3 Ways To Embrace Your New Location
Military life usually means that, every two to four years, you’ll move to a new location. Sometimes it turns out well, and other times not so much. Unfortunately, too often we hear that a military family has broken up because they moved to a new location and couldn’t find happiness.
Usually when a move doesn’t turn out well, it causes resentment and lots of problems. Here are three ways to embrace your new location and hopefully head off some of those issues:
1. Find new adventures.
Many military spouses don’t have a clue what PCSing looks like until they’re involved in it. Military moves can take you far away from your family and friends. Then, add a deployment into the mix, and it causes a lot of forced alone time.
It’s important to take your new location into your own hands. Find friends, get a job, join your children’s school as a volunteer, go to mommy-and-me classes in the new area… These are all fun ways to begin embracing your new home. Go exploring and find new adventures to go on every weekend. No matter how boring the location, there’s always something fun to visit and learn.
2. Teach your children the benefits.
When you feel resentment about your new location, military children will also feel the same emotions. When you’re a military family, you’ll be moving, so it’s important to teach your children to enjoy the new locations as they come. They’re the ones who have to go to a new school and make new friends. Teach them to enjoy the new location and how to keep in touch with their old friends so they can understand how to best deal with the situation.
3. Do all the things you’ve been wanting to do.
Once you know you’re leaving, do the things you’ve been saying you’ll do. Wanted to try that restaurant in town? Do it now. Wanted to visit the beach a few hours away? Take a weekend there. When you get to your new place, you won’t think of all the things that you didn’t get to do. Finishing out your time by doing everything you wanted to do before leaving will help you get rid of the PCSing blues.
Remember, military life isn’t easy, but we know what we need to do. Most people get sad about PCSing at some point in their military journey, but we have to embrace it and think of it as a new opportunity in a new location.
