It’s Veterans Day as well as Military Family Month, and I’m proud of many things, not least my own veteran.
My spouse Helen, a former U.S. Air Force captain, wrote a guest post a couple of years ago about her experience serving as a woman and under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. She was still in the inactive reserves when we met, but left the service shortly thereafter, as she explains in her piece. I hope you’ll go read it if you haven’t already.
While Helen, our son, and I have never had the experience of being a military family, we have other family members and friends who have. It’s a life with particular challenges, as President Obama explained in his proclamation for Military Family Month:
Spouses press pause on their careers or strive to balance work and family while their loved ones are away. The two million children of service members work hard to keep up their studies and make new friends, despite transferring school systems an average of 6 to 9 times.
I’m very pleased, therefore, that my brother’s wife’s sister Amy, who is married to an Army officer and has two kids. has partnered with two other military spouses/moms to launch Chameleon Kids, a company dedicated to “military kids of all ages.” They say on their site that the only books and online resources they could find previously “focused on the negatives of moving and deployments.” In contrast, they “wanted their kids to also see the happiness in their military lives.” They publish a quarterly print magazine and run a pretty active blog and Facebook page, full of ideas and inspiration like “7 Reasons Halloween Is REALLY Cool for Military Kids.” The company welcomes kids from all types of military families, Amy assures me.
While I’m celebrating all the servicemembers and veterans in my life, however, I also want to recognize that although Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is no more, we still have not reached equality for all LGBTQ servicemembers. Although the VA has made tremendous strides in the past year towards recognizing same-sex spouses, transgender servicemembers and veterans still face bias. The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that “134,000 American veterans are transgender, and over 15,000 trans people are serving in military today despite rules forbidding them to serve openly.”
Here’s to pride and progress, then, but also to perseverance towards unfinished goals. I know our servicemembers and veterans believe in those values. Let’s make sure we support them, too.