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Health Communication Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hhth20

The Milspouse Battle Rhythm: Communicating Resilience Throughout the Deployment Cycle a

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Melinda Villagran , Mollie Rose Canzona & Christy J. W. Ledford a

Department of Communication Studies , Texas State University

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Department of Communication , George Mason University

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Department of Biomedical Information , Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Published online: 17 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Melinda Villagran , Mollie Rose Canzona & Christy J. W. Ledford (2013) The Milspouse Battle Rhythm: Communicating Resilience Throughout the Deployment Cycle, Health Communication, 28:8, 778-788, DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2013.800441 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2013.800441

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Health Communication, 28: 778–788, 2013 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1041-0236 print / 1532-7027 online DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2013.800441

The Milspouse Battle Rhythm: Communicating Resilience Throughout the Deployment Cycle

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Melinda Villagran Department of Communication Studies Texas State University

Mollie Rose Canzona Department of Communication George Mason University

Christy J. W. Ledford Department of Biomedical Information Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Military spouses (milspouses) enact resilience through communication before, during, and after military deployments. Based on an organizing framework of resilience processes (Buzzanell, 2010), this study examined milspouses’ communicative construction of resilience during an increasingly rapid military deployment cycle. Narratives from in-depth interviews with military spouses (n = 24) revealed how resilience is achieved through communication seeking to reconcile the often contradictory realities of milspouses who endure physical, psychological, and social difficulties due to prolonged separations from their partners.

Since September 11, 2001, military families have suffered due to changes in the U.S. military deployment system that increased in the frequency and length of military deployments. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) military families have experienced a period uniquely characterized as a constant cycle of deployment resulting in high rates of death and injury for military members, and uncertainty for milspouses waiting at home (Chandra, Martin, Hawkins, & Richardson, 2010; Lemmon & Chartrand, 2009; Mansfield et al., 2010). A “battle rhythm,” or pattern for military action in deployed locations, occurs when a military unit effectively transfers plans and contingencies learned during training to the deployment mission (Torruella, 2007). The homeostasis of a battle rhythm turns chaos into consistency in situations when military members encounter new threats, gather information from multiple sources, shape useable information to make informed decisions, and create routine Correspondence should be addressed to Melinda Villagran, Department of Communication Studies, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX 78666. E-mail: [email protected]

processes in a changing environment (Torruella, 2007). For military spouses (hereafter referred to as milspouses), a battle rhythm takes shape at home, as separated family members intersubjectively create meaning and forge routines to withstand the hardships of deployment. Lucas and Buzzanell (2012) offered a proactive view of resilience, within which hardship is viewed more as an ever-present partner during adversity than an obstacle to overcome. In this study, we explore how the milspouse battle rhythm serves as an ever-present partner through which resilience is communicatively constituted during the increasingly lengthy cycle of deployment separations. Milspouses construct resilience as they reduce chaos and uncertainty by proactively forging relationships and share their experiences. Through this process, milspouse resilience is constituted by connected stories of separation and reintegration that have come to define to military life. Resilience occurs as part of what the milspouse does, and what the milspouse is in the face of ongoing change due to a partner’s military service. In line with existing research describing how resilience is communicatively constituted within families and by workers in challenging workplace environments (Buzzanell, 2010;

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Buzzanell, Shenoy, Remke, & Lucas, 2009), we propose a communicative construction of milspouse resilience that is created intersubjectively through a continuing narrative linking military service with personal sacrifice. We focus on how milspouses discursively construct resilience as they struggle to make sense of often contradictory and difficult circumstances. Our goal is to further understand how narratives about the physical, mental, and relational health challenges from lengthy periods of separation converge as part of an ongoing milspouse narrative of successful adaptation. Before presenting data and analysis to further explicate the communicative process of resilience among milspouses, we first provide a brief overview of the quality-of-life challenges experienced by milspouses as a result of deployment separations. Second, we offer a brief overview of resilience research related to milspouses’ deployment experiences.

LITERATURE REVIEW The World Health Organization (1948) offers a multidimensional view of quality of life as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (p. 100). Communicative competency is also a function of quality of life (Nussbaum, 2007). Quality of life among military families may be threatened by what milspouses commonly refer to as the dreaded 3 Ds of military life: deployment, divorce, and death. Deployment was historically a linear and limited process of separation and reintegration, with a distinct beginning and ending. During OEF/OIF, however, reintegration has been replaced by redeployment, which occurs as quickly as 9 months after a military member has returned home (Pincus, House, Christianson, & Adler, 2012). The new cycle of deployment creates increasing time pressure in a process of emotional reorganization, as milspouses repeatedly attach to and withdraw from their partners (Morse, 2006). The results of the new deployment cycle on military family members’ quality of life include increasing divorce rates, increases in child and spouse abuse by military members, increases in suicide among military members, and greater difficulty with reintegration following redeployment (Davis & Zoroya, 2007). Military members often return home from deployments with significant illnesses and injuries, but deploymentrelated stressors also present significant health risks for milspouses. For instance, researchers have documented deployment’s negative impact on milspouses’ health promotion behaviors and pregnancy health (Robrecht, Millegan, Leventis, Crescitelli, & McLay, 2008). As compared with wives of personnel who were not deployed, women whose husbands were deployed received more diagnoses of depressive disorders, sleep disorders, anxiety, and acute stress reaction and adjustment disorders (Mansfield et al., 2010). Compared to new mothers whose partners did

