When my father, Odysseus, and his men sailed off to the Trojan War, they were confident their gods favored a quick victory. Instead, the siege of Troy lasted ten years. After Troy fell, the survivors made their way home to Sparta, Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere in the ancient Peloponnese. Neither my father nor any of his troops arrived home with the rest. We waited for years as the news grew worse. Odysseus was dead, we were told,or imprisoned, or, worst yet, he had married another woman and abandoned my mother Penelope, my brother Telemachus, and me.


If he is alive somewhere, his thoughts may wander to Penelope and Telemachus, but he won’t be thinking of me. I am the daughter he doesn’t know exists. Odysseus went off to the Trojan War when his son, Telemachus, was barely old enough to walk. His wife, Penelope, was a teenage bride, and is now a young wife, mother, and queen who has to try to rule Ithaca without him.


I was born seven months after he left. I am a hero’s daughter and a princess of his realm, but I have lived my entire life without a father. I’m nineteen now, and still waiting.


All over the world, and throughout history children grow up as I have. This website will focus on the children of those men and women who have gone off to fight America's wars, and provide information and resources for all who care about military families and want to help.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

What I've Learned


This will be my last post to Xanthe’s World for the foreseeable future.  I want to summarize the most important insights and information I have garnered in my nearly five months of daily blogging.
  • Military families are under an enormous amount of stress, beyond what normally goes with the territory.  This is caused in large part by the extraordinarily long and frequent deployments of servicemembers to war zones.  This takes a toll on the psychological wellbeing and physical health of families, and makes reintegration of returning servicemembers more difficult.  As a result, the divorce rate is rising and a greater percentage of children than in the general population need help with mental health issues. Aggravating this are rising numbers of servicemembers with PTSD, which has a carryover effect onto spouses and children.
  • Superficial and easy forms of support for service families are abundant (think “support our troops” bumper stickers), but due to the all-volunteer military, most Americans have little contact with or knowledge of military families.  Only 2% of the population serves our country.  This creates a situation where caring becomes very abstract, rather arbitrary and not very deep. If we are going to ask such a small number of our fellow Americans to serve for us, we must find better ways to serve them in return.
  • Keeping our armed services all-volunteer has placed a huge burden on National Guard members, many of whom made the commitment to service based on the expectation that it would take them away from home only a predictable and minimal amount of time each month.  They have jobs and professions that are disrupted by being called up for lengthy service, and they often live far away from military bases, making their families unable to access services meant to help them.  Reserves face many of the same problems.  
  • Children suffer academically from frequent moves and are often unable to stay on track for graduation and eligibility for college.  Children with special needs are particularly vulnerable, especially in situations where limited availability of service makes them have to start over on waiting lists in every new community they move to.  Efforts are underway to address this on a nationwide basis.
  • The impact of military service on women, especially those deployed to combat zones, is not well understood. Many women seem to come back from deployment with feelings of futility and inadequacy about settling back into the role of nurturing parent.  A suicide rate three times the national average for women in the same age group is a cause for alarm.  
  • There are many, many programs and services in the private sector as well as those offered by the military and governmental agencies.  A large number of these are self-help offered by veterans or spouses, and in some cases military children, to others going through the same things. It is really heartening to see how much effort is going into making sure veterans, active duty, and reserve servicemembers and their families get the help they need and the advocacy they deserve. Still, many of these programs are run on a shoestring and even the better-funded ones have seen their funding cut, and in some cases eliminated due to the downturn in the economy.  Private foundations have cut back their support of all kinds of programs, and military families must compete with many other worthy causes for a dwindling pot of money. Their needs are growing at the same time resources are shrinking.
  • Military families are known for their resilience, their strength, and their teamwork. They need our support to keep the challenges from becoming too great, and they need us to show our pride in them and the service their military members provide.  Kids serve too.  Spouses serve too.  They are doing an amazing job, and we need not only to notice, but to tell them so.  
Posted by About AART at 6:30 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)