2008/05/09 00:00:00
By Tanya Biank — May 9, 2008
Fifteen months ago Army wife and journalist Jan Wesner started a blog to educate civilians about military life. But her posts took on the feel of diary entries when her husband of 17 years deployed to Iraq — with one difference: Anyone can read and respond to a blog.
“I talked about the times when I drank too much and how I started smoking and how I worried if we would be different when he got back,” says Wesner, who lives near MacDill AFB, Fla., and whose blog, Standing By appears on the St. Petersburg Times’ Web site. “I talked about the things my kids said, and I even talked about not having sex for so long.”
Because of her openness, Wesner was able to form friendships with military spouses from across the country she had never met.
“There are things I say on my blog that I would never say to someone face-to-face,” she says.
Virtual community
Welcome to the military spouse blogosphere, where “milspouse bloggers,” as they are known, share experiences and opinions, rally support, seek resources, and find friendship in the virtual world. In many ways military spouse blogs are a fusion of the unit newsletter, holiday greeting card, snail-mail letter, and journal entry.
“Describing how it feels to be a military spouse is extremely important. There are so many spouses out there who can turn to spouse bloggers for therapy, for friendship, for guidance, and for so much more. Plus, troops on the front lines can turn to their blogs to keep tabs on home and see how everyone is doing,” says Jean-Paul “JP” Borda, a deployed guardmember who is the founder and webmaster of Milblogging.com, an aggregator site of nearly 2,000 military-related blogs that features more than 200 spouse blogs.
“The great thing about the spouse community when it comes to blogging and sharing is that we want everyone to benefit,” says Sue Hoppin, an Air Force wife and deputy director for Spouse Outreach at MOAA. Her MOAA Spouse blog provides a forum to share resources, tips, and experiences. Hoppin also blogged during her husband’s 15-month deployment to Pakistan.
The importance of interaction
Blogs differ from Web sites because they are interactive. They first appeared on the Internet in the early-to-mid-1990s and became mainstream in 2002. Blogging became popular with the military at the start of the Iraq war as a way for troops to document their experiences and provide a combat perspective outside the media’s. Soon after, military spouses started their own blogs. Today, these blogs provide a venue for spouses to connect to the military community-at-large beyond unit coffee groups, spouse clubs, and family readiness groups.
“Many of us find that we’re constantly juggling extra responsibilities when our spouses are away for training, TDY, or deployments, and that can get stressful,” says the pseudonymous Mrs. Greyhawk, a milspouse blogger who, with her husband, runs the popular Mudville Gazette. She was among a select group of milbloggers who met with President George W. Bush at the White House in 2007. “Blogging is a way for us to stay in touch with our servicemember and to share experiences, vent, and offer support to others spouses in similar situations,” she says.
“Our readers feel like they have a community they can turn to for support 24-7,” says milspouse blogger and Army wife Andi Hurley, who partnered with Military.com in 2006 to create SpouseBUZZ, written by and for military spouses. “The goal of SpouseBUZZ is to celebrate the things that unite us. We exist to provide a supportive environment for all military spouses, regardless of rank, branch, gender, or political affiliation.”
SpouseBUZZ offers an informative series of posts about milspouse blogging.
Another group blog, the hip Okinawa Hai, launched this past winter and is the brainchild of Marine wife Meredith Novario. The site is a user-friendly community resource for spouses currently stationed in or headed to Okinawa.
“We all feel strongly about living in Okinawa and sharing our experiences,” Novario says. “Our readership continues to grow, which makes us feel good and dream bigger.” The editors, all volunteers on the island, post daily in one of five categories, “To Live,” “To Learn,” “To Shop,” “To Eat,” and “To Do.”
“We love that there’s a place out there for people to learn and give advice to others about living overseas,” says Lan Marietta, the “To Live” editor, who is married to a Navy physician.
Unique and useful
Spouse blogs can be as creative and original as the people posting. Mitja Ng-Baumhackl, whose wife is a Navy JAG officer, launched Naval Gazing in February with a “flat mommy” photo book he created during his wife Elysia’s deployment to Bahrain this past year. Ng-Baumhackl’s touching and comical pictorial features the couple’s pacifier-sucking 18-month-old daughter and a life-size cardboard cutout version of Elysia in uniform — flat mommy — at family events and sightseeing trips. The photo book captures how the absence of a loved one during a deployment affects a family.
From the first day he posted, strangers who felt a connection contacted Ng-Baumhackl.
“Before I became a military spouse I did not fully appreciate how long it can take to build a circle of friends in a new community,” says Ng-Baumhackl, who considers his blog nontraditional because it is written from the perspective of a male spouse. “You can feel isolated even when surrounded by a large community. Blogs really do help you keep in touch with a community that is constantly on the move. You just have to start the conversation and others join in.”
Some spouses post entries using only their first name or a pseudonym. An officer’s wife goes by LAW (Liberal Army Wife) on the Proud Liberal Army Wife site she started in 2005. “I couldn’t find much being written by someone like me — a proud liberal Army wife,” she says. “So I decided to do it. I also wanted to show liberals that not all military spouses are automatons, which is something I was reading in liberal non-military blogs.” She’s received reactions ranging from sympathy and support to name-calling and what she calls “some truly nasty babbling.”
Most likely, milspouse blogging will evolve along with the military community, world events, and technology.
“I see them as invaluable and here to stay for as long as there is a military — and the Internet, of course,” says Mrs. Greyhawk.