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not deploy, mothers whose partner was deployed during their pregnancy experienced significantly higher rates of postnatal depression (Robrecht et al., 2008). Deployment stress among milspouses has also been negatively associated with regular exercise, social behaviors, regular sleep, and safety–environmental behaviors (Padden, Connors, & Agazio, 2011). Despite increased OEF/OIF deployments, milspouses continue to communicate a general sense of self-sufficiency, optimism, and support for the military and its mission (Davis, Ward, & Storm, 2011; Johnson et al., 2007). As a group, milspouses tend to value strength of character and successful adaptation to a changing environment (Gewirtz, Erbes, Polusn, Forgatch, & DeGarmo, 2011). These messages may be intended to demonstrate milspouses’ personal well-being and continuing commitment to their partners. Conversely, research suggests there may be a lack of efficacy among milspouses who married and had children early in life (Ahmadi & Green, 2011). Younger milspouses, non-U.S. and naturalized citizens, and those with children at home may be at greater risk for unsuccessful coping during deployment than older milspouses, U.S. citizens, and those without children at home (Johnson et al., 2007; Weins & Boss, 2006; Westhuis, Fafara, & Ouellette, 2006). Unsuccessful adaptation to the deployment situation among these milspouses may stem from a lack of social support, or a sense that resilience will commence once the military member returns home. During deployments, some milspouses take on household tasks normally performed by the military member (Klein, Tatone, & Lindsey, 1988), while others seek to avoid deployment anxieties by focusing on new skills such as home repair or financial management. Many milspouses report experiencing a greater sense of autonomy in decision making for the family during deployment (Figley, 1993a; Weins & Boss, 2006), but in this instance autonomy is not always viewed favorably since it is not optional for military spouses who are unable to communicate with their partners to make shared decisions. Communicatively Constructing Resilience The issue of resilience is studied by scholars from many social scientific disciplines (Egeland, Carlson, & Sroufe, 1993; Kaplan, Turner, Norman, & Stillson, 1996; Ong, Bergeman, & Boker, 2009), but there is still surprisingly little evidence regarding resilience processes among milspouses during OEF/OIF (Johnson et al., 2007). After reviewing five decades of resilience research, Luthar (2006) concluded, “Resilience rests, fundamentally, on relationships” (p. 780). In line with Luthar’s assertion, a communication-based view of resilience is situated in processes that are “developed, sustained, and grown through discourse, interaction, and material considerations” (Buzzanell, 2010, p. 2). This description of resilience is particularly

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applicable to the milspouse context because it highlights the importance of relationships among those seeking resilience, and places a strong emphasis on dynamic communicative sensemaking associated with uncertain situations (Buzzanell, 2010; Buzzanell et al., 2009; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012). It suggests that resilience is not merely a psychological way of coping, or a physiological response to stress. Instead, the socially constructed narrative that constitutes the milspouse identity requires talk, stories, and relationships that intersubjectively craft the resilience experience among milspouses and reframe adversity as “part of the job.” Although a few empirical studies have investigated resilience as a process of sensemaking through interaction, by focusing on the context of milspouse identity, it is possible to explore how resilience is communicatively constructed over time throughout a cycle of deployments. This study sought to further explore the iterative and reflexive processes that provide the opportunity for renewal and rebuilding of relationships in military families throughout dynamic OEF/OIF deployment cycles. Communicationbased resilience is achieved through processes involving accounts, narratives, and other messages intended to (a) craft normalcy; (b) affirm identity anchors; (c) maintain and use communication networks; (d) reframe events putting alternative logics to work; and (e) legitimize negative feelings while foregrounding productive action (Buzzanell, 2010; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012). Each of these processes as employed in the deployment context is further described and defined in Table 1. Through a continuous communicative construction of resilience, these processes shape how the lives of families who have been separated for extended periods of time are

transformed by their experiences in both negative and positive ways. We examined milspouses’ views on resilience that created, and were created by, their deployment experiences. Despite the growing body of work on the communicative construction of resilience, there is still an absence of literature analyzing communication-based resilience experiences among milspouses. We therefore sought to extend existing research on resilience in families and workplace contexts by focusing on assumptions about military life, as well as interactions and messages surrounding milspouses’ deployment experiences. Our research is guided by the following questions: RQ1: How do milspouses communicatively construct their experiences of military deployments? RQ2: In what ways do the processes of resilience described by Buzzanell (2010) help shape resilience among milspouses throughout the deployment cycle? METHOD Based on more than 20 hours of audiotaped interviews with spouses of active-duty military members, this study systematically analyzed participants’ accounts of military deployments to uncover evidence of milspouse resilience throughout the deployment cycle. Participants To pursue information about communication and resilience among milspouses during deployments, interviews with

