Episode 23: Military Family Appreciation Day: Spouse Perspectives - Melissa, Janet, McKayla, Lyndsay

Did you know the third Friday of every September is Military Family Appreciation Day? What is it like to be a spouse or partner with someone in the RCAF? What are the challenges? What are the things that make it great? What advice would a spouse give to a new pilot to help them have a successful family life?

What is it like if your new husband deploys? What about when you have a newborn, or you're pregnant? We will explore all these challenges and more as we sit down with 4 spouses to hear about the RCAF homefront on this episode of The Pilot Project Podcast.

What is The Pilot Project Podcast?

The Pilot Project Podcast is an aviation podcast that aims to help new pilots learn what it takes to succeed in the world of flight, to help people in the flight training system learn what they may want to fly, and to give Canadians and the world a peek into life on the flight deck in the RCAF. We want to help pilots succeed and thrive! We interview real RCAF pilots for their exciting stories as well as the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll learn their tips to develop resilience and the tools it takes to make it in flight training.

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AI GENERATED AND WILL CONTAIN SOME SMALL ERRORS. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT [e-mail]. We understand the importance of good subtitles but currently as a one-person operation we just don't have the ability to edit these in a timely fashion and keep episodes coming out regularly. Thank you for your understanding!

In this episode, the AI could not differentiate between Melissa and McKayla's voice, so McKayla is mislabeled as Melissa.

All right, we're ready for departure. Here on the Pilot Project

Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the

RCAF. Brought to you by Skies magazine and

RCAF today. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With

me today is my beautiful wife, Melissa Morrison.

Melissa, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

It's always a pleasure to be welcomed into the basement.

So Melissa, can you start by quickly telling us about yourself?

Yeah.

So I was born and raised in

Truro, which is about an hour north of Halifax,

Nova Scotia. I lived there with my parents and

siblings until I went off to university. I

did an undergrad in Kinesiology at

UNB, thinking it would be a more practical

undergrad to get as I was thinking about going to med school at

the time I got sick in university. While I was

waiting to kind of figure out what to do

next, I decided to do a Master's in Sport and Exercise

Science. Partway through that, I

abandoned the idea of medicine altogether and

decided that I should pursue what had always kind of been my

side hustle of sorts business. So I did a

Master's in Business Administration while I worked

full time, ran a business, and coached a lot of cheer

teams.

And I think that's a perfect summary of who you are, that you were

doing two masters at the same time, running a

business, coaching, cheerleading. You were working as

well?

I like to be busy.

Ah, yeah.

Can you tell our listeners about how we met?

We met online before. It was cool. I

had set my, uh, I'm going to age us here plenty of fish

account to a 500 kilometer radius

so I could see all of the prospective suitors

out there. My roommate at the time told me that I

needed to get out and meet people, so she dared me

to go on twelve dates in the month of December.

We later referred to this as the twelve dates of

Christmas. I'm not sure how persistent you

thought I was, but I remember trying to convince you

to meet me a bunch of times,

actually. And one of them was

even coffee at the airport before you flew

home on Christmas holidays. Because I was just desperate to

finish the challenge.

Yeah.

Uh, because I thought you were super into me, and it turned out you were

just doing a challenge.

It's kind of shocking that we actually even met up at

all with all the circumstances of what kind

of happened the next few months. But we

eventually met. We hit it off

pretty well pretty quickly. You were introduced

to the whole cheer team and all of their

parents pretty.

Early on our second date. Yeah.

You met my family pretty quick after that.

Yeah, it was probably our third date.

Yeah.

A funny thing that I always think about is how you tricked me about where you

lived.

So I would go back and

forth between my parents'house in Turo, Nova

Scotia, and school in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

So it would show me as being

from a different location depending on where I was at the time

and when I was talking to Brian. You

were on a course in Halifax?

Yeah, that's right. I was on a course in Halifax for three

months, so I had actually deleted plenty of fish, but decided

to get it again since I was in the city for a few months.

Yeah. You were in Halifax on a course, and you

thought I was living in Truro.

That's right.

But I was actually just visiting at my

parents'house and so you were like, Sweet,

she's only an hour away. Turns out

the regular commute from the Annapolis Valley

to Fredericton is how many hours?

It's about 5 hours with stops. So I spent the next

year and changed almost every weekend, driving 5

hours each way.

Yeah.

So we dated a little over a

year before we got

engaged.

Yeah, we dated for about 14 months. Yeah.

And then I remember thinking we got

engaged in May, and I was like, I really want to have, like,

a summer wedding. And I was like,

but to wait another year just feels like

too long. And I think it was my mom, actually, who

was like, well, why don't you just get married this

summer? So we planned and had

a wedding about 90 days from the time we got

engaged until the time we got married.

And I was gone for a month of that in Hawaii for

RIMPAC, which is a big military exercise.

Yeah.

So I moved all my stuff from Fredericton into

his house and got it all set up while he

was away and planned the wedding

and yeah. Then we got married

and attempted to.

Start our life together.

That's right. So when we did start dating, what was

your initial thought when it came to dating someone in the

RCAF?

I think we mentioned this in one.

Of, uh, the previous episodes, that

dating.

