Halley Trembath’s husband, Ben, is currently serving as a C-130 pilot in the Wyoming Air National Guard, giving the family some permanency in their living situation, but Halley and her family have experience with active duty and National Guard life. “Ben graduated from the Air Force Academy. He always wanted to be a pilot, but like with most things in the military, he was originally assigned a different career field, Halley says. “He eventually found a way to make his dream happen with the Guard.” She’s proud of her husband for persevering in realizing his dream job, especially for the lessons that can teach their two sons, ages seven and five, as they grow up. Sometimes you have to embrace the now in order to realize your future.

Halley and Ben met in Colorado, when Halley attended the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Her roommate knew Ben from high school and Ben offered them free tickets to an Air Force football game. Halley jumped at the chance to attend an Academy game, where she met Ben and the two became great friends. “We were friends for about a year,” Halley says, “then we went on our first date at the Garden of the Gods National Park. Coincidentally, there was a wedding ceremony happening when we were there, but we both quickly assured each other it wasn’t a sign of anything. Although if I’m completely honest, I was kind of hoping it was.” The couple wed two days after Ben’s graduation from the Air Force Academy.

Halley still sees Ben’s graduation as a highlight of their time in the military. “It’s the ultimate pomp and circumstance,” she says. “The president was the speaker that year, and just seeing the joy on all the graduates’ faces that they’d made it [is] a core memory for me, and every time I think about it, I still get all the feels.” After that great start to her new chapter, Halley and Ben began Air Force life, and Halley quickly realized it wasn’t always as great as graduation had been. They moved five different times during his time in the Air Force, and with no military experience (no one on her side of the family had ever served) Halley quickly realized how independent and resilient she’d need to be. “I’ve always been a super independent person, which helped with TDYs and deployments, but learning how to be all things was new to me. It’s Murphy’s Law,” she explains, “if it could break while he was gone, it would. I’ve been a plumber, an electrician, and who knows how many other things over the years. I even love moving. It’s fun and exciting to discover a new place.” Military life can be challenging, but Halley’s personal motto is “If you let it be yucky, it will be.” So, early on she made a personal resolution to find joy and good no matter where they were or what was going on, and as a result, she cannot pick a favorite duty station easily.

When pressed, she says it was probably the years they spent in Little Rock, Arkansas. “Absolutely because of the friends we made there,” she says. “All our husbands went on their first and second deployments together, so we were all learning this Air Force thing together. We really got to know those people so well and we still talk to them all the time.” In fact, Halley still goes back once a year to visit friends who are still in the area and to check on the rental properties she manages there.

Which brings her to what she feels is one of the most significant challenges she’s faced as a military spouse. “I’ve actually only had one job in my degree field,” she says, “at our first base. Then we were told on a Monday that we were PCSing on that Friday—the only time in Ben’s career it’s been that quick—and the company I was with wanted me to stay for another six months before transferring to their offices where we were moving. I didn’t want to be apart that long when we didn’t have to be, so I left thinking because we were going to a big city (the biggest we were ever stationed in) I’d be able to find a job there.” Spoiler alert, she wasn’t, and she attributes that directly to being a military spouse. She decided to take the year they were there to work on her skills, not just professionally but mostly life skills. “I learned about eating healthy. We were still used to eating like college students, which isn’t necessarily the healthiest lifestyle. I got involved in a spouses’ group, went to the gym, and just generally took every opportunity to work on things that would set me up for success,” she says. She adds that while she experienced some heartache over her career, her natural resiliency helped her make the most of the situation.

Eventually, once they landed in Little Rock, Halley started a job in property management, working her way up from leasing agent to her firm’s top manager. She got her Arkansas real estate license and realized she’d found a career she was passionate about. When she and her family eventually moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, Halley ran right into another professional challenge associated with being a military spouse. “I had to wait two years to restart my license,” she explains. “I had to bide my time for two years working for another firm and to get my broker’s license. It’s hard to have to start over every time you move, but I’d heard horrible things about property management in Cheyenne, and I wanted to change that, especially for military and veterans.”