TABLE 1 Five Processes of Milspouse Resilient Communication Process

Characteristics

Subthemes From Coding

Crafting normalcy

Discourse functions to create a system of meaning, a routine, or a mundane process in daily life

Reinforcing a cycle of deployment Rituals to mark time Avoiding uncertainty in daily life Coping through predictable discourse

Affirming identity anchors

Discourse used to explain milspouse identity and promote the milspouse archetype

Coping with complaint Independence and resourcefulness

Maintaining and using social networks

Building and using relationships to cope and manage activities

Rumor control Milspouse support groups Support for less experienced and disenfranchised milspouses

Using alternative logics

Collectively reframe deployment to allow and encourage resilience

Normalizing uncertainty Reframing mental stressors as part of an adventure Finding humor in uncertainty

Foregrounding productive actions/minimizing negative feelings

Communicatively constructing resilience despite acknowledging adversity

Actions used to mask or distract from negative emotions Passing time by staying active

Note. Adapted from Buzzanell (2010).

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24 active-duty military spouses were conducted. Participants were recruited in a mid-size southern U.S. city that is home to two major military installations and within 15 miles of two additional military installations. A member of the research team introduced the project to two leaders of a local military spouse organization. The two local milspouse leaders agreed to contact potential participants in the local community and provide them with contact information for a member of the research team. Interested participants contacted a member of the research team by phone or by e-mail, and a meeting was scheduled to conduct the face-to-face interviews. The successful recruitment of milspouse participants was achieved in part by selecting and gaining permissions to use three private, conveniently located settings: a private office adjacent to a soccer field where several participants’ children had soccer practice, an empty classroom at a local elementary school where several participants dropped their children off for school in the mornings, and the office at a community clubhouse adjacent to a local swimming pool. To maintain anonymity and encourage candid responses to the interview questions, interviews were numbered, and no identifying information was collected regarding military members’ ranks, job titles, or duty stations. Any discussion of specific job titles or specific missions was redacted from the transcripts. The average age of participants was 32 years. Two participants were male, and all participants’ spouses had deployed at least once in the past year. Seven participant spouses were deployed at the time of their interview. Two participants were currently serving in unofficial milspouse leadership positions related to their spouses’ jobs; both were married to unit commanders and acted as voluntary liaisons between their military organizations and other milspouses in their unit. The interviews were structured to inquire about changes in participants’ daily routines before, during, and after each deployment. Questions also focused on the extent to which participants felt the need to “stay positive” about deployments and/or “bounce back” when their partner returned home. Participants were encouraged to focus on the stories of their own deployment experiences, as opposed to the more work-related issues of their partners, or other specific issues faced by their children. Interviews ranged from 30 to 50 minutes, were audiotaped and transcribed, and resulted in 81 pages of interview transcripts. Data Analysis Strauss and Corbin (1990) described the deductive method of using a priori research in qualitative data analysis as a means of gaining “theoretical sensitivity” to help identify empirical evidence which supported or contradicted existing theoretical ideas (p. 41–47). Although Buzzanell’s five processes of resilience were previously discussed as a means of understanding resilience after job loss, we sought to examine

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potential evidence of resilience in military families experiencing deployments. For this reason, Buzzanell’s resilience processes and their definitions served an overarching structure for our analysis, within which a more inductive coding process was employed to identify processes, practices, and material resources contributing to resilience in this context (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Stage one of data analysis included open coding of unrestricted chunks of texts that potentially related to resilience based on Buzzanell’s existing definitions. At this point, interpretations were tentative and linkages between the data and Buzzanell’s resilience processes were not completely clear. Phase two involved further integration of open codes with Buzzanell’s framework by connecting, collapsing, or associating emergent subthemes within each of the resilience processes. As the emergent subthemes presented in Table 1 were associated with the five resilience processes, each unit of text that represented the subtheme was compared to the definitions of the resilience processes to ensure consistency with the overall process definitions. Phase three involved the specific categorization of information units (talk) to provide confirming and disconfirming evidence of each category of resilience in this context. The goal of this phase was to confirm that each subtheme was mutually exclusive and appropriately placed into the larger process categories based on the interview transcript data. The final phase involved the juxtaposition of the contextual elements of the data with Buzzanell’s (2010) description of resilience communication to more clearly examine the congruence of these data with existing empirical evidence on resilience. This phase ended with construction of interpretive claims for a newly emergent view of milspouse resilient communication (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002; Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

