 10-Miler and the Warrior Dash. She is signed up to run the Marine Corps marathon this fall.
For Sarah, running has become a form of self-care. It puts her in a better head space, she said.
"I covet that time when I'm running … It makes my heart happy," she said.
Sarah encourages others to carve out time for themselves as well.
"Whatever it is that makes your heart happy, give yourself time to do it and enjoy it, and don't feel bad about it. That's the best thing that you can do for yourself," Sarah said. "People tend to lose sight of that."
As she's kept going and grown stronger in herself, Sarah said she's found she's become a happier mother and spouse.
Sarah also has become a passionate advocate for her child with special needs. She volunteers regularly at her children's school and with Our Community Spouses' Club of Fort Riley to give back to the community. And, of course, she runs.
Sarah and her husband, William, recently celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary.
"What do I appreciate about Sarah?" William said. "I appreciate that she is always there for her Family. I appreciate the way she's raised our children, especially during the times that I've been deployed. I appreciate that she's my best friend."
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