Knowing Cheyenne was their last stop, as Ben planned to transition from active-duty Air Force to the Guard unit there, Halley started making plans to open her own property management business. “One of the things I did professionally was work for the Chamber of Commerce,” Halley says. “It was such a rewarding experience. I loved the work, but the hours were challenging since I have a family. I learned the roles of business in the community, big, medium, and small. My time there really shaped my ideas of business.”

That knowledge helped her a lot when she launched her company, Rock Solid Properties. “The core of our business has always been to help military families and veterans with their housing needs, whether that’s long-term purchase, rental, or even Airbnbs. Of course, we help anyone, but our experiences with the military have made us passionate about helping other military families have the best experience they can when they’re in Cheyenne,” she says. Being her own boss lets Halley achieve the work/life balance she needs, especially as Ben’s job still has him deploying and going on TDYs.

Her favorite deployment trick is surviving the first two weeks however you can. “It’s the time when they first leave and you realize that you’re it until they’re back. Give yourself time to make that transition, that adjustment. Then, start planning things to make the time go faster,” she says. Halley says that having little things to look forward to helps. For her children, she involves them in planning things that are just for the three of them. “We’ll go to the zoo; there’s a great one not far from us. Or we’ll take a short trip somewhere an hour/hour and a half away.” It helps that Denver is within that time frame and offers lots of opportunities. “You don’t have to take a vacation or go anywhere expensive or that requires a lot of planning on your part. Just find things to do that you can look forward to and plan them for different times throughout the deployment,” she says. She also suggests making the most of the holidays when your spouse is home. “For us, Ben’s deployment schedule always seems to mean he’ll be gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, we don’t create traditions or expectations around those holidays,” Halley says. “Instead, we’ve adopted St. Patrick’s Day as our big family holiday. I know it sounds strange, but Ben is almost always home on March 17^th, so we do it up big. We have the food and the beer and the friends and make it fun.” It helps that there’s a lot of Irish in her ancestry, but more importantly, it’s a holiday the family can usually count on being together.

What’s surprised her the most so far about military life? “How small and how big the community is at the same time,” she says. “The C-130 community particularly feels small, but it’s really big. Still, I feel connected to people all over the world. Everything feels intertwined.” Resources like the Family Readiness Center and opportunities like MyCAA, which lets military spouses get professional certifications for free, also help you feel connected and offer great resources for military spouses.

Her best piece of advice is to “join a spouses’ group of some type wherever you are—a traditional spouses club, a book club, whatever. Just join one to meet and get to know other military spouses. It helps a lot. Also, always check out your Outdoor Rec center. They can be a great resource and people don’t think about them.”

Halley’s motto for military spouses is “Take it and run with it.” “Don’t let it run you,” she cautions. No matter where you are or what challenges you’re up against, face them head on and always, always focus on finding the good things about wherever you are. It makes all the difference.

Did you enjoy this article? Read the full e-magazine, here.

Kimi Taylor has been living the military life since 2007 when she married her husband, Brandon. They married right after Brandon’s West Point commissioning ceremony, which Kimi attended as his fiancée. “The West Point graduation ceremony is phenomenal,” Kimi says. She adds, “Most military ceremonies start to run together after a while. They’re so similar and you attend so many over the years, but Brandon’s graduation from West Point is something I’ll always remember.”

How Kimi and Brandon met sounds like one of those serendipitous, meet-cute stories that Hallmark movies are based on. Or so Kimi has heard countless times over the years when she recounts it. “I attended Seton Hall for college. I had a partial academic scholarship and played soccer there, but after two years I transferred to the University of Hawaii, where I received a half academic/half athletic scholarship. That first year in Hawaii I was missing my friends from back in Seton Hall so much that my parents gave me an airplane ticket to New York as my Christmas present.” Kimi goes on to relate that she flew to New York in early January that year and had a great time with her Seton Hall friends. She’d been telling them that she wanted them all to go to New York City for a day, but when that day came all her friends bowed out. Kimi, not to be deterred, went by herself.

At New York City’s iconic Penn Station, Kimi stepped onto the up escalator and Brandon stepped onto the down escalator. Their eyes met and they stared at each other the whole ride. Once she reached the top, Kimi stepped off the escalator and a few seconds later heard a voice talking to her. It was Brandon, who had turned and run up the stairs as soon as he got to the bottom to catch her before she could disappear from his life forever. After explaining that she lived 6,000 miles away, the two exchanged phone numbers and somehow managed to make the long-distance thing work until they could be reunited post-college. The rest, as they say, is (military family) history.