RESULTS Participants described the communicative construction of their deployment experiences. The nature of military life requires regular separation among family members, but milspouses in this study expressed uncertainty about how to achieve a sense of resilience during the escalating cycle of deployments. Several participants noted that their partners now undergo resilience training as part of their predeployment activities, but none of the participants had knowledge of resilience training programs available to milspouses or family members. In this study, milspouses provided examples of how resilience was achieved through communication aiming to craft a new sense of normalcy, affirm identity anchors, maintain and use social networks, use alternative logics to reframe with stressors, and foreground productive action before, during, and after separation from their spouses (Buzzanell, 2010). Table 1 provides a description and example of each of the five resilience communication processes in this context.

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Crafting a New Normalcy

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Crafting normalcy referred to patterns of talk and sensemaking used to produce systems of meaning in a changing environment (Buzzanell, 2010). Participants in this study overwhelmingly discussed crafting normalcy as way to reconcile “contradictory realities” of separation and reconciliation wit their partners. Participants described how a battle rhythm of normalcy helped them manage uncertainty by limiting the amount of inconsistency in their daily lives. A participant described her sense of crafting normalcy by saying, It’s sort of like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I do the same things over and over to make my life simple. (Participant 19)

In the film Groundhog Day, actor Bill Murray’s character is in a time loop, where every day is the same, and every interaction is repeated. The consistency and expansion of repetition among some spouses created a new sense of normalcy to fill the time that might have been spent with a loved one. Activities normally shared with a loved one were continued to maintain consistency, and time spent on repeated activities was often expanded to craft a more extensive schedule and fill time that might have normally been spent with a loved one. For example, normalcy was crafted by repeatedly watching and recording their loved one’s favorite television programs, ritualistic activities such as marking a calendar for each day that passes, attending weekly potluck luncheons with other spouses whose partners were deployed, and creating routines for keeping a weekly video diary to chronicle life while their spouse was away. Even when milspouses did not particularly enjoy certain activities, they were repeated to maintain consistency with previous norms: I don’t really like watching the news but I still watched it when he was gone. We always watch it at night so I just kept on watching it. (Participant 7)

In anticipation of the next deployment, some participants tried to maximize their opportunities for resilience by altering expectations of family relationships and roles even when their spouse was not deployed. For example, a participant described communication used for social distancing before and during deployment by saying:

Co-parenting was also a challenge with a military member partner who was alternately involved with the family, and then unavailable for short or long periods of time. A participant described her frustrations crafting normalcy: When they leave you know you have to do things all on your own, you get your own battle rhythm, my husband calls it a battle rhythm, but then things get disrupted when they pop in and out. My kids talk to him on Skype, and it’s great that we get to talk, but it can really be hard to keep things the way I want them done. The transition from both of us parenting to just me is disrupted every time he pops in. (Participant 1)

For this participant, crafting normalcy was particularly difficult because each deployment seemed to be liminal, situated between the present and the future, and based on a routine of the past. The communicative uncertainty associated with continuous deployment cycles reduced the amount of time available to adjust between separation and reintegration of their partners into everyday life rituals, and routine discourse.

Affirming Identity Anchors Buzzanell (2010) described identity anchors as “a relatively enduring cluster of identity discourses upon which individuals and their familial, collegial, and/or community members rely when explaining who they are for themselves and in relation to each other” (p. 4). The historical milspouse archetype was defined by distinct rules and expectations that have not been drastically transformed to reflect the new patterns of military life. The ideal milspouse identity is still rooted in an expectation of personal sacrifice and resilience in the face of adversity. From this perspective, milspouse resilience is achieved by maintaining a positive outlook and a strength of character not shared by women outside military life. Separation is part of the job description, and living with the challenges of separation requires resiliency skills that reinforce a woman’s ability to manage her role. One woman described what she believed is the guiding principle of milspouse identity:

Even when my husband was home, he always told me to do things on my own so I would get used to it. (Participant 15)

Even with my close girlfriend, there is sort of an unspoken rule about whining. We don’t admit most of the things we feel. For our husbands, the mission always comes first, and we signed up for this life, so there’s not much room for whining. (Participant 8)

Buzzanell (2010) described crafting normalcy as discourse and performance that promote recurrent patterns in daily life. Among participants in this study, there was a strong desire to maintain a family routine to cope with deployments. Crafting normalcy, however, was often described as difficult because of constant disruption to the families’ routines when the military member was alternately home and away from the family.

