Peer Emma

Peer Emma is a veteran, the partner of a veteran, and a mother who has raised children amidst numerous posting cycles and deployments. She knows how difficult the holiday season can be on veterans, whether she was deployed herself, or at home whilst her husband was deployed.

“Learning how to maintain connections over distance was the biggest skill,” Emma says, reflecting on how she would manage some of the tough times associated with the holiday season.

For Emma, that meant “maintaining traditions that can still be done when the other person isn’t there. Putting the tree up on a certain day, or having a favourite dish served. Having a movie that everyone watches on Christmas leave.”

These experiences were not only difficult for Emma, but her family too. To cope with missing out on the traditional family Christmas, Emma and her colleagues created a new habit of celebrating their own ‘orphan’ version.

“Some of these are my most favourite Christmas memories,” she says.

Even though it’s normal to feel like you are missing out on precious moments, Emma offers the following suggestions for coping during difficult times:

• Reflect on what the holidays really mean to you. What is really missing that is making you struggle?
• Are there little things that you can shift to make you feel connected? Even over a distance?
• Reach out to others who might be in the same position and see if they are interested in an Orphans Christmas?
• Could you volunteer somewhere, or be a part of another person’s Christmas?
• Is there a new skill you could learn? Or a place you could visit.