A therapist with deep ties to the military community, this is Dr. Emma Smith’s final monthly advice column for Military.com.
I’ve sat down to write this column several times, and each time I’ve found myself unable to do what I’ve always done here: translate complexity into something usable or hopeful.
For me, this space has always been about that. About naming what often goes unspoken in military life. The invisible labor. The strategic and often geographic calculations. The emotional terrain that doesn’t make it into briefings or homecoming photos. And the fact that our grit and resilience allow us to push through and find our way despite the challenges. My hope has been to offer something that felt both candid and useful. A column that could sit beside you in moments that don’t have easy answers.
As I sit at my desk, my mind drifts back to my time as a new military girlfriend, and then wife, trying desperately to learn a new culture, a new pattern of existence – and which power of attorney form was acceptable to which company – when life had to go on despite half my heart being on the other side of the world.
I remember seeing military spouse advice columns for the first time, printed on the commissary newsstand, and wishing that one day I would know enough to write something meaningful for others.
Twenty years later, that dream came true, thanks, in part, to the friendship of a fellow milspo I’d “met” on one of those early military spouse forums. The military spouse world is small. It becomes a haven and a refuge during wartime. I will always be grateful to those women for helping me understand the lingo, what homecoming is really like, and even how to read an LES.
That experience shaped how I understand relationships, especially friendship. The power of the spouse community is real and enduring. I’m still connected with several of those original forum women today, and many others through PCSing and advocacy work. And it also shaped how I understand the cost of service: the parts that are visible, and the many that go largely unseen.
It is from that place that I find myself here now, at the edge of what I can offer in this format. No one was more surprised than I was to find my final column coinciding with the beginning of another conflict. I didn’t expect we would find ourselves here again so quickly. And I can’t seem to write something that asks you to carry on as if this is just another cycle. I can’t package the uncertainty or fear into something tidy. War is messy, and no one knows that better than military families. Find your people among those living the life with you. They will understand in ways that others cannot.
This space has meant something to me. A full-circle moment. A dream, once imagined in the middle of a commissary checkout line, realized. If you were one of the people who found something here, something that made you feel less alone, or like you had a friend who understood, then this column did what it was meant to do.
Thank you for allowing me to be on this journey with you.
Off the clock, but always in your corner—
Dr. Emma
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