Someone in the RCF was not something that would win me

over, especially the fact that you flew a plane. I

didn't really care a lot about that. What

I knew about people in the RCAF was

really just what I knew from having some friends who were in the

army who were involved in Afghanistan

and would go away for periods of time and then come back.

But to me, that kind of

seemed.

Like a perk because I'm an

introvert.

So having some time to myself every once in a

while didn't seem like a horrible thing,

especially living

with someone who is a very social

extrovert. I kind of thought it would

balance it out, give me some more alone time.

Although at that point, we didn't anticipate

or see long deployments in your future. It

was more just being away on exercises or

being kind of on call, or just

different things like that.

Yeah, most of our deployments at that point were like a couple of weeks for an

exercise or an op here and there. So long deployments

were pretty rare.

Yeah.

So a little bit of extra time to myself just

seemed like, um, an all right thing. That was really about as far as.

I'd really thought about it.

You've had to make some professional sacrifices to follow me

around, especially when we were in Nova Scotia. Can you tell us a little

more about that?

Yeah, being kind of a newer

grad with experiences, but

maybe not like, direct experience, made

it pretty difficult for me to find a job in

a small rural town in Nova

Scotia. At one point, I had

decided to take my master's degrees right off

my resume, and at that point, I started to get a lot

more job interviews. I think people

just perhaps look at your resume thinking

that, well, you're not going to stay here because

maybe they know your military or can tell by your resume,

or maybe they just think you're too overqualified for the

job sometimes when you apply with more

education or experience on your resume. As someone who

hires people now though, I get it. But I

think it never hurts to ask the candidate why they may want

the job you're hiring for, or just to be

transparent with what you can offer in terms of pay and benefits,

so that they can decide if they want to take the job or

not. I do think the world is getting better

in terms of remote work options, which makes it easier for

military spouses to find work, but that isn't

for everyone. I, uh, do think, though, we as

military spouses or maybe this is something we should do a

better job of sharing. Just letting people know that there are

certain careers that are easy to move with

and others that are much harder if people are

just thinking about their career but maybe

are in a relationship with someone who is in the

RCAF. I think most military spouses

just end up looking for flexibility when it comes to

work because someone is at

home and someone ends up being responsible for the

majority of that. When you are with someone who is

away a lot, you often have to manage everything as a

single parent, maybe without family or friends around.

So trying to set yourself up for day to day

success is something

a lot of people look for. And unfortunately, this often

means that some professional sacrifices

may take place depending on.

Your line of work.

Did you find that frustrating at all when we were in Nova

Scotia, I.

Found it so frustrating because I wanted to find

community and I wanted to gain experience. So I

was, at that point, willing to take

lower paying jobs or jobs that maybe

weren't directly affiliated with my

degrees. Like, my two degrees are in fairly

different areas, so there was lots of kind

of room to grow and learn

more. And yeah, it was very

frustrating. There's some really small places that

some of the bases are, and it can be, uh, a

frustrating experience for spouses trying to find work. Sometimes,

I think.

Yeah, for sure. So most of our

listeners will know that I'm not currently flying due to a

mental health diagnosis. But when I was flying, how did you

find balancing our jobs as well as having children?

Truthfully, I think it's been harder for me, since you've

stopped flying to balance working and having

kids, just given everything that you're going

through right now with your diagnosis, I've

had to take on a bit more with

just managing our life in general.

Yeah, that's fair.

We were kind of lucky that we.

Didn'T have to manage balancing jobs and

kids for too long between

parental leaves and getting posted.

But I do remember that it was a bit of a juggling act,

especially when it came to childcare.

Our childcare was right by the base. On your way

to work, normally, you would do all the pickups and drop

offs. So when you were flying

or away on an exercise or just getting

called out if you were on call, i, uh, would have to

use banked or holiday hours just to manage

drop offs or pickups because I had a 40 ish

minute commute in the opposite direction.

So earlier you mentioned that once you

moved to Greenwood with me, that we

had to try to start our life together. I

actually deployed when we had been married for less than two months.

What was that like for you, looking back?

I think I was in shock at first. We found out, what, two weeks

after we got married?

Yeah, about that.

When you tried to put in a leave pass for our honeymoon,

where were we going?

We were supposed to go to Jamaica with a couple friends of ours, Matt

and Brienne. And when I went

to ask about the leave pass, the flight commander

told me, you might want to hold off on that. There's something coming down

the pipe. And I thought,

because things were going on in Europe at the time, that I was going to

go over to Europe, and I was all excited.

And then it turned out to be flying over the

Middle East, which, again, I was excited for. But it

wasn't what I was expecting at all as a submarine hunter.

Yeah.

And I think it being Roto zero

for the listeners.

Roto zero is rotation zero. It means you're the first people to

go over.

I think that was the hardest part the military

didn't know answers to anyone's questions. I

remember sitting in the mess on the

base with, uh, everyone else who was about to go on

Roto Zero. And in the briefing, they

didn't know where you guys were going to stay. You guys thought

you were staying intense when you showed up there. They didn't know

what communication was going to look like or how you were

going to be able to contact home or how often,

or just any of that, which

was hard not knowing, but also

hard because we had never experienced that. You had never

experienced that. There was no kind of knowledge to

pass on to make it feel better. It was just a lot of

unknown. I just moved there, so I didn't really

know anyone at that point in time. I

coped really bad and just assumed

the worst to the whole situation. I just

kind of thought about the fact that

we just got married.

