Five Years of Lessons as a Soldier's Mom

My last blog post for PBS Point of View: Regarding War is up... I share some of the lessons I have learned as Some Soldier's Mom:

This month marks five years that I have blogged about the experience of being a soldier's mom. It has been five years since I stood at Fort Benning and tearfully (later hysterically) said farewell to my youngest son and his Army brothers ("my guys") as they left for Iraq. These five years have been a wild and horrific — and wonderful — ride. Today I share the most intense of the lessons I have learned.

1. Life really is frail. [snip]

2. There really are no words to comfort the mother or father or spouse or siblings of a soldier who has died.  [snip]

Read them all  at Conversations: Coming Home and add yours in the comments!

Vigilance: The Good Kind

Over at PBS - Point of View, I blog about the necessity of being vigilant in protecting the warrior legacy:

It is important for all of us — citizens who truly support the troops and who honor our veterans — to become active and remain engaged in protecting the warrior legacy. As we head into a new year, I implore everyone in the military, veterans, their families and the general public to learn about proposed and pending legislation and to be energetic in communicating their opinions to their Senators and Representatives. This is important not just at the federal level, but at the state levels as well. 

As state and federal legislators look to reduce spending or find funding for pet (read: pork) projects, military and veterans programs will be looked at as likely sources for cuts, because of their relative size to other budget commitments. Our watchfulness will be vitally important to the roughly 1.4 million personnel on active duty, the additional 900,000 members of the Reserve and National Guard and the 23.2 million military veterans in the United States.

Please go over and read all of it and bookmark some of the links to military and veterans organizations -- and to your legislators -- that are provided.

You should also take the time to read the contributions by the other bloggers at the PBS/Conversations - On Coming Home blog... and leave your comments!