The Permission I Never Gave Myself
The parking lot was full by the time I arrived after dropping my children off at school.
I sat in my car and stared at the steering wheel, completely paralyzed. For the third time that week, I never made it inside. Feeling ashamed, I shifted my car into reverse and drove the short distance back to my house, where I unceremoniously sat on our oversized couch and stared at a blank television screen for the next six hours.
Sadly, this was my routine for almost six months.
I didn’t know grief could make a parking lot feel impossible.
By then, I was already struggling with depression while carrying the relentless weight of being a military spouse during wartime. Grief simply became the weight that finally pinned me in place.
At the time, my husband was working 16–18-hour days, so I was the default parent while trying to survive the feeling of falling into the deepest, darkest hole I had ever experienced. Anger, sadness, guilt, depression, and resentment all lived inside my body simultaneously.
Most people didn’t notice the shell of a human I had become. I knew. My husband knew.
I felt ignored, misunderstood, and completely helpless. I couldn’t put words or explanations to how I felt at the time. I just knew I was not okay.
The tears were constant.
Returning “home” to say one last goodbye to my mother changed every single thing about me. I was no longer the daughter she raised. I was a woman attempting to figure out how to go on without her.
While the events honoring her were incredibly difficult to witness, in many ways, the toughest part had only begun.
Because the “after” would never end.
After the funeral. After everyone went back to their lives. After the flowers disappeared and the phone calls stopped.
I still had children to raise. A military spouse role to fulfill. Responsibilities that didn’t disappear simply because my mother had.
And I was trapped in a body that simply would not cooperate.
There is no pause button for military spouses when something tragic happens. There is no time to take a knee or catch your breath. Expectations continue on, and you are expected to keep up no matter what.
At that time, our family was dealing with so much externally that adding the stress of losing a family member severed the last thread holding me together.
I knew I couldn’t depend on my husband to help with the kids or the house. It was my job. Hell, I never knew if I would even be awake when he finally walked through the door, hoping he could get at least a few hours of sleep.
And we were living through a global pandemic, which made an already isolating experience feel almost impossible to escape.
Eventually, I stopped expecting so much from myself. I stopped trying to do the things I had done “before.”
I stopped driving to the gym.
I stopped hoping my husband would come home and help me or somehow fix me.
When I dropped those expectations, I was finally able to lose some of the shame I carried around every day.
I was fully aware that I was failing, but I couldn’t stop it.
So I embraced it.
I did the bare minimum to keep my children safe and fed. Nothing more.
Over time, things became slightly easier. I still wasn’t fully present in my life. The fog was too dense for that. But I began to regain small pieces of the person I had been before.
When the calendar turned over, I decided I was ready to attempt my workout routine again.
It was far from easy, but I conquered it.
My head was down and my anxiety was pinging when I walked back into the gymnasium. I expected people to be disappointed in me because I had stopped attending class.
Thankfully, I was very wrong.
I was welcomed with open arms and smiles.
The understanding and grace those women showed me is something I will never forget. As I had done for most of my life, I had been far too hard on myself after something so tragic.
Those women didn’t blink when I couldn’t immediately return to what had once been my normal.
They showed me compassion and empathy.
They gave me something I had forgotten to give myself.
Grace.
Moving my body a few times a week didn’t erase my inner turmoil, but it gave me human interaction again. Even though I was unusually quiet—the opposite of my typical personality—I was surrounded by people I knew I could trust.
I wasn’t ready to explain myself.
I didn’t have to.
I could simply be there and do what my body would allow.
And that was enough.
Soon after returning to the gym, I realized I needed to speak with someone professionally about how I was feeling.
I had attempted to talk to my husband, but he didn’t “get it.” I became more frustrated than anything as he stared at me, listening to every word.
Looking back, I was clearly expecting him to magically become a mental health professional overnight.
Thankfully, I was able to see a counselor on our installation and begin sharing what I was feeling.
While hindsight now tells me that counselor was not qualified to help me in the ways I needed, she did give me a safe place to verbally assault her with all of my trauma and frustration.
At that point, having a safe space was crucial. I needed somewhere I could begin to put words to what was happening inside me.
Not long after I began seeing the counselor, we moved again.
While moving is always difficult, that move ultimately allowed me to find the therapist I needed.
It was there that I learned the phrase prolonged grief.
I had never allowed myself to fall apart after losing my mother.
If I cried, I only allowed myself a few minutes.
I desperately wanted to fall apart and lie in my bed in the dark every single day, but I believed I wasn’t allowed to.
Being a military spouse while dealing with something of this magnitude is crippling.
Part of you understands that you have responsibilities. Children who need you. A household that still needs to function. A spouse who may be gone more than he is home.
But another part of you does not care about any of that.
That part just wants to collapse.