This sucks.

You're probably not going to come back, because it felt very much

like you were going into a full war zone at that

point because there was so little known about it. And I

just kind of figured I would be a widow

and this would be really tough, but I would figure

out a way to move on. And then I kind of

thought, if you came back alive, awesome. We could

then finally start our life together.

I think this was really brought home. I

think it was in your first tour. I

remember two men in matching outfits

creeping around our base house, kind of like looking

in windows. It looked like they were, like, seeing if anyone was home.

I was upstairs watching them from the windows, trying to figure out

what was going on. Everything I

could think of was that they wanted to see if someone was

home. Because any movie about military

people, you may remember that if

two people in uniform come to

knock on your door, it's generally not good news. They're

generally coming to tell you that someone has passed away.

So this is what was going on in my head as

I'm creeping down, because they're not going to call you

to tell you this stuff. They're going to come to your house.

So at that point, all of the

horrible thoughts I had kind of had became very real

in that moment until obviously I

answered the door and they just wanted

to ask questions or schedule something to fix

on the house.

I've heard that story a few times before, but I don't

think I had ever connected it with the assumptions you'd

made about me not coming back. I never

realized how tough that must have been when that happened that

day.

Looking back, I think it impacted

me.

More than I thought it did at the time. The time I was

just probably more relieved than anything that

they weren't coming to tell me that you died. Our

time between deployments was

really weird, is how I would best describe it.

It's really hard to build a foundation or grow your

relationship when the other person isn't there. And for us, we

were pretty newly married. This was our first

time living together or even being in the same

province for any length of time. Being

deployed isn't like your long distance dating, which is kind of what

I thought it would be like. And I was like, whatever. We've been doing

this our whole relationship. No big deal, because

you can't be real and you can't talk

for hours or just like, FaceTime while you're

doing whatever. I found it

really shallow in terms of our

conversations. It definitely felt like we were protecting

each other. I didn't want to worry you so that you could

stay focused and do your job and come

home alive. And I think you didn't want to scare me

with kind of the things that were really going on.

Yeah, for sure.

There's lots you probably weren't allowed to tell me, so

that also makes sense why it felt that way.

Yes.

I just remember, especially your first

deployment, that time period was

really lonely for me. I wasn't working full

time at that point. Had just moved there.

I remember the running joke on your first tour was, uh, that you were going to come

home to me holding a puppy.

Well, Melissa was sending me photos of

puppies almost every day for dogs that she

wanted. And we did get a dog in between deployments.

Yeah.

So it happened. But I didn't surprise you with a dog?

No. The first time you left,

I didn't.

Have a support network, so that made it really hard. It

was supposed to be our first Christmas together.

Didn't happen because you were gone, and we didn't know

you were going to be gone that Christmas. We thought you'd be home

before that. I was lucky, though, that I

found another newly married spouse to hang out with during that

time. That kind of helped a little bit. And I

did have some extended family, and my parents weren't that

far away from where we were living at the time,

so that helped a bit. Into the second

tour, things got a little bit better. The Aurora

community set up sponsor families and stuff, which

was nice, and you'd meet the rest of the

crew you were going with before you went,

and you just had someone who would reach out

every once in a while to make sure things were doing okay.

I think that's a piece that

a lot of us could do better at, just helping to support

one another. We also had neighbors who would come

snowblow our driveway, which was a godsend, because that was the

winter where every Wednesday it would snow twelve to

18 inches every single week.

That was an insane winter for snow.

So much snow.

That's the one where on Pei, people had

snow up to their roofs. And it wasn't quite that bad in Nova

Scotia, but it was close.

Yeah.

Very grateful for the community we had around

there. I remember before you left,

we'd gotten a power of attorney just in case

I needed to do anything else, because we weren't even set up as a couple

to have a joint bank account or anything like

that. Little did we know, all of the things I

would end up using that for over the years because you

were gone.

We bought a car.

We bought a house. I moved into

our military house on

my own. I moved into our house. We bought

in Greenwood. Eight months pregnant without you

because you were away.

I was in the Arctic for yeah.

Like, it's crazy to think about all these big

life things that I just.

Did on my own because you were gone.

Do you remember anything special we did to help get through

the deployments?

For me as an individual, I just did a lot of

compartmentalizing and trying to focus

on what I was doing. And then if I got to talk.

To you, it was like, sweet, he's.

Alive, and I get to talk to him. But I really tried to

just go with the flow of the day to day and try to keep

myself busy. I do remember going

very extreme when it came to

care packages. So I remember your

birthday. One, like, the whole inside of the box was

covered in streamers, and there was so much stuff in that

box.

Yeah. You sent me cake in a jar. There was Mason jars

full of cake that I could share with my friends fake

mustaches. You would send me USB

sticks pretty regularly with another set of

the latest top hits for music

so that I could listen to what you were listening to at home when I

was working out.

Yeah.

And Christmas. I remember the Christmas

package once we realized you weren't going to be

there. I think they even let us do a special Christmas

mail.

