People who serve in the military have already proven themselves proficient in character to be a good mother or a good father. The day you signed up, you signed up knowing the next chapter of your life would test and polish your duty and your discipline. You signed up to prepare for the unchosen stress of protecting your country with the chosen stress of training. You trained to expect the unexpected; to prepare with foresight and planning; to cultivate quick thinking, courage, and brawn so you could respond well and with strength to any challenge.

Now put that lens to parenting, and even more to parenting solo. You can protect the innocence of your kids. You can give them safety and refuge. You can motivate them, passing on your values. You can help them trust in your leadership. We already know you can do that. It’s just a question of how to do that when the van is broken down again, and the Christmas concert is tomorrow night and you still need to make a donkey head out of one-inch foam and spray paint, and you just got news of your next deployment.

Solo parenting while serving your country is a feat of logistics, applied tension, and team support. Astronaut Chris Hadfield writes about how we show up in a way you might recognize. As you listen, we’ll pause—bring to mind people in the service, people in your history on teams, who have filled these archetypes.

“In any new situation, whether it involves an elevator or a rocket ship, you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways,” he says. “As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your
impact is neutral and doesn’t tip the balance one way or the other. Or you’ll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value.”

As Hadfield explains, everyone wants to be a plus one. But “…proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you’ll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform.”

Balance roots in attitude. You don’t get to choose and declare that you’re a plus-one. That’s for the people around you to decide. Claiming that for yourself fuels entitlement and will knock you off a path of earning the regard of others. Whether you’re in the environment of a ship, a base, or your home, operate from the baseline of not claiming your value, but demonstrating it.

Pressures and Stressors

Serving in the military is already a promise to respond with your strength under duress. Even through times of relative peace, you’re living under the tension of that promise. And further, as a solo parent, you’re living under many other tensions that may affect your focus, your effectiveness, and the well-being of your children:

● Maintaining a job and household as well as caring for children
● Shouldering financial burdens alone post-divorce or loss
●Trying to work through conflicts around visitation and custody
● Dealing with a hostile or uncooperative co-parent
● Feeling challenged to spend quality time with children
● Supporting your child’s school performance or social relationships
● Handling disruptions to extended family time or relationships
● Managing your or your ex’s dating or new relationships

Take a moment to appreciate all the ways you’ve shouldered these promises and tensions well—and to acknowledge all those in the service who are doing the same in parallel.

Author Thusitha Perera wrote, “You’ve somehow boarded a rickety rollercoaster moving at a pace at which the world is a blur, and the screws are half a turn away from it all falling apart.”

The sensation is familiar, but being in the service, we can’t imagine not stepping forward for the ride:

“Because balance doesn’t exist, you’re either operating under or over your energetic equilibrium,” writes Katherine Morgan Schafler. “In other words, you’re in the realm of being either underwhelmed or overwhelmed. Perfectionists reliably choose to operate over their equilibriums. For perfectionists, the risk of being underwhelmed is much scarier than the risk of being overwhelmed.”

We promised our strength under duress. We are rollercoaster-seekers. We may have gotten more than we bargained for—not only dangerous, high-stakes military missions, but what might feel like a dangerous, high-stakes emotional long-game at home. As we must in the field, we make do with what we have. We get inventive, we plan thoroughly, and we lean on our team.