Military life is full of plans and contingencies, and resilience through identity anchors requires an ability to manage deployment planning processes. Milspouses often described how they competently completed deploymentrelated tasks, but few participants described how they prepared emotionally prior to deployments. Similarly, postdeployment tasks were viewed as a function of task completion, but only one participant mentioned any discussion

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with her partner of how they would bounce back after the deployment was over. A participant explained:

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We got all the papers done, the will, the power of attorney, but we didn’t really talk about what being apart would feel like, or what I was supposed to think about while he was gone. Most of my friends try to think all positive thoughts all the time, and they act like they know what they’re doing when they mow the lawn and stuff. I have no idea what a military wife is really supposed to be able to do, but I don’t really feel like I can complain about things to them. It’s just not accepted. (Participant 10)

In this example, the more commonly espoused milspouse identity anchors of independence and resourcefulness are foregrounded, but the participant also expressed her unmet needs for social support through communicative connection. She seems to fear that her uncertainty about how to discursively make sense of the deployment experience might be viewed as complaining and socially unacceptable. Discourse that could alleviate her uncertainty is backgrounded in favor of actions to reaffirm socially acceptable milspouse norms. Quality of life that could contribute to resilience was especially diminished among some participants who engaged in behaviors perceived as inconsistent with the espoused milspouse archetype. For example, women participants who worked outside the home reported feeling isolated and rejected by their milspouse peers, and a few participants discussed an unwillingness to share their feelings with coworkers who had never personally experienced military deployment separations, for fear of rejection. There was a universal consensus among all participants that milspouses with jobs outside the home had a much harder time during deployment separations, and a male participant even reported taking a leave of absence from his job during his wife’s 6month deployment. A female milspouse who continued to work outside the home recalled what she felt was a collective silence among her milspouse peers about physical and psychological problems she experienced during her husband’s deployment. I think they thought if I quit my job, I wouldn’t be so tired all the time, but really not sleeping was making me sick. I can never sleep when my husband is deployed. (Participant 10)

In this way, professional identity anchors that could potentially foster a sense of normalcy served as an additional barrier to social support from milspouse and non-milspouse peers. Interactions with other working peers that could have benefitted milspouses did not occur due to a lack of connection or fear of stigmatization. Moreover, narratives from milspouses in this study suggested that opportunities for resilience were diminished when milspouses disconfirmed commonly held milspouse identity anchors during interactions with their peers.

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Maintaining and Using Social Networks In addition to their individual experiences, participants shared stories of how their milspouse social networks were used to create a common narrative of the milspouse experience. Using social networks channels, individual resilience stories converged to become part of a larger, continuing story that linked resilience to service through personal sacrifice. Social networks were viewed as tools to maintain communicative connection among milspouses, and to reach out to younger and disenfranchised milspouses during deployments. Previous research suggests younger milspouses often struggle with loneliness and isolation during deployments and shy away from spouse networks that include spouses of more senior military members. An older milspouse participant explained: Those brand new spouses that are young—18 or 19 years old—they’ll say they’re fine but they’re not. They really rely on talking to their spouse because a lot of times they’re alone at a base and away from their family. You get accustomed to receiving a call, so when that call doesn’t come you get really shaken up. (Participant 10)

Participant 10 was the spouse of a very senior officer, so she felt especially responsible for the milspouses from her husband’s unit. Her husband was the leader of the military members, and she was the unpaid leader of the spouses left behind. She described how she had made countless trips to visit young spouses in their homes, arranged babysitters for spouses when they had appointments, and over time had comforted almost a half dozen young wives whose husbands had been killed during OEF/OIF conflicts. Participant 10 said that with a few exceptions, she did not typically socialize with the milspouses in her husband’s unit outside of deployments, but during deployments she actively contacted them to help her husband by “anticipating problems before they became public.” The younger participants in this study described how they sought out information from more senior milspouses in their social network as a substitute for communication and support normally received from their deployed spouse. A participant explained: The first deployment was the hardest for me because I didn’t know any of the other wives. Before my husband left we made a plan to talk all the time on Skype, but then I didn’t hear from him for weeks at a time. I met [my milspouse friend] who suggested I e-mail him pictures every day so I could at least feel like I was talking to him, even though he didn’t talk back. (Participant 6)

Increases in gossip and malicious rumors were described as a negative consequence of milspouse social networks during deployments. Rumor control was discussed as a function of support networks, and several participants described the negative impact of private or classified information that was shared on Facebook or other accessible websites. Regarding the propensity for milspouse support networks to

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foster secret information sharing in public conversations, a participant stated:

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You have to be careful because rumors get started when one person finds out something and they post it. Things get twisted. I’m certain, pretty certain, they would discourage us from posting information online because you could endanger somebody’s life. But lots of people do it, even when they really don’t know what they’re talking about. Somebody will post, “Oh they’re getting ready to leave in a week,” and they don’t realize they’re putting the unit in danger. (Participant 9)

