PMFRC welcomes blogger, author Kim Mills

She is Fierce blogger and author Kim Mills stopped at the Petawawa Military Family Resource Centre (PMFRC) for a meet and greet and to share some of her hard-won and often hilarious life experience as a military spouse.

The writer and public speaker was warmly greeted by old friends and fans alike on Mar. 30. She shared amusing, and something heartbreaking anecdotes as she navigated the military family lifestyle.

She didn’t hold back on the challenges, the realities and the difficulties of having a serving spouse deploy or leave to be on course or on exercise, especially in a time when families were an afterthought at best.

Yet through the laughs and tears, she had a message to share with the military spouses in attendance: be supportive of one another, no matter what.

Cattiness over petty differences should be a thing of the past, and spouses need to rise above it and instead find commonalities.

“We need to learn how to adjust another queen’s crown without telling the world that it’s crooked,” said Mills.

She hopes to inspire spouses, male and female, to create a strong community among themselves, one where they can find help and support at every turn as they work through the challenges and worries of having absent partners.

“We need to swallow back that tendency to think, ‘When I was in their spot, nobody helped me,’ and instead remember what you would have needed and be that,” said Mills.

“You should be who you needed,” she added.

Sharing a simple smile with a stranger can be a lifeline to somebody struggling.

She has shared her message at 21 different Military Resource Centres across the nation, spoken to high ranking military officials, executive directors, and politicians. Yet it is the other spouses that she wishes to impact the most.

She hopes to inspire others to help build up the military family community and she knows that it starts by helping each other out.

“It isn’t going to get better for us if we think we have to do it all by ourselves,” said Mills.

People may be struggling and be too proud to ask for help. So when in doubt, one should reach out and help out with concrete actions. Whether that is babysitting a newborn while the mother naps, picking up extra groceries to drop off or bringing over some cake to share over coffee. Those small actions can mean the world.

“If we really want to move forward, I highly encourage people to make really tangible offers of help,” said Mills.

Her anecdotes, stories, and advice can be found online at www.sheisfierce.net or you can visit her on Facebook.