And it continually tries to cut you off at the knees.
The lesson I learned while walking through a journey I never asked for wasn’t how to push through.
It was how to stop punishing myself for being broken by something that would break anyone.
Grieving a parent is human. It is expected.
The guilt I carried for not being by my mother’s bedside when she lost her fight is something I still carry with me years later.
But I can also recognize something I couldn't recognize then:
I did the best I could in the worst situation possible.
And maybe that is what I needed to learn all along.
Not how to keep going.
Not how to be stronger.
Not how to push through.
How to stop punishing myself for being human.
Remain Her Daughter
A wife, mother, colleague, daughter, and friend was gone.
And after her burial, it seemed like I was the only one who noticed.
My father uttered the words, “You’ll never understand. She was my wife and just your mother,” when it came to how much I was allowed to miss my own mother.
How dare he say that?
There is no one person who can dictate how much someone grieves someone else. That is completely unfair. I don’t have to justify my grief to anyone, especially a family member.
In the days leading up to my mom’s funeral, my brother, dad, and I stood near each other, misty-eyed, talking to the hundreds of people who came to honor my mom.
So why did it seem like I was the only one completely dying inside?
Was I the only one sobbing myself to sleep every night? Could anyone eat a full meal? I could barely stomach the smell of food.
And why was I expected to complete all the tasks that my mom would have done had she been there?
I didn’t sign up to be her replacement.
No one could ever do that.
Her shoes might have been small in stature, but they were enormous in heart.
A daughter lost her mother and was immediately handed responsibilities instead of being allowed to be a daughter.
I remember standing in the room where my mother’s casket was and nearly falling to my knees. To this day, five years later, I can still see that room in my mind.
I don’t think I had ever felt so sick in my life.
My mother was not supposed to be the one in that casket.
I couldn’t bear to look.
If I didn’t look, it wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be true.
And yet, somehow, life around me continued.
There were dishes.
There was dinner.
There were things that needed to be done.
I was expected to stand at the same sink my mother had stood at just a few days before and wash her dishes.
I was asked to use her pots and pans to make everyone dinner at her stove, as if she had never been there or might return any minute and take over.
I can still remember how my body felt completing those tasks.
I was there, but I wasn't.
I was numb inside.
My mother had just died, and somehow I was already being asked to step into the space she had left behind.
I didn't understand it then.
I only knew that I didn't want to do it.
I didn't want to wash her dishes.
I didn't want to cook in her kitchen.
I didn't want to touch the things she had just touched.
I wanted my mother.
I wanted to be her daughter.
I wanted someone else to take care of everything while I fell apart.
Instead, I kept functioning.
I grieved quietly for years before finally being diagnosed with prolonged grief by a professional. Thankfully, after hours of work and millions of tears, I can finally speak about my grief without completely breaking down.
But there is one thing I have noticed about my journey.
No one else in my family seems to have grieved the way I did.
And for years, I wondered why.
I know my dad missed my mom. I witnessed his sorrow many times. But I wondered if it lingered for anyone else the way it lingered for me.
Was she really closer to me, and that’s why I fell apart so badly?
Did my brother ever show emotion over losing our mom so suddenly?
How is it that my dad seemed to move on so quickly?
What I struggled with most was not knowing where my grief fit. Everyone around me seemed to find their way forward, while I felt trapped in the moment my mother died.
I spent so much time looking at everyone else's grief that I began questioning my own.
Maybe I was grieving too much.
Maybe I was taking too long.
Maybe I was supposed to be stronger.
Maybe something was wrong with me.
But what if nothing was wrong with me?
What if my grief didn't need to look like anyone else's?
It feels like the loss of my mother pulled the release pin on our family.
I carry resentment for the ways that people did or didn’t act surrounding her passing. I carry frustration because of the parentification that was thrust upon me while my anxiety and grief were pulling me under.
And I carry anger for the years I spent believing that I wasn't allowed to miss my own mother as much as I did.
I don’t love all of the new realizations I’ve had after processing my grief, because now I see the truth in people.
The curtain has been drawn back.
I can truthfully assess situations without my mental health weighing me down and altering my vision.
I can never unsee these things.
I can never forget how it felt to smile and hug hundreds of people without my husband and kids by my side.
I will certainly never forget being made to feel that I wasn't allowed to miss my mom.
And maybe that is one of the cruelest things about grief.
You lose someone, and then you discover all the things you didn't know about the people who remain.
The tsunamis of grief that occur after losing someone you love are not only shocking, but so unfair.
Why am I on an amazing vacation with my family and suddenly I see or hear something that reminds me of her and instantly I am sobbing?
Why can something so small pull me back into a moment that happened five years ago?
I worked so hard to be able to speak about her without tears in my eyes, yet I still struggle sometimes.
