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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska — Editor's note: This commentary focuses on mental health and the struggle that comes with Alaska winters, as well as how taking a leap of faith and taking care of oneself can help all facets of one's life.
It’s a Wednesday night as I write this, and I’m in my feelings a little bit. A conversation I had with my Airmen today keeps running through my mind, and I want to talk about it.
We as service members, and society as a whole, talk a lot more now about mental health than we did just a few years ago, and I think that’s great. But at the same time, are we really practicing what we’re preaching?
I can tell you I haven’t been for a while, and it caught up with me.
Let me backtrack and just briefly talk about why this essay is called Desperate.
I used that word today to describe how I felt earlier this year. I was coming up on my one-year anniversary in Alaska, and the dark, cold winter mixed with a lack of relationships outside of work and home started getting to me.
While in the middle of my thesis coursework, I decided I wanted to start building a writing community where I live, so I reached out to my neighborhood Facebook page. Through that leap of faith, I thankfully connected with another 30-something who quickly became my person, my forever neighbor. It’s gonna stick, I think.
Tuesdays are generally our writing days, and when I started talking about the group, which we comically call our “CreativiTea” time, and how our group is expanding, I started it off by saying that in March I was desperate for friends.
I don’t remember the last time I used that word to describe myself, and to be honest it bothers me – as it should, I guess.
Adulting is hard, and building meaningful connections with people, both within the work center and beyond, is challenging to say the least. With a heavy workload, I hadn’t made time to network with other noncommissioned officers.
Personally, I felt like it would be a waste of time because what I wanted. No, what I needed was valuable conversations that filled my cup, not “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” competition to make it to the next rank.
The military moved my family here in April of 2021, and before I moved here, I had friends, both in my work center and outside of it. Here… not so much until earlier this year. So, I figured if connecting to other NCOs the way I wanted to wasn’t going to work, I needed to make friends within my community.
It’s also a nice feeling being able to just have non-military conversations with people that aren’t your significant other.
After I took a chunk of leave in May, my friend and I started meeting regularly, bonding over tea, cookies, our shared love for telling stories, and my four-year-old manically chasing her dogs and black cat Benjamin. I don’t put that as eloquently as Krysta does, because I studied fiction writing and she creative non-fiction, and I tend to write Fantasy stories. Make my daughter into a Fairy, which she and I have done a few times, and it’s on. Talking about how tea and cookies makes my kiddo jump off the deep end and go in and out and in and out despite the temperature, without shoes, and dumping out all the dog toys to see which one she can tease them with… that’s about all I can do.
It didn’t occur to me how much regularly meeting with her, conversing and sharing prose, connecting with another human being on a deeply personal level, could truly affect my mental health in a positive way.
Between building that habit and routine, and leadership in my corner, I finally started taking care of myself.
I always try to remind my Airmen that it’s ok to seek mental health assistance, behavioral health, whatever your outlet is, yet I wasn’t doing it for myself until recently.
Now, even today when talking with my team, I’m openly discussing how changing my meds around in my routine helped with my motivation, focus, sleep…
I hope by having these conversations with my Airmen, they’ll see that taking these steps to take care of yourself doesn’t affect your career, as many often think. Instead, it helps you thrive and really, truly live an authentic life.
Story was originally posted to the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson website on Dec. 7, 2022 and may be found at https://www.jber.jb.mil/News/Commentaries/Display/Article/3239506/desperate/.
| Date Taken: | 12.07.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 12.12.2022 15:20 |
| Story ID: | 434811 |
| Location: | COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, US |
| Web Views: | 18 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Desperate, by MSgt Hailey Staker, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
