Renee Amato is well accustomed to military family life after 14 years, 7 moves and 4 kids with her husband, Army Lt. Col. Alexander Amato, commander of Army Field Support Battalion – Africa. She said the best part has been making friends around the world and seeing her husband’s positive contributions. “You see your spouse doing things, contributing to the greater good and, as a whole, you feel very proud of them, very inspired,” she said.
At the same time, she said the instability of military life can be difficult. “There’s just a lot of 'uncontrollables,'” she said, noting missed holidays and birthdays, frequent moves and changing plans, in addition to the unexpected surprises that pop up along the way. She recalled one situation in which the movers put all her family’s furniture parts in a single box, then lost the box. “We couldn’t put anything we owned together,” she said with a laugh. “We were calling Ikea trying to find parts.”
One of Amato’s biggest challenges came when her husband had to leave immediately after the family relocated to Italy. “I didn’t really know anyone and I was very scared,” she said. “But you have to 'pick your hard.' It’s hard to get out there and do stuff, but it’s also hard to stay in your house and miss all the opportunities. . . . Neither one is easy, so you have to pick the most beneficial one.”
She has found great strength and growth in experiences like these, she said. “The negatives are also the positives,” she said. “The hardest thing that happened to you can be the best thing that ever happened to you because you get so much compassion and understanding for people who have gone through it too. You meet someone new and you know what it’s like to be new. You have someone whose husband is gone and you know what that’s like. You have that connection and compassion that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. I think that’s something beautiful that comes out of military life that we don’t speak of often enough.”
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