For a long time, I thought that was the goal. To be able to talk about my mother without crying.
To finally be “okay.”
But maybe that isn't the goal.
Maybe grief doesn't have a finish line.
Maybe healing isn't never crying again.
Maybe healing is being able to cry and still keep living.
Because I loved my mother.
And I still do.
Why was my grief treated as excessive when it was simply mine?
I don't know why my grief looked different.
I don't know why her passing affected me the way it did.
I don't know why I couldn't simply put it down and move forward when everyone else seemed able to.
But I know this now: I wasn't grieving incorrectly.
I was grieving my mother.
And when she died, I wasn't supposed to become her.
I was supposed to remain her daughter.
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Written by Allison Burton, 2026
Because Someone Has To Say It
You Don't Have To Erase The Chapters
There are phrases military spouses hear so often they almost become part of our identity. Being grateful 100% of the time is a big one. So is being “resilient,” or the ever-present reminder to “look at this like an adventure.” As simple as those phrases sound, they are not always easy to embody. And that’s okay. Sometimes accepting your lived experience means admitting it was complicated.
We are fully capable of being frustrated by moving every two to three years while also being grateful that we experienced a state or country we may never have otherwise called home. Military spouses spend so much of their spouse’s career doing things for everyone else that they sometimes forget they are also allowed to acknowledge their own feelings.
For years, I thought accepting my life meant being thankful for every single chapter. I thought resilience meant quickly moving past the hard parts. I’ve learned that acceptance looks different.
I am grateful for every chapter of my life, but gratitude does not erase the moments that were painful.
Did I enjoy my husband deploying twice in three years, each one lasting a year? Absolutely not. However, during that same season, I delivered two healthy babies that I love more than I can fathom.
Am I proud of the period in my marriage when I was in such a dark place that I pushed my husband away daily? Absolutely not. However, that season forced me to confront parts of myself I wasn’t proud of. It taught me to communicate, heal, and become a better partner.
Do I enjoy the heartbreaking goodbyes that come with this lifestyle? Definitely not. But I am incredibly grateful for the people who have been part of my story, whether they are now a few miles away or on the other side of the world. Distance may change the way relationships look, but it does not erase their impact.
There doesn’t have to be tension between gratitude and honesty. They can happen at the exact same time.
Accepting our lived experiences does not mean we have to love every moment of them. It means we give ourselves permission to acknowledge the full picture: the difficult chapters, the unexpected blessings, the moments we would repeat, and the ones we would never choose again.
Our stories are not made up of only the good or only the hard. They are made up of all of it. Those experiences become part of us, but they do not have to become the entirety of who we are.
As military spouses — and simply as humans — we often minimize our experiences because someone else “has it worse,” or we worry someone will overhear us and think we’re ungrateful. We are allowed to honor what has happened in our lives without letting it define our entire identity. Acceptance is not putting a shiny bow on difficult experiences. It’s allowing ourselves to tell the truth about them.
Every experience we carry has the potential to deepen our empathy. The challenges we’ve overcome have created skills that we may never have acquired or recognized in ourselves. Each person’s story has the power to connect them to someone else. You don’t have to erase hard chapters to appreciate the whole book.
The life we have lived is the foundation for the person we are becoming. We don’t have to rewrite our past to move forward. We simply have to acknowledge it, honor it, and carry it with us.
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Written by Allison Burton, 2026
Because Someone Has To Say It
Goodbyes Suck
After more than two decades with my husband, goodbyes still don't get easier. Instead each one feels more impossible than the last. Marrying a service member usually comes with the understanding of saying ‘see you later’ often, but no one prepares you for the tsunami of emotions that occur when you are sending them off to a war zone. It doesn't matter that I've been fiercely independent for most of my life..whenever the duffle bags come out, the shirts are rolled up, and the Kevlar makes an appearance I absolutely fall apart on the inside.
From the moment you hear the news of your soldier deploying until the second they walk away feels like 30 seconds and 3 months all at the same time. Military send offs are a wild anomaly that encourages us to want to ‘rip the Band-Aid’ of goodbye off as soon as we can so we can start counting down the days until they return. While wanting to rush the pain so that it can end, you simultaneously don’t ever want to let go. Tears fall so often you feel as though your body cannot possibly make any more, and they don’t ask permission to appear. They show up when you’re cooking dinner in hopes that being productive will keep your mind occupied, or while you’re folding laundry as your soldier packs and the next thing you know the socks are soaked because you’re doubled over on the bed sobbing. Separation tears don’t care about anything, they just hold hands with grief and anxiety to be able to show up at any moment.