Yeah, they did, because they got there pretty quick.

But I had sent you, like, a little mini light up Christmas

tree and lights to decorate your bunk and Santa

hat. And obviously, like, our, uh, traditional

Christmas traditions of pajamas and things like

that in your box just to try and make it feel a

little bit special.

It was nice, for sure. It was a tough time. It was not easy to be

away at Christmas. I really wanted to be home with you, but

those things helped, for sure.

Yeah.

And I just got to be one of those people that kept their

Christmas decorations, uh, up forever, because put

them up after Remembrance Day and kept

them up until you came home. And we could

actually have Christmas, which ended up being

February. So it was definitely

the longest I've ever had Christmas decorations up.

Uh, what do you think has been the hardest part

of being espoused to someone in the RCAF

for some people.

And I think for me at one point as well, I think

the change and need to adapt to, uh, new places, new

plans, all of that stuff is really

hard. Change is kind of a constant in life, though.

And I think for most couples, this doesn't really

sink in until you have kids, just how

much things change every couple of weeks with kids, something

changes. So I think I've

gotten a lot better at, uh, dealing with change

and adapting to things as they come. Kind of

rolling with it, making the best out of situations

now.

Yeah, for sure.

I've definitely grown in that area. For

me, the hardest part is the

unknown. I'm pretty big at

compartmentalizing and living to make kind of the best set of

moments. So that definitely has helped me a lot. But

you never know when a flight will be unserviceable

or when a call out will happen. When you're on call,

remember your check ride for your aircraft captain

upgrade?

Yeah. It got delayed a bunch and ended up being on my

30th birthday. Yeah.

So we were like, all right, he's got this

upgraded flight. A couple of weeks later is his birthday.

We should be pretty safe to plan his birthday because he's

not on the schedule yet. And yeah, delay

after delay finally ends up. You take off

like, the morning of your birthday party,

finally. And this is like his 30th

birthday.

So we've got like, I don't know.

2025 people coming to our house

for supper, I think even. And

the whole time I'm, um, like, is he going to make it to

his birthday party? No idea. Because you're flying.

So obviously I don't know when you're going to get down. I'm just,

like, waiting for a message. People are like, Is he

home yet? Is he coming? People are showing up to

your birthday party at our house.

Don't know where you are.

And then eventually we get a text message.

And I'm like, he's coming. And he passed. And I

just remember being so relieved that I didn't have

to just host this giant party by myself. That wasn't

even for me. And then it was pretty epic,

though, when you showed up. And it's not only your

birthday and all your friends are around you to celebrate, but

also you had this good news that you passed your

upgrade plate.

Yeah, that was a great day.

Yeah.

What has been the best part of being a spouse to someone in the

RCIF?

The community you get to be part of is

just incredible.

You have to do work and put.

In work to kind of make it happen. But you have

so many instant connection points with other

people who are in the RCAF.

Those people get it.

They know what you've been through or what you might be going

through. You can laugh at kind of the struggles

and ridiculousness of the system, but you can

also learn from each other.

I find.

There's always someone willing to make new friends or

looking for friends and there's always kind of places

to stay around the world, which is pretty cool.

If you like to travel, what's been.

Your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

Flying the Aurora with you was a pretty

surreal moment for me.

Yeah, that was pretty cool.

Before that, I'd never really even pictured you

flying an airplane, believe it or

not. So to get to do that together on

Family Day was pretty neat.

I've seen you and your friends

study every part of that plane and talk about

it for hours on end and then to

actually be in it, watching you do what you do is pretty

cool.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that experience too.

For this next and uh, last question. I'd like you to

picture a young pilot, maybe somebody who's going through the

school. Now, what piece of advice would you give to a young

pilot to help them have a successful family life?

There's probably two things

that I would suggest. I'll talk a little bit more about each

of them. The first is to ask questions, and

the second is to find community. So

by asking questions, whether you're the spouse

or partner or the military

member, ask the questions so that you know what to

expect. Unmet expectations,

as probably most people can agree with,

are often the cause of turmoil in a relationship.

It's not an easy road, but there's amazing resources to

help families thrive in the RCAF. But you have

to know about them and sometimes you have to

push and, uh, ask specifically for them.

Talking to other couples or colleagues who may be that

stage or two ahead of you is kind of a great way to

learn about what the future could look like and issues

that could come up. They really should write a gen

file for family life, I think, if there isn't already one

out there, just to give people

insight. Relationships are tough in or

out of the military, but I really believe strongly that

if you're both willing to put in the work, there's lots of

resources available to help you succeed

along the way. And uh, when it comes to

finding community, finding community

is what will make your life feel full. We had a

great group of friends before we had kids and we have an

amazing community here in Portage right now.

And having those people helps your mental

health, but it also gives you options to help

manage your family life, especially during those

times when you may be solo parenting. So

it can be a huge support just

to help you navigate all the different things

that you as a military family might come up

against, whether it's deployments

or trips away or things like that.

And I think just being open and.

Willing to kind of pay it forward. I remember

when we first got here, people didn't really go away

a lot, but when you guys would do your cross

countries, I'd always be like, who's away?

Who's away?