One participant stated that despite the negative consequences of milspouse social network gossip, she was comforted by any and all interaction from members of her husband’s unit. In her view, any information was better than no information, and accessing the milspouse support network was a way to pass the time regardless of the accuracy of the information she received: To be honest, I would get on Facebook for hours every day. I never took too much of what people said seriously, but at least I had something to do. It was more about having someone to talk to than getting good information. I got good information at the spouse briefings on base. (Participant 2)

Putting Alternative Logics to Work Buzzanell (2010) explained how alternative logics can be found by recognizing the craziness of a situation. Resilient communication among milspouses required the routinization of alternative logics used to anticipate situational and relational changes. In a sense, the essence of life as a milspouse involves the assumptions of a unique reality, which is often unfamiliar to those living outside contemporary military culture. There is nothing normal about having a spouse who is in constant physical danger, who is routinely away from home, and who often comes home in what appears to be deep psychological distress. Participants discussed how living in new cities all the time, away from family, required them to embrace the craziness of their lives as an adventure, or something to be proud of and celebrate. A participant described how her partner helps her stay organized when he is home, and how she struggles with organization while he is deployed: It cracks me up when I go to a store that has one of those reward cards like CVS or Walgreens. When I don’t have the card with me they go, “I can look it up by your phone number.” I’ve had nine different phone numbers in the last five years, not counting my cell phone numbers, and there is no way I could remember the number I listed when we opened the card. They they go, “If you don’t know your phone number, maybe I can look you up by your address. What’s your ZIP code?’ I just look at them like, “Are you kidding me?” I just have to laugh. (Participant 4)

Using alternative logics to help members achieve resilience during deployments also involved use of specific strategies to simplify life during deployment, including reduction in work outside the home, altering children’s extracurricular schedules, and altering views of technology used to communicate. When describing how she managed the stress of her family commitments without her partner, a participant explained: I told the coach, we just don’t do away games. Period. My son will skip them because I can’t take all four to another town and still make the other three kids’ games. My husband was [my son’s] coach last year but now we are going to be your worst nightmare because we will miss all the away games. Period. (Participant 19)

In this case, the normal routine of the family was unattainable while her husband was deployed, and without any viable options to maintain their schedule, the participant seemed to jokingly accept that she had to make changes to her children’s routine. Participant 19 expressed a sense of resignation to her situation that almost required a sense of humor. She said her kids love it that they get pizza twice a week “when Daddy’s gone,” and she thought it was beneficial that she has learned to decline social invitations because “I just don’t need extra stress from trying to get my kids to put on their good shoes.” Several milspouses discussed how they also employed alternative logics to legitimize unmet needs due to missed communication with their partners. In non-deployment situations most military family members have the general expectation that their partners will share stories about events that happen at work, and will be reachable via telephone or computer at some point in the day. Those two assumptions do not hold true when a spouse is deployed, so milspouses have to adjust their rational expectations for communication based on their partners’ mission and access to communication channels. A participant explained: Sometimes my husband knew he would not be able to call at our regular Friday night time because he had a mission scheduled, but he could not tell me he had a mission so I would wait for the call. He knew I was going to be mad at him, so sometimes he would lie and say the phones were jammed. I just thought he forgot. (Participant 4)

The deployed spouse in this case knew how important his scheduled call was to his partner, but he also knew his mission was highly classified. He lied to his wife, who misattributed the miscommunication to her husband’s lack of interest in their scheduled conversation. Even though this participant logically knew her husband could not freely choose when to call her, and logically knew it was not likely that he forgot to call, she communicatively constructed resilience by adopting an alternative logic regarding the lack of importance of the scheduled call.

