On Wednesday, Blue Star Families joined with Service Nation to celebrate Veterans Day, write letters for BSF's Operation Appreciation, and pack hundreds of thank you care packages for the families of deployed service members. 

Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden were on hand to help launch Mission Serve, a network of 36 initiatives partnering military and civilian service organizations to support the needs of our troops, veterans and military families.

Here are the remarks of BSF founder, Kathy Roth-Douquet, explaining more about the Veterans Day event:

Two months ago today, on 9/11, I sent my husband to Afghanistan for a year. It’s the fourth combat deployment of my daughter Sophie’s eleven years. She’s seen seven schools during her daddy’s absences too – hers is the life of a military child. She - and I - are a different kind of veterans of today’s war. We’re unspeakably proud of my husband, but there’s no hiding that its hard too. The group I’m involved with – Blue Star Families, and all these groups here, are about solutions for the hard parts of military life. In Blue Star Families we believe as Service Nation does that solutions come in part from our own action, and it comes from the help of the larger community. Many of you here today have helped us with that – packing our ThxBox to the families of deployed servicemembers – these today will go to Kansas National Guard, Virginian individual augmentees, and to North Carolina regular families. The Operation Appreciation letters you all are writing today will go around the country, including to the shaken community of Fort Hood. MissionServe has shown wonderful leadership in helping groups like mine connect to those who care in the larger community – in ways that makes us all activists, all agents in our own solutions. Its terribly fitting that we celebrate those partnerships today, on Veterans Day, a day that recognizes Americans – veterans – who serve so selflessly. Here’s just a smattering of the partnerships engendered by the leadership of Be The Change:

Blue Star Families is partnering with PBS to create reintegration toolkits for families, ones we packed in the ThxBoxes today, and to connecting Greater DC Cares to the National Guard community around the Capitol region. Student Veterans of America are joining with Big Brothers Big Sisters to mentor youth. American Legion Auxiliary is engaging with Operation Homefront’s adopt a military family for the holidays programs. Sierra Club is partnering both with the National Military Family Association’s Operation Purple® to offer a free week of summer camp fun for military kids with parents who have been, are currently, or will be deployed, and with Armed Services YMCA to provide post-deployment family reintegration camping trips. MCEC and America’s Promise Alliance are working with military-connected schools to ensure their kids are adequately represented in the Gallup Student Poll, a nationwide survey of 5th through 12th graders measuring hope, engagement, and well-being.

Thank you all for being here today, for caring, and serving.

Dessert! The payback so many military spouses wait eagerly wait for, when it will be our turn, right? At first I regarded the end of my husband Barrett’s recent OIF deployment as my chocolate cream pie. In fact I said goodbye to him imagining that when he returned, he would pay me back by morphing into an idealized family man that I’ve always carried around in my head, while I’d turn into the next Pam Houston, an award-winning writer know for her love of tough men and adventure. But deep down, I knew that expectation set us up for a fall.

In order to survive the fifteen months he was away, I had to find a way to have a full life without him. Otherwise I would have died from resentment. And I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to follow one of my dreams. So while he was deployed, I got a great babysitter, and sat down and wrote the crazy, hard, wonderful story of making peace with my warrior husband: Love in Condition Yellow. 

And through writing the book, and surviving the deployment, it hit me that our having my fantasy of a stress-free, art-filled life was never meant to be. Ultimately, that which frightened me the most—my husband’s leaving our family for deployment — made me appreciate our unique relationship more. It taught me that our love stems not from Barrett’s being at my side to “complete” some fantasy in my head, but rather, in my loving him while also pursuing my own best and fullest self.   

Oddly, he has become more of a family man. The time away did change him, but I don’t think it would have happened if I’d spent the whole deployment tapping my watch. Dear dessert-lovers, did you think Barrett’s coming off active duty means we now have the weekend beach and ski outings that I’ve always craved? Nope, now that he is home and back on Reserve status, he works every weekend at the police department! And did I think I would breathe a sigh of relief because he was out of harm’s way? Well, having four Oakland officers killed this past March washed that possibility away. 

Hello to all the military spouses out there!  I am not only new to BSF, but new to the military experience, and I thought that for my first post I would introduce myself and give you a little background information about me.

I have been a Navy Reserve spouse since July 3 of this year.  My husband is a Reservist (and former Active Duty) who is serving an IA tour in...Little Creek, Virginia.  I know.  We are so lucky that it’s not Iraq or Afghanistan, and my heart goes out to those of you in that situation.  I will be the first to admit that my husband is not your typical sailor, even with 13 years in the service.  He has never been deployed.  He has never been on sea duty.  And he has been a Reservist for the last 9 years, so his (and our) military experience is a little unusual, compared to his friends and his co-workers.

Although I am new to the Navy, I do have a brother who recently left the Army’s infantry and had deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and my brother-in-law is also in the Army, with one Iraq deployment under his belt.  So I have a bit of experience sending packages, worrying, and missing my family member - even though it was not my husband.

Frustrated by Having to Register to VOTE Every Time You Move?  Tell Us All About It!

Blue Star Families wants to identify the special challenges that military members and their families face when struggling to vote and fully participate in our government.  Help us by completing the BSF Voter Registration survey.  We are interested in knowing:

• How often you have had to register to vote?
• What kinds of problems you have had voting – either in person or via absentee? Why aren’t you registered to vote?
•  

We want to share our military family stories with key policy makers and we need your help.

It will take fewer than 10 minutes for you to complete the online survey.  PLEASE DO IT TODAY!