In the 17 years the Army has been moving her family around, Kimi has endured multiple deployments. “My husband’s battalion deployed one day after our first son was born,” she recalls. “They gave him two weeks at home and then he had to leave to join his unit.” He deployed again when their second son was just under one year old. For their third child, Brandon was there, but the family PCSed from Arizona five week later.

For Kimi, whose father was a police officer, the idea of service, protection, discipline, and sense of duty that we associate with military members wasn’t too difficult to adapt to, but everything else about military life came with a steep learning curve. “Both of my grandfathers served in the military, one in the Navy and one in the Air Force, and my uncle was in the Marines, but all were retired by the time I came around,” Kimi explains. “So, I had no concept of what military life was like. The acronyms alone are like learning a foreign language!” Still, the most surprising thing for Kimi has been that the military moves you wherever you state you don’t want to go. “You fill out your wish list of where you’d like to go next,” she says, “and if you’ve listed your top 40 choices, the military comes back and says we’re sending you to your 41^st choice.” It’s consistent, she adds. None of the seven duty stations they’ve had so far has been one of their top choices.

The other challenging aspect of military life (besides multiple deployments, countless TDYs, and never going where you hope to go) has been finding gainful employment. “I have to work,” Kimi says. “Everything is so expensive, especially where we’re stationed now in Hawaii.” For Kimi, freelancing has become so much easier today, but it’s still hard to consistently find remote work. Kimi herself has basically started a new business each time they’ve moved. She’s worked as a graphic designer, a photographer, an illustrator, and a seamstress for customized baby carriers and wraps, plus she has taught herself to weave. “I bought my first loom and taught myself how to weave baby wraps. Sometimes I still look at the pieces I’ve kept for myself and marvel that I made them. I love creating with my hands and weaving just seemed like a natural fit.”

Since moving to Hawaii, Kimi has sold all but her most beloved loom. It remains in storage in the continental U.S. since Hawaii’s climate is too humid for it. Plus, given how expensive the cost of living is there, they don’t have space in their house for it. Which means Kimi is reinventing herself professionally once again. “Since moving to Hawaii, I’ve started another business, Fate Whispers Graphic Design. I work with authors and the bookish community. It’s both a full-service graphic design business and a nerdy bookish merchandise shop through Etsy where I am licensed by various authors to create merchandise using quotes and ideas from their books.” The business allows her to use her graphic design skills and love of literature in new, creative ways. It’s just another avenue Kimi has found to create professional opportunities wherever the Army sends her family.

While military life brings significant challenges to professional life, Kimi adds that making friends is challenging as well. “Most of my friends live inside my phone,” she says, meaning it’s rare that her close friends are physically present in her life. While technology makes it easier to maintain connections over long distances, there’s nothing like having friends who are right there. Instead, Kimi has seasonal friends. Friends who come into her life because they’re stationed together or because they have kids in the same activities. She adds, “It’s hard to find like-minded people even when you’re all military.”

It’s not all bad, though. Her family is close, and Kimi’s favorite memories of military life are all wrapped up in the family moments: “I already mentioned the West Point graduation, which is a highlight of military life, but my favorite memories are the Christmases we’ve all been together as a family. The best memories are the small ones. The ones that are ‘just us’ being together as a family. No guests, no other people, just our family hanging out together.” Speaking of Christmas, Kimi’s family doesn’t have many holiday traditions they insist on, instead letting where they are and whether they’re all together or not dictate their plans, but they do have one tradition that Kimi misses and hopes to start again. “Somewhere along the way, we started going together to a movie on Christmas Day. We stopped during COVID, but I’d really like to start up again. That, and my husband always insists the tree go up the day after Thanksgiving. Those are probably the only traditions we really try to make happen every year.”

When we asked her what advice she’d give new military spouses, Kimi doesn’t hesitate: “Be flexible. You have no choice. Be as flexible as Gumby.” Something will always come up. Plans will change. So don’t plan, she adds. Or if you do plan, expect that there will be changes.