Let's make sure we have them over so it's one less meal they

have to think about or mhm, something like that when

someone's away. And I think just looking for those little

opportunities to also give back and

help support your community where you are

is just a good way to constantly make

sure that the military

community is going to keep supporting one another in the

future.

Yeah, for sure. So Melissa actually came

home today during her workday for her lunch break to record

this. So I just want to thank you so much. I know from personal

experience how busy you are, and I really appreciate you taking

the time to be here today. Thank you.

No problem.

If you ever need me back, you.

Know where I live.

All right, so our next guest today on the Pilot Project podcast

is my good friend Janet Musters. Listeners will remember

our show on Tackhill with Janet's husband, Pete.

Welcome to the show, Janet.

Thanks for having me.

So, Janet, can you start by quickly telling us about yourself?

I was born and raised on a, uh, small farm in southern

Alberta near a little village called Milo.

After I graduated, I got my private pilot's license, thinking this

would be an exciting career for me. After I finished

my private pilot's license, I took a year and went backpacking with

my friend and realized I was way more fun than having

any career. So spent a while backpacking and

waitressing just to fund my traveling addiction.

Then, uh, decided I needed an actual career

and figured people around the world like to eat. So I went and gotten a

culinary arts degree. Worked at that for a little

bit, realized it really wasn't for me. And then after a brief

stint in banking, I actually ended up, at the

age of 27, going into school for my

nursing degree and, uh, became a registered nurse

and kind of realized along the way that this is actually where I was meant to

be and have been working at that ever since.

So you've had a lot of adventures?

Eh, I have had a few twists and turns along the

way, trying to know, as everyone has, figuring life out, figuring

out who they are and what their real passions and interests

are.

Yeah, I mean, that actually is kind of similar to Pete,

right? Like, he had a couple different stages to

his career through life before he landed on being a pilot in the

RCAF.

Exactly.

How did you and Pete meet each other?

Uh, the running joke is that I bought him off the

Internet. I was single, and I

was in school full time, and I was working. Part

was really it was. Hard to meet people. One

night I was sitting there, finished my homework, had a

glass or two of wine, and realized, maybe I should try this online

dating thing. Uh, the first profile I ever

saw was Peter's, and he's the only one I ever

contacted. Unfortunately, in order to

be able to contact the person whose profile you're viewing,

you had to sign up and pay $60 a month for

this dating app. And I'm a student with a

mortgage at the time. So I kind of sat down, looked at my budget and

realized, you know what, I'm going to eat instant noodles for a

month in the hopes that this guy is going to turn out to be

something special. And he was. So nine

months later, after about five months apart for basic training

and a two day engagement, we actually eloped. Which,

uh, is very typically military, I think. Yeah, we've

been married for over twelve years now and we have two beautiful

daughters. So the tagline is not bad for $60

is kind of how we kind of defined our relationship.

Yeah.

You got good value for money.

Yeah.

Good ROI on that one, for sure.

What was your initial thought when it came to dating someone in the

RCAF?

Well, Pete actually wasn't in the RCAF when we met.

He had his commercial license and he'd done some crop dusting and

some work as a glider tow. You know, bills have to be

paid and those typically don't pay too

well. So he was actually teaching high school social studies when I met

him. He had been applying to the RCAF for about, I

think, five years and they just weren't hiring

anybody. Weren't hiring anybody. And then

shortly after we met the RCAF, ah, called and said,

guess what? Your application's accepted. So for him, it was

awful. He had just met this great girl and now he's got this great job

and he wasn't sure which one he might have to give up or how

compatible the two are going to be. But fortunately,

given my previously somewhat nomadic lifestyle,

i, uh, was actually up for the adventure. So the

challenge was that he took off for his five month basic training

course only four months after we met. So he didn't have

a cell phone at that time. And, uh, we actually wrote

letters back and forth while he was at basic training for those five months,

which is kind of sweet and nostalgic. I still have all

of them bound with a ribbon in a

safe little, uh, box somewhere.

But it documents a relationship from the typical

dating, getting to know you letters to I'll bring the

engagement ring to your graduation ceremony and I have the church booked for two

days later. So it's kind of fun to have

the chronology of our entire relationship documented on

paper.

So you guys basically

arranged that by letter while he was on

basic training?

Yeah, and the occasional phone call from the hallway.

That's right.

Yeah.

The payphones in the mega.

Yeah. That's the only other source of

communication.

Yeah. There wasn't much privacy back then.

No, not so much. So, yeah, that was basically how we

arranged everything and booked everything, and,

uh, we got a cell phone shortly after he

graduated.

So you're pretty busy. You work as a registered nurse and also

as a nurse injector and you and Pete also have two

kids. How have you found balancing employment,

parenthood, and being married to an RCAF pilot?

It requires a very large calendar in our kitchen.

Uh, some days it feels a little bit like hot know?

Okay, you're on school daycare, drop off this day, and then I can

do pickup. Then you have drop off and pick up, unless my last

client cancels, in which case you can take the later flights and I'll pick

up. I think one of the biggest challenges with being a

military spouse is that you often have no support. You're

often dropped into this random town. You have no family,

no friends. You're trying to do it all on your own until

you find your tribe of people. I mean, every military

spouse knows the struggle of filling out the emergency contact

lists on the daycare and school

applications. It's like, what was that grocery store

clerk's name? She's nice. I'll ask for her number. I'm sure

she wouldn't mind being our contact. You literally know no

one.

