My Story: Blogs by Four Military Teens

My Story: Blogs by Four Military Teens is a series of blogs by four military teens that highlights their feelings and experiences before, during, and after parental deployment. It provides support and education for all military teens and preteens by recognizingtheir unique joys and sacrifices, addressing their fears and hopes, and exploring how parental deployment affects their lives. Although the four youth in My Story are fictional, the stories are real—the blogs are a compilation of real-life experiences of military kids.

The blogs in My Story address issues such as

• pride in parents’ military service
• sadness, anger, and confusion regarding deployments
• excitement of homecoming
• challenges of reconnecting after deployment
• finding a new normal
• teen depression
• dealing with parents’ emotional and physical challenges (e.g., PTSD, substance abuse, injury)
• divorce
• resilience and posttraumatic growth.

Proofreading a manuscript is always crucial because I am the last person to see the manuscript before it is officially printed into a book. With the many sensitive issues in this book, I had to be particularly careful that they were expressed in a clear manner that would not further confuse the teenage readers.