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Today Is Military Spouses Appreciation Day. Here’s Why You Should Celebrate

(SHUTTERSTOCK: By Sara Nicole Garavuso)

Jena Greene Reporter
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May is Military Appreciation Month, and today, May 11, is national Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

And while it’s important to honor military members and their families every day, today is particularly important.

President Trump commemorated National Military Spouse Day on Thursday, calling the soldiers’ spouses in the room “an inspiration to us all.”

“We ask so much of our military spouses: Frequent moves; heartbreaking separations; parenting alone; incomplete celebrations; and weeks, months, and sometimes years of waiting for a loved one’s safe return from harm’s way. Time and time again, however, military spouses respond with resilience that defies explanation,” Trump said on Thursday. “Our service members are often praised as national heroes, but their spouses are equally worthy of that distinction.”

President Ronald Reagan was the first to institute a day of recognition. Reagan thanked military spouses for the sacrifices they were willing to make every single day by signing a proclamation in 1984.

My own mother was a military spouse. She also happens to be a Gold Star widow. And while giving up her husband for the sake of the country was the hardest sacrifice she had to make, she made a multitude of others in her 15 years of marriage.

As a family, we moved over a dozen times. My father deployed frequently, which left every bit of housework and child-raising in my mom’s lap. And when my father was killed by hostile fire in Iraq in 2004, my mother was left to do everything on her own.

Many military spouses can relate to this mandatory independence and the fear of having to give everything up for the country. And we should thank them every day for their many daily sacrifices that so few are willing to make.

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Jena Greene