Like most retiring military professionals, I departed my final formation with a shadow box, a stack of papers and a broken heart. When I joined the military in the 1980s, it never occurred to me that I could not remain in the Army forever. Of course, I had a vague sense that someday I would have to leave the service and return to the ranks of the civilian population.
With the prospect of transitioning looming ever closer in the final years of my service, I received some great advice from a former Sergeant Major about the three distinct lives of military professionals. He had retired several years earlier and already negotiated the minefields of the emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual and social domains of resiliency. He was kind, insightful and I bore the humility to listen carefully. Now, six years after my own retirement, I have also gained some key insights on what has proven to be the greatest period of transition and change in my lifetime. To say the very least, it hasn’t always been easy…most of my mistakes, although most non-intuitive, were entirely preventable had I only known what lay ahead.
Over the next few weeks, I will describe the tenuous pathways and strategies to pass over and through these minefields from my own experience with the full understanding that all transitions are very personal and specific to each individual. The retirement and transition of a career teacher, police officer or business owner is no less significant than that of a military service member.
Still, there are common paradigms, with which each of us must contend as I have to varying degrees of success. I will share the successes and failures realized through my continuous engagement with our veteran’s community since my retirement in May 2015. I plan to publish a brief article weekly beginning with the psychological aspects of preparing for and moving through the military separation and retirement processes. We will then explore the other paradigms from aspects that I wish I had known about and prepared for prior to my own departure from service. I hope you will find them educational and entertaining as they are written from the heart with you in mind.
As 2020 draws to a close, please accept my wishes and prayers for a peaceful, healthy and blessed New Year for your families.
God bless,
Your brother, Jack
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