Knowing your soldier is going to a combat zone is difficult and scary, but sometimes there is also a massive uncertainty if they have no return date. There is no end state. Do you count up the days since you can’t count them down? Having an absent family member due to deployment is hard enough, but attempting to explain to your children and extended family members the uncertainty of time they’ll be away is an entirely different level of difficulty. The crushing unknowing makes the deployment feel heavier, if that is even possible. Every single day you hope for a call so you can hear “we know when we’re coming home”, and on the days you don’t hear it slowly rip your heart in two again.
The feeling of continuing your life as ‘normal’ as possible while your spouse is deployed is the most awkward and guilt inducing feeling. Here you are in a safe space, with your bed, your things, and the comfort of ‘home’ with your family all while knowing that your soldier is lacking all of those things. Of course, they’re trained for combat, but that doesn’t erase the guilt you feel whenever you get to go on a fun trip, or do something cool with your kids knowing that they cannot be there. Sharing those awesome moments with them are bittersweet. Everyone wants them home, but when that isn’t the situation, it’s tough to continue on as usual.
Some days go by without a hitch, and everyone in the home is happy and seemingly thriving. Then other days feel like absolute torture. Those days you miss your person a bit more than the day prior, and it’s not just a thought, it’s a feeling. A soul deep emptiness that only having that person home will fill.
Many people assume that after decades of military life, deployment gets easier. In my experience, the opposite is true. I don’t know of any spouse, male or female, who enjoys the idea of learning that their best friend and partner will be in harm’s way for an extended period of time. In most marriages, as the years pass, you become closer with your partner than you were even the year prior. They’re your confidant, your other half, and the one who knows you best. Of course, I don’t want him to leave. This leads to whether or not we can function without our spouse. Absolutely we can, but we don’t want to.
Deployments come and go within military careers, but there are a few things that linger far after they are over and your soldier has returned home. Welcoming them back into the fold is not always easy. After all, you were the only parent home for an extended amount of time and now you have to attempt to shift routines and expectations back to ‘before’ and pray that it goes smoothly. The before deployment and after deployment are vastly different for a myriad of reasons, some which are very obvious. But many don’t realize just how hard it is to feel the pressure to pick right up where you were before they left. No one in your home is the same. The kids have grown, you have grown, your spouse has grown. Habits have been picked up, or completely dropped during the time apart and reintegration can be very difficult. Knowing that, I would much rather experience a little turmoil as my husband reenters daily life at home than any other alternative possible.
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Written by Allison Burton, 2026
Because Someone Has To Say It
I Said What I Said
Sometimes being an adult with a fully functioning frontal lobe really comes back and bites you in the ass. When you can no longer ignore the obvious that is happening in front of you, you have two choices: accept it for what it is no matter how it makes you feel, or continue to act like you don’t know any better.
For me, I have a very hard time unseeing things once I notice them. Repetitive mistreatment of women, noticed. Bullying that is relentless from a person or group of people, detected. Realizing that your voice stands out in the best way, but those around you are too oblivious or afraid to realize their wrongdoings…fucking sucks.
When I started writing my book and creating my platform, I had one major goal in mind. Say the thing that no one else is courageous enough to say. Be ‘that’ person that makes it a bit awkward for calling out the bullshit. Hold people and organizations accountable. Stand up for the people who cannot stand up for themselves. And do so unapologetically.
Not too long ago, I longed to be accepted by a certain group of people. I was already friendly with them, but I wanted desperately for them to fold me into their group and absorb me as one of their own. With that longing came information. Information that I didn’t really love hearing, but alas, information that I desperately needed to learn.
What I didn’t know about this group of people was the toxic nature of their environment and how incestuous it was. I wasn’t prepared to learn about the bully mentality that ran rampant, or the holier than thou mindset that sometimes accompanied this group and its members.
You see, whenever I saw a chance at slightly advancing myself and my goals through a network, I assumed the best and greatest of those people. Little did I know what skeletons were hiding in the closet. Upon gaining the knowledge of the truth, that was so very unexpected, I began to watch more carefully what was happening around me.
Sure enough, the patterns emerged over time. Conversations weren’t honest, opportunities were squashed, and overall trust was lost.
When you’re someone who builds an entire platform on saying the hard things, yet you’re surrounded by adults who only want to display sunshine and rainbows, you realize really quickly how much you stand out. And that’s ok! I am who I am, and I am me unapologetically.
Have I realized that some friendships and colleagues aren’t what I thought they once were? Yep. Do I also know that I’m better because of it? Also, yes.
Being rejected because of how you think and what you’re willing to say comes at a cost, but it’s also very eye opening. I can see now which people and organizations walk the walk, or just talk the talk.
I am not here to placate anyone and say what people want me to say. I don’t have time for that. I’ve been there, done that. No thanks! I am interested in honest conversations.
I am where I am because I say the real, raw, unhinged shit.
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Written by Allison Burton, 2026
Because Someone Has To Say It