How Letters Impact Soldiers

Today’s Par­ent Resource Arti­cle is writ­ten by Diana Doherty from Read­ing is Sexy.

My hus­band and I just had our first child in Novem­ber 2009. This incred­i­ble, life chang­ing expe­ri­ence was even more spe­cial for us because hubby was able to be there through­out my preg­nancy and for the birth. It may seem like a strange thing to say, but when you’re a mil­i­tary fam­ily, you feel blessed to be all together on such spe­cial occa­sions. My hus­band has been deployed to Iraq twice with the US Army. He spent a com­bined total of 27 months there within four years. When a sol­dier is deployed, they miss so many impor­tant things – birth­days, anniver­saries, the birth of a child, grad­u­a­tions, the loss of loved ones, and the list goes on.

The things a sol­dier expe­ri­ences, from com­bat to times of incred­i­ble bore­dom, take a huge toll on their morale. Emails, phone calls, care pack­ages, and cards from back home help keep them con­nected to life back home. Just con­sider if you packed up and left your whole life behind to go to a coun­try you’ve never been in for an entire year. Even with­out the stress of a soldier’s job, sim­ply being away for such a long time would make home feel like a dis­tant memory.

Orga­ni­za­tions that send mail to sol­diers, like A Child Writes, make an enor­mous dif­fer­ence in the lives of so many young men and women serv­ing in the mil­i­tary. To these ser­vice mem­bers, receiv­ing mail from some­one back home who doesn’t even know them per­son­ally makes them feel like all of us in the US really care about them. It reminds them that, even though they hear all kinds of crazy news com­ing out of the US, we haven’t for­got­ten where they are and what they’re doing for us. It gives them strength and hope to con­tinue doing their dif­fi­cult jobs. Receiv­ing a mes­sage from chil­dren is spe­cial, too, because it means that as par­ents you took the time to talk to your child a lit­tle bit about what sol­diers do.

Many men and women leave chil­dren behind when they deploy. When they return, their child has changed so much. The whole fam­ily dynamic has changed. Very lit­tle is the same as when they left it. Stay­ing con­nected through mail and email helps ease this tran­si­tion when it comes, espe­cially when that sol­dier knows that there are peo­ple out there who care about what they’re doing and the sac­ri­fices they’ve made.

Thanks to all of you A Child Writes mem­bers who take the time to par­tic­i­pate in the spe­cial causes that ACW sup­ports. When you par­tic­i­pate in the Mil­i­tary Aware­ness project this month, know that your child’s mail will make a sol­dier some­where happy and give them one more good day in their count­down to com­ing back home.

About the author:

My name is Diana Doherty and I write at Read­ing is Sexy where I pro­vide inter­est­ing news, reviews and more for book read­ers. You can con­nect with me on Twit­ter @readingissexy.