Yeah.

Uh, fortunately, when we moved here, there were a couple of other orphan

military families who had also recently been

posted in. So we kind of banded together and formed our

own second family here. And it's been pretty amazing ever

since. But juggling schedules, especially

when my hospital shifts are 12 hours and the clinic shifts have

varying hours, and Peter's doing cross countries and night

flyings, it can just get a little chaotic.

We go week by week and just try to keep things as routine

as possible for the kids. And in three years of school, we've

only forgotten to pick the kids up once, so I think

we're managing pretty well.

So Pete deployed to Iraq. At a time in life when

you had a 22 month old and a two month old,

what was that like for you?

That was rough, I guess, is the.

Best way to describe it.

Fortunately, it was a bit of a shorter deployment. His

deployment was just under four months. I know some people can be deployed

for six months, nine months, so I was grateful for that.

He was actually initially supposed to be on the first wave of

deployments, which would have had him away when

our youngest was born. But fortunately, he was able

to switch with someone on the second wave so that he could at least be

here for her birth. I remember being very

intentional about making sure that we had family photos done

after our youngest was born on the surface, you tell yourself, oh,

it's just because we want to celebrate our growing family, but

deep down it's because your spouse is deploying and like,

well, what if?

It was really hard.

We were living in a town where I really only had made one close

friend and I was too exhausted to get out and do

many activities. My oldest didn't nap well,

and I had a newborn and they both woke up two to three times a

night, each at different times. And my closest family

was 4 hours away. So I was existing at about three to

4 hours of sleep a night for almost four months.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Fun times. I was able to spend several weeks with my

parents, fortunately, and that was helpful. But there's a reason that they

use sleep deprivation as a torture device. I can

attest to that. Uh, I remember at one point, I think

my lowest was when my kitchen sink got clogged

and I'm lugging my kids all around town. I'm half

asleep, I'm trying to borrow plumbing snakes from Peter's

coworkers and our neighbors. And then we get home and the

sink won't unclog and I'm covered in bits of whatever was in the

drain and the kids are crying and hungry and I'm starting to cry.

It was just one of those moments where you're like, it can't

get any worse than so. But we

got through it one long day at a time and lived to tell the

tale, fortunately. I, uh, remember when Peter got

home and he was on post deployment leave. He told me he wanted to

do a Janet deployment week where I basically

existed in the house with no responsibility other

know, breastfeeding our youngest. And he really wanted to try

and understand what the experience was like for me. And I think it

was quite an eye opener for him. I stood there the first day and

I looked around and I literally had no clue what to do with

myself. I was completely disoriented.

Wow, that's an awesome idea that Pete had to

do that.

Mhm.

But what a crazy hard experience

that sounds like to have that. You know, the part

that really hit me was when you were talking about making sure you

get photos done just in case.

Yeah, I still kind of tear up a little bit thinking about it, because you're just

like most people would document.

The birth of a child right.

Just as a happy time. And it was kind of this really

mixed emotions, like being like, I really want to make sure we get those

photos because otherwise we'll have no

photos as a family.

It was kind of a mixed emotion that day.

But I'm, um, glad we got it.

Yeah, everybody kind of copes with those thoughts

and those fears in different ways.

Exactly.

It is really hard though. It's a very hard thing to say

goodbye to your loved ones. And I think

harder for the ones who are staying behind,

because when we go over, we're busy, we're

doing our job.

You have control over your situation.

We have control and we have all the information.

Yeah, exactly.

And you can't have all the information.

Yeah, we just kind of sit there waiting and

when is the next phone call? When is the next text?

Haven't heard from him in a while. It's just

you're kind of along for the ride and you're just

waiting.

How, uh, did you get through that?

Well, I was pretty busy with the

kids, and fortunately that just kept me distracted

enough. As many spouses, I

think you just throw yourself into family life and you throw

yourself into your kids, and there's

often not a lot of time left at the end of the day.

And those few minutes you do have, you just kind of

let it pass and get back to whatever you're doing.

And that was my coping mechanism

anyways, just to kind of keep busy and keep my

brain occupied. So you just don't let it stray into all those other

thoughts.

What's been the hardest part of being a spouse to someone in the

RCAF besides deployment?

I think the hardest part for me so far was when he was

posted to 408 Squadron in Edmonton, which is

a tactical helicopter squadron. When we were there, it just

seemed like the unit was running at 110% at

all times, and they were just incredibly busy,

which, I mean, it's not necessarily bad, but given

the nature of what they do, there was absolutely zero.

Predictability to Peter's schedule.

I mean, he would go to work on a Tuesday morning and I would have no

idea if I should plant dinner for him Tuesday night. The schedule

would change multiple times a day, and at one point he realized

he had worked for two months without a day off because they were helping

with wildfires, they were doing training exercises.

He'd always be coming home saying, okay, I should have this weekend off.