Kimi offers another piece of advice for milspouses: “Always ask if a place has a military discount. It might be awkward, but ask even to the point of being weird about it. You never know when it might work.” She also recommends the Veterans Transition Association. You have to apply via an Eventbrite application, but they offer free Coursera courses to military spouses. Kimi has taken advantage of that opportunity as well as the seven free Coursera courses military spouses can access through Hiring Our Heroes. Coursera can help you stay relevant, whether it’s in a career field or just new avenues you want to explore.

Finally, when asked what her military spouse motto would be, Kimi laughs and says, “’Yep, sounds about right.’” She adds, “I’m not sure how many times I’ve said that over the years, but it’s a lot. Although, it’s probably better to say, ‘Just roll with it’ for a motto instead.”

Kimi participated in the Empowering the Homefront 2023 Entrepreneur Cohort hosted by Powerhouse President Jessica Bertsch and has recently joined the Powerhouse Planning freelancer team. We’re excited to have her on board and look forward to all the amazing contributions she will bring.

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Jessica Bertsch, president of Powerhouse Planning and proud 17-year military spouse to a CAPT in the U.S. Coast Guard

In 1976, my father-in-law wrote Nobody Asked Me But . . . and my husband, who is currently serving in the United States Coast Guard, recently sent it my way. I thought the write-up was brilliant, and I wanted to attempt to write it from a military spouse perspective. So, here you go . . .

Friends,

The following is a list of what frustrates me to no end when it comes to being a military spouse:

1. The 25+ deployments I have been through
2. The endless nights of solo parenting
3. The dang fire alarm that ONLY goes off at 2 a.m. when my husband is at sea
4. The T.V. remote that never works once he ships out
5. The ant invasion that happens day two into his deployment that means I now have to become the “exterminator”
6. The car issues I have to deal with by myself and explain by noise and vocal demonstrations to the mechanic
7. The selling of homes twice solo
8. Reregistering my company in five different states
9. Having to change my state of residency three times because of owning a business
10. Dealing with a break-in and going to court solo to provide a statement to the judge
11. Registering the kids for doctors and dentists every. single. move
12. Finding a new church every. single. move
13. Building a sense of community every. single. move
14. Chasing a squirrel out of my house while my husband was at sea (Thanks, Tim and Ron, for helping me on that one. That’s the best defense I’ve ever seen in a noncompetitive sport.)
15. Evacuating from two hurricanes with three small children and a dog (which was made even more frustrating when all the stores ran out of ice, so I was “forced” to buy boxed wine so the wine bags could serve as ice bags to keep my food cold)
16. Sending a dog to heaven solo
17. Finding a leak in the ceiling of our first home only to realize the home was infested with black mold and being removed for months while the home was tarped, gutted, and remodeled
18. Having to explain that the U.S. Coast Guard is indeed part of the military
19. Having to explain what the U.S. Coast Guard does
20. Having to answer the question “How do you do it?” a thousand times over the past 17 years
21. Not being able to travel internationally easily because my spouse needs special permission
22. Not being able to take vacation easily or on a whim because my spouse needs permission
23. Not ever having a spouse that is settled in a career because he is essentially restarting his career every two to three years
24. Having a spouse who has a PhD but makes only a portion of his worth
25. Dealing with a horrible dental plan (currently we pay out of pocket for ours)

But the thing I hate most is that I love it.

I love the other spouses and friends I’ve met on this journey.

I love that I’m married to a man who has given so selflessly to our country.

I love that throughout his career journey he has seen me as an equal and provided me a place to share my dreams, hopes, and wishes and has worked tirelessly to provide me fulfillment too along the way.

I love that I’ve been forced to learn a ton of things the hard way, but, man, it’s made me strong.

I am grateful for this military spouse walk and can proudly look back at every single home we’ve had and see blessings each step of the way.

Onward I go to keep loving this crazy life we’ve built.

Did you enjoy this article? Read the full e-magazine, here.

Jessica Bertsch is a proud Coastie wife and mom to three children. In her “spare” time she runs Powerhouse Planning, LLC: powerhouseplanning.com.