Marriage During Deployment

Since combat operations began in October 2001, more than 2.1 million U.S service members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and over half of them were married. Marriage During Deployment, a memoir about a military family during wartime deployment, offers a window into the homelife and emotional world of a military family during deployment. During her husband’s Army deployment to Afghanistan, Marna Ashburn shows the mother handling everything – teaching the child to drive, attending little league games and school events solo, fixing broken dishwashers and cars, and celebrating holidays without dad. Marriage During Deployment depicts how the children and mother cope during the absence of their military member and how they stay connected to him while he is six thousand miles away from them.But while families try to stay connected during deployment, it can certainly be tough on them, and even tougher on the relationship. The truth is that geographical distance allows habits and coping mechanisms to fall away, revealing some long-ignored issues. In the end, Marriage During Deployment becomes a meditation on marriage, relationships, and identity, prompting the reader to question whether the couple can survive the life-changing year of deployment. The accumulation of missed moments inevitably creates a distance which may prove irreparable. Between the heartbreaking send-offs and the joyful reunions, there’s this – a year of separation, distance, challenges, anxiety, and loneliness. While providing you with an honest portrayal of resilient kids and a can-do military wife, Marna Ashburn also reveals the hidden costs of Army service.

Marriage During Deployment is a no-holds-barred look at the life of a mom and wife whose story will resonate with others who have struggled through the tangled web of emotions that go along with parenting and marriage during a deployment. The hope and pain is palpable on the pages of Marriage During Deployment, leaving readers wondering "What will come of this marriage? Will it survive deployment?", Marna Ashburn writes with uncommon bravery and honesty about the struggles unique to military marriages. This book gripped me from beginning to end. Hers is a voice we need to hear; with hard-won perspective and clear-eyed candor, Ashburn lights the way to a better understanding of service and sacrifice., Marna Ashburn speaks from bitter experience when she says military marriage requires careful attention from both spouses to survive and be healthy. She writes that a year-long deployment was the "death knell" to her own troubled marriage. However, her candidly related and hard-won experience could help other military couples to strengthen their own partnerships, not just for deployment but for all the challenges of military life.

Marna Ashburn grew up in an Air Force family, served five years in the US Army as a helicopter pilot after college, and then was a military wife for twenty years. Marna is the author of many books and articles on military life and military families, including Household Baggage: The Moving Life of a Military Wife (2006) and Household Baggage Handlers: 56 Stories from the Hearts and Lives of Military Wives (2008). She has been a featured guest speaker at Spouse Club meetings at military installations across the country, including Fort Leavenworth, Fort Drum, Fort Irwin, Fort Polk, the US Military Academy, Hanscom AFB, Carlisle Barracks, and the Naval War College, and has been interviewed several times on Army Wife Talk Radio (AWTN.com) and SpouseBuzz.com. She was a regular monthly columnist for Military Spouse magazine, and her other articles and essays were featured in publications such as ​Off Duty, Married to the Military, American Baby, Skirt!, The Military Times, SO Rhode Island, ​and the​ Providence Journal. ​ Her books can be found at her website, HouseholdBaggage.com, which also links to her blog, The Chronicles of Marna.