I look around at the dining room and am suddenly viewing echoes of our lives lived within these four walls. Ghost scenes of homework being done at the table. My daughter making cookies for the first time in our kitchen. My favorite people in the whole world joking and bonding…These traces of shared life are too much, and I start sobbing again.
There are days when the noise is too loud—when the talk of new wars, sacrifice, and uncertainty makes even something as simple as a cup of tea with a silly hat-wearing friend feel impossible. And still, we show up. We love. We try. We endure.
Our service members often fight for the “unlovable.” They don’t get the luxury to linger at the top of the hole. They jump and they fight. Maybe that is the approach we need to take with those who are “unlovable” in our lives.
Follow along below to witness the very first VSP Writers’ Retreat. In February 2026, Veteran and active duty military spouses travelled from six different states to create, to bond, to celebrate the beautiful fragility of being broken open.
That night, as I lie in our bed alone, I feel it…the loneliness. The absence of his breathing on the pillow beside me turns the room into a vacuum. The missing warmth of his body, his chest beneath my head, the rhythmic thud of his heartbeat – I’ve forgotten how to live without them.
This feels like deployment. Not just the absence but the underlying worry. It’s always there, always in your throat, behind your eyeballs, shoved under your fingernails.
Denial, it turns out is not just a river in Egypt. It is an ever-present river that twists and turns as it flows around my brain, dampening the desires of foregone dreams.
It was my heart I had to check when I began to know my husband in ways that had nothing to do with being a hero, running off and saving the world. I told myself so many things to validate 25 years of chaos. Who were we out here? How did we relate when all our marriage had ever known was war? A truth I hid behind the heroism began to peek out, I had only myself to look at when I didn’t know how to look at him.
National Guard veteran and Army spouse, Kasie Purvis, shares her family’s story of making the decision to become active duty and reflects on how their nomadic lifestyle and quest for connection led her to start her own podcast called “Gather the Scattered” in this VSP blog post.
Marine Corps Veteran spouse, Lauren Fagan, shares her story of recovery from addiction and reflects on her life-long journey of healing in this VSP blog post.
Watch VSP’s debut staged reading of in*BETWEEN – written by Amy Uptgraft and the members of the Heart to Script Writing Group – in Knoxville, TN on November 3rd, 2023.
Veterans Spouse Project (VSP) is the only nonprofit arts organization in the nation working to give voice to the experiences of military spouses through theatre and creative arts. Learn more about how to share, connect, listen, and create with us in your community.
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