And then he didn't, or I should be getting a day or

two off in lieu next week. But then he had to replace somebody on

an exercise at the last minute and took off for a week. You

basically just plan your life as if your spouse doesn't exist,

and then if they happen to be there, it's a bonus. But

if inevitably they aren't, then it doesn't mess with

your mean. I couldn't even

plan know, dentists, doctors,

haircuts, anything, if it was at all dependent on Peter

being available to take.

Care of the kids.

So it was really hard on her oldest, who was still under two at

the Know Kids Crave routine. And she had no idea

if Peter was coming or going or if he was

home. But he had to sleep because he was night flying, so he couldn't

play with her. Deployments are hard, but at

least they're somewhat know, you have sort of a

set, uh, start date, a set end date, one

goodbye and one hello. But this was

an entirely different challenge. I think another

hard part was when he came to me, I think this was just a couple of

weeks after he got back from his

and you know, you're still in that reintegration stage

of the relationship, which is as challenging as the

separation part. And I'm recovering from the exhaustion of the last

four months and still kind of in that,

you know, flux. And he comes home

from work and he says to me, uh, by the way, I think we're being posted to

Manitoba in a few months where we know no one in my family's support

is now going to be two provinces away. So that was

also another low, I would say another

challenge.

Um yeah. Luckily it turned out to be a great

thing.

It did, it really did.

But you have no idea when you just get the

news, right?

Yeah. There's a couple of things there that I think are worth

touching on. One is you mentioned the difficulty

of reintegration.

Mhm absolutely.

Really hard. When you come back, everyone is really

excited. Right. But there's some apprehension and

something you have to realize if you're the person who is away is that while you've

been gone, your spouse has figured out a

way to make everything work without you.

Yeah.

You have your routine, you have your systems in

place. Exactly.

And that that's. Okay. And you have to sort of

softly reinsert yourself into

the pattern of life around your house because

they already have their ways and you can't just

kick in the door and be like, I'm home, it's going to be back to the way it

used to be. Mhm, it's just not how it works. I think it

surprises a lot of people that, um, coming home,

it can be really tough.

Yeah, absolutely. And just depending on

each person's emotional or

affection stage by nature right. My husband's a very

affectionate person. I take a little bit longer to warm up,

so there's always that clash too.

Right.

He wants to rush in and he wants to give me a big hug and I

just need a little bit more time to kind of

get my brain kind of wrapped around. Okay, I

have my spouse back now and then

just I've been running on fumes and

I'm exhausted and I've managed to figure out a way to

cope and now you want to come in and mess this way up

and no, you can't. This is how I survive

and just sort of realizing that I need to let go

of some of my systems. Um, and he needs to

adopt some of them and just kind of finessing

that it takes a little while. It's not just

like everybody's back together and it's all hunky dory.

It's a bit of a process.

Yeah. And I think that's important for people to know who haven't deployed

before, that that's something they might face.

M absolutely.

The other thing that I think is important to highlight is

just acknowledging how tough it can be at an operational

unit and that, that busyness and craziness is just

the way things are there. And I think

that for young pilots who are

listening, you need to realize that there's a reason

that the intent is not to have people at an operational

unit for, like, ten years in a row. Because it just causes so much

burnout and it can be so hard on families. And that's why

they want to rotate you into a school or a ground

position. So especially if you can get one of those school jobs,

it provides such a great break for you and for

your family.

Yeah.

And especially when you're thinking about the kids. And that was

my biggest challenge, is just the

unpredictability of, uh, the day to

day. If somebody said to me, okay, so for the

next two weeks, your husband's going to be working every day,

great, I can plan for that. I can maybe

make a longer trip out to visit family, I can

maybe plan my life a little bit. But when

it's going day to day, like, oh, maybe tomorrow or, uh,

we'll have time together as a family or oh, I'm going to be off this

weekend, so you get the kids really hyped up for, okay, Daddy's going to

be home this weekend. Oh, there's a festival in town, we're going to go

this festival as a family. And then Friday he's packing his

bags to go off to some other training exercise

because there's a last minute change of plans.

Then the kids are broken hearted. I thought we were going to

do this. Then you're doing all these plans you made by yourself

and it's interesting the plans you make when you think there's going to be two

of you to take care of two kids versus the plans you

make when you know you're going to be solo are often very

different.

Absolutely.

Um, yeah, it's exhausting and it's

frustrating and it's stressful in a different way

as deployments are, but it doesn't mean, uh,

it's any less difficult. So

absolutely. Coming to Portage and just

seeing that routine and even in just the first couple weeks

were here, pete would come home from work and be

like, okay, I'm going to go tomorrow, I'm going to go

to work at nine, I'm going to be home

at six. And the kids were like, okay, so

he went to work at nine and then he was actually home

at six or maybe even a few minutes earlier. And

just the change that I saw in our oldest, like our youngest was one,

she didn't time is not a really irrelevant thing for her at

that point, but our oldest was three and the change I saw in

her was amazing. Just to have some routine, some

predictability. I can trust that my parent is going to

be there when they say they're going to be there was huge for

her and for me as well. I remember

Pete came to me one day and he's like, okay, so

next month we're looking at doing some cross countries

and this and that. What do you think about me going

for these days on cross country? And I just stood there and I.