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Legitimizing Negative Feelings while Foregrounding Productive Action Buzzanell described how resilience in the context of job loss may result from efforts to downplay negative feelings in favor of positive emotions such as hopefulness. In the milspouse context, there was certainly an expressed desire to enact positive communication during deployments, despite a legitimate right to feel sad, angry, or scared. Without exception, participants expressed the need to think and act in a positive manner during deployments, and privileging positive thoughts and actions was seen as central to communicatively constructing resilience. Surprisingly, absent from the data was any clear example from a participant of prolonged negative emotions regarding their spouse, or his or her absence, or his or her profession. Although several participants mentioned the potential threat of negative attitudes and emotions among milspouses, participants summarily rejected any legitimate right to experience or act on negative emotions. In various ways, each participant in this study used language or examples to relate how resilience is thwarted by negative feelings due to adversity during deployments, but no participant openly described how she or he routinely experienced or dealt with negative thoughts and emotions. A participant described the role of emotions by stating, “Allowing yourself to cry about it makes things worse because it opens the door to a whole bunch of emotions that can make things much worse. The real trick is to try and distract yourself by keeping busy” (Participant 22). Another participant described how negative emotions thwart resilience based on the message they send to those who interact with her. Participant 4 explained, “When a spouse goes around looking all sad and lonely, she is basically telling people she thinks her feelings are more important than her husband’s mission. That is just not accepted among my friends. We suck it up, stay positive, and do our time with a smile. We all signed up for this when we married to the military.” In this study, each participant gave at least one example of talk intended to express resilience through a positive outlook on their situation. Buzzanell (2010) describes this foregrounding of productive action as a hallmark of the communicative construction of resilience. Although data from this study provided consistent evidence of Buzzanell’s communicative resilience processes, participant narratives were inconclusive regarding the ability to legitimize negative feelings while foregrounding productive action. Specifically, although participants described strategies and tactics used to foreground productive action, there were few narratives describing how negative feelings should or would be perceived as a legitimate part of resilience in milspouse culture. Interestingly, there were very few first-person acknowledgments of negative emotions as part of the deployment experience, and resilience was most often described as antithetical to the existence of negative

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emotions. A consistent need to “stay positive” was described as an essential part of achieving resilience, and negative feelings were consistently described as a potentially destructive force that could prevent successful coping, resilience, and reintegration upon a spouse’s return. The consistent view of resilience espoused by participants who had experienced deployments involved talk that reframed expectations, or crafted a new sense of normalcy to maintain an optimistic outlook.

DISCUSSION The two research questions in this study sought to explore milspouses’ experiences during a constant deployment cycle and their relationship with the communicative construction of resilience. The participants’ narratives provided tremendous insights into how milspouses discursively make sense of their unique realities. Resilience during deployments was described as a set of processes involving new routines, alternative logics, social support, and interaction to intersubjectively negotiate a proactive state of being among milspouses over time. Participants’ narratives also confirmed the centrality of communication in milspouses’ quality of life and resilience. The irony of predicting the unpredictable as part of deployment separations and the desire to seek simplicity during a complex personal journey were described in various ways by participants in this study. Interestingly, resilience was not described as an outcome or product of deployment. It was much more often discussed in terms of mindfulness about the relational context and circumstances that existed before their partner left, and a desire to share stories and enact processes to maintain their relationship despite separation. In narratives related to all five processes of resilience described by Buzzanell (2010), the challenges of resilience were evident when participants discussed how they struggled with self-perceived inabilities to live up to an archetypal milspouse identity. Resilience was therefore described more as a continuing personal journey than a collective outcome or destination, and the support of others during deployments was sought more as an endorsement of newly crafted normalcy, but not as a result of any personal inadequacy. Milspouses found crafting normalcy difficult in an environment where expectations for communication were unclear. Increased frequency of deployments made it difficult for milspouses to create reliable routines and maintain cognitive frameworks to support stability and resilience. Vormbrock (1993) described how some milspouses sought to balance continuing emotional ties with less day-to-day support from their spouses. Achieving this balance helped milspouses experience a greater sense of resilience and satisfaction throughout the entire deployment process. Changes in explanatory frameworks and identity compelled using and maintaining social networks to address the

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emerging situation. Milspouses who utilized and maintained social support networks may be better equipped to manage the uncertainty associated with the new face of deployment to manage social, temporal, financial, medical, and cultural pressures discussed by participants. Overall, the theme of using social networks echoes Dao’s (2011) observation that constant communication during deployment can be distracting for military members, but distraction seems equally likely for milspouses seeking to create their own battle rhythm while their spouse is away. Research suggests communication between partners strongly influences wives’ positive coping during a deployment (Moelker & Van der Kloet, 2006), but unrealistic expectations for spousal communication during deployment was common theme among many participants. Social support from other milspouses can also play an essential role in positive coping during a deployment (Pittman, Kerpelman, & McFadyen, 2004), and in this study it was evident how resilience was enacted through successfully supporting disenfranchised milspouses. More senior participants described how they provided support for junior milspouses, but their narratives helped illuminate how extending help to others provided a framework for resilience for those in leadership positions. These findings support existing research that reported that milspouses who receive social support from each other often benefit from a sense of belonging that can buffer the stresses of separation from their spouse (Fenell & Fenell, 2003). In 2009, Spera reported that active-duty milspouses had more positive experiences when they had strong relationships, effective leaders, and tangible social support from community members and other milspouses. This research supported the importance of maintaining and using social networks for resilience. Participants in this study referenced the alternative logics of normalizing uncertainty, reframing stressors, and using humor to ease uncertainty and collectively contextualize deployment and support resilience. In developing their self-regulation model of psychosocial responses to healthrelated threats, Leventhal, Benyamini, and Brownlee (1997) described the mechanism through which communication may support milspouses’ uses of alternative logics to deal with mental stressors associated with deployment. In this model, personal (e.g., personality attributes and prior learning) and social (e.g., social support) attributes combine to create the context within which milspouses communicate with others, as well as a lens through which each deployment is viewed and experienced. Buzzanell (2010) writes that in a time of national crisis “an organization is likely to (re)assert its primary identity, mission, image, and/or brand” (p. 5). Narratives in this study support the need among milspouses to (re)assert their shared identity anchors of quiet strength and sacrifice, and background existing individual and professional identities to facilitate their partners’ service to country.

