~THE END~

When I started my blog, it was called 365 Days of Deployment.  In the end, my husband was only deployed for about half that many days.  It was 189 days too long, though.  When I started my blog, I did it for my husband, and for myself.  I never imagined it would get as big as it did.  As much as I've been a support to so many of you, you've been a support to me as well.  Whether my posts made you laugh, cry, or just realize that you're not completely alone in how you're feeling, if I helped even one person, in any way, it was worth it to me.


If there's anything you take from reading my blog, I'd like it to be this: It's okay to not be okay.  It's okay to cry. It's okay to have bad days.  And it's okay to feel however you're feeling.  Being an Army wife with a deployed husband is an experience that nobody who hasn't been through it could ever understand.  My situation is not unique.  There are hundreds of thousands of families that go through deployments every year, many of them with soldiers in much more dangerous places and for much longer periods of time.


My husband's deployment was relatively quiet.  He wasn't hurt, and he never had to hurt anyone else.  He was granted R&R halfway through, so we never went longer than three months without seeing each other.  Aside from when he first got to Iraq and again when he drove from Iraq to Kuwait, we never went more than a couple days without talking.  As far as deployments go, we got pretty lucky.


But deployments are awful, no matter how "easy" you have it.  And being an Army Wife is an experience like no other.  While my husband's deployment is over, our story is far from over.  He will still be stationed in Texas until 2014, while I'm in Michigan working and raising our boys.  We will still have our issues and our challenges, I'm sure.  And I'll still share all of that with all of you.  Just not on a daily basis.  I was being a little overly ambitious with the whole "daily blog" thing, I think.


So you'll still hear from me, just not quite as often.  Take care, stay strong, and always remember....you are NOT alone!