Implications The uncertainty created by the new face of deployment can produce disturbing feelings of sadness and fear. However, Faber, Willerton, Clymer, MacDermid, and Weiss (2008) reported that when military members lived for prolonged periods without their spouse, upon reunion both parties were more likely to avoid discussions with their partner about thoughts and feelings. Communication became more discretionary in terms of which topics were perceived as relevant or potentially important to the other party. It is important for milspouses to feel free to express and legitimize negative feelings caused by biographical disruption. However, if they are also able to reframe the circumstance into one of cautious hopefulness they may be able to take the productive action needed to affirm identity anchors and use and maintain social networks needed to support quality of life outcomes. Resilience among military families is a complex and dynamic process. Findings from this study provide evidence of the challenges and opportunities for milspouses as they intersubjectively create resilience. A recent report from the Center for Military Health Policy Research (Chandra et al., 2010) included a call for the integration of support for family communication programs into existing deployment planning. For milspouses who live near their family support system, some families improve their communication and marital satisfaction by participating in family therapy sessions after a deployment (Ford et al., 1998), but more resilience awareness programs are needed to teach important communication skills to family members before and during deployment separations. Post-deployment interaction is but one aspect of communicatively constructed resilience for milspouses and their partners. More public conversations are needed to acknowledge the existence of negative emotions that occur during deployment. Milspouse leaders who publicly affirm their own resilience processes could redefine the meaning of emotions experienced during deployments and serve as role models for resilience in the face of adversity. Peer or professional counseling groups could be implemented to help milspouses make the distinction between feeling negative emotions and acting negatively toward family members. Milspouses who aspire to maintain conformity and optimism might have a greater chance of resilience if they were able to deal with negative emotions in a structured process. The military has made great strides to create behavioral health programs for military members seeking to cope with psychological problems stemming from deployments, and these programs could be extended to help milspouses dealing with similar concerns. Several government and academic institutions have been working to develop programs to help military families achieve resilience in spite of the unpredictability of OEF/OIF deployments. The U.S. Air Force, for example, has recently promoted resilience as a culture

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of holistic physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellness (Vickers, 2012). This shift acknowledges that resilience is not solely a psychological process, but rather is constituted through communication to deal with uncertainty in every aspect of military families’ lives. In all branches of the military there is a strong sense that all military family members are at great risk for emotional and behavioral health consequences of war-related stress (Vickers, 2012), and more programs are needed to offer services for families seeking to maintain positive coping during deployment. The examples of milspouses’ communicative construction of resilience presented in this study rest on the assumption that resilience is a desired state of being, and one that occurs through communication before, during, and after physical separation due to deployment. Milspouses who are capable of open communication about their feelings and challenges may be more successful in achieving resilience. A new sense of normalcy did not occur at the end of a deployment for any of the participants in this study. Instead, each milspouse provided evidence of how crafting normalcy through ongoing discourse aided them in reshaping and reframing their circumstances during adversity. The results of this qualitative study uncovered mixed evidence regarding Buzzanell’s resilience processes, but the themes of crafting normalcy, affirming identity anchors, and using and maintaining social networks were particularly pertinent to the milspouse experience. Future work should further investigate ways to help milspouses legitimize negative emotions without damaging their self-efficacy for coping with prolonged separations.

Limitations Since the first and third authors participated in data collection and analysis in this qualitative research, personal biases, experiences, and assumptions of the researchers must be considered (Gerhart et al., 2001). With a combined 31 years of marriage to Air Force officers, we have personally experienced deployment and separation and have often acted as part of a support system for other milspouses. Although as researchers we sought to bracket our own experiences, the lens created by our many deployment experiences undoubtedly impacted our analysis of the data and interactions with participants. In addition, the results of this study are descriptive accounts from the participants representing two branches of services in one community, so any generalization of their experiences, as with all nonrandom samples, should be made with caution. It is very likely that additional examples of resilience among milspouses exist, but these data strongly supported most of the framework presented by Buzzanell (2010). Future research should seek to examine alternative sources and functions of resilience as a barrier to the negative impact of deployments on milspouses’ quality of life.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT The opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s), and are not necessarily representative of those of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), the Department of Defense (DOD); or, the United States Army, Navy, or Air Force.

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