Looked at him, um, I'm sorry, next

month.

We're planning next month. My brain was

ready to explode because I'd never been able to plan

tomorrow. So just kind

of being able to relax into the

knowledge that we can make

plans, we can have some routine was a

huge weight off my shoulders and

yeah, I think that the military members

who are working often don't appreciate how

much that can mean to the person at home. Trying

to manage everything day to day just to be able to have that

predictability.

Yeah, for sure. What's been the

best part of being a spouse to someone in the RCAF?

The adventures are awesome. That's for know,

always imagining where you might go next. Are we going to go to

Comox? Are we going to go to GooseBay? Could it be an outCan? Posting

to Germany or the know, getting to

live in areas of the country that you never thought you

would? I, in a million years, never would have thought I'd be living

in southern Manitoba. Yet here we are and we're finding all kinds of

awesome things to do. It has been a lot of fun,

but honestly, the best part has really been all the amazing families

you meet. We all have this unique shared experience

that not a lot of other people can really

understand or relate to. We're kind of in it

together and other military spouses just get

it. They understand the challenges, they can

anticipate what your needs are going to be. And we

really just create this community of support. And once you've been in the

military long enough, there aren't too many places that you can be

posted to where you won't know at least one person. So your

tribe just kind of grows from there. But I've

said before that this is the best and the worst part of being a

military spouse. You get to meet all these amazing families

and all these amazing people, but then you also have to leave them.

So it's kind of a double edged sword from my experience.

Yeah, that's true. It is hard because

everybody in this lifestyle learns the skill of

making fast friends.

Yes, absolutely.

Which is amazing. But it is tough because we're

always moving on. You're always not losing

friends, but those friends are always they might be only a year

away from saying goodbye for who knows how long. And

that's tough.

It is.

And I think for us, our

biggest challenge now is because we've been here for five

years. You're always talking, postings, coming

up and where are we going to go? And just kind of

trying to broach the subject with our kids

because they love their life here too, and just

trying to build that resiliency in them. And every time we bring it up,

it really upsets them, the thought that their

friends aren't going to be here all for the rest of their lives because

they were so young when we moved here and they've had such a

formative part of their childhood so far

here. So that's something that

I'm anticipating and dreading

eventually moving on. But in the meantime,

they've just had the best group of friends they could ever had

for the last five years.

So we will see what the future holds.

Yeah, I can relate to that. It is really hard

to think about either leaving or

others leaving and it makes it so much tougher

even when you've got kids in the picture who have made those

connections and you really don't want to see their little hearts break.

Yeah. And it'll be the first time we've had to consider

their feelings and their emotions up to a

certain point.

It's like, you're two, you're coming with

us.

You don't have much say. But now that they're older, we want to

include them in the decision making process as much as we can.

And just trying to figure out what.

That looks like is challenging.

Yeah, that's something we'll have to navigate as we keep going

forward.

What's been your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

That's a tough one.

I was trying to think about it.

And I think one of the coolest.

Experiences is always when they have family day at the base. Once

a year you get to have an opportunity to

take a flight with your spouse or

somebody else if you want to try a different

aircraft. Uh, just watching the kids

watch their dad, it really helps them connect with

and understand what he's doing when he can't be with them on a day to

day basis. And I think that's really great. And

I mean, flying low in a helicopter is

always pretty fun too,

for sure. I'm sure we're not going as low as

they usually fly, so I can only imagine

what it's like for them.

But I enjoy it.

That's my favorite part of it is getting those little

experiences that not a.

Lot of other people would get to.

Have and to connect with. What Peter's doing on a day to

day basis is also a really big thing for us.

Yeah. For is it's huge to get that

to make it real instead of just make it an idea.

Mhm. You see them flying overhead

know, over our house every day, multiple

helicopters and airplanes. But it's different when you get to.

Be in the aircraft with them.

So I uh, want you to picture a new

pilot here in Southport, someone who's in training,

let's say you run into them at a mass dinner and they ask for

advice. What advice would you give to that young pilot to

help them have a successful family life in the

RCAF?

I think the biggest piece

from my.

Point of view would be you have to be willing and able to see this

life from your spouse's perspective as well as your

own.

Right.

Really putting in time and effort to understand that,

yes, we're not being deployed, we're not going into war

zones and other dangerous situations, but

we are still enjoying a lot of stress trying

to manage home life alone and normalize things for the

kids and figure out how to build an entire support

group from scratch every few years. And just keep some of

that burden off of you so that you can

be fully present in your job and stay safe so that you can come home to

us. So I think that would be my biggest

piece of advice is to really appreciate the

piece that we are doing at home that allows

you to be present and active at work.

And giving your wife her own deployment week every

once in a while is also highly recommended.

Yeah, I was going to say what are the ways that someone can do

that, but that's actually a great way they can to take on that

role for a week and really get a taste of what that's

like.

Uh, yeah, just appreciating that

we may not have imminent danger or

stress in that regard, but it's a different level

of challenges. Mhm it's no less valid

or valuable to the situation.

Okay, Janet, that's going to wrap it up for this

interview. So I just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time

out of your day and being on the show.

Thanks so much, Brian. It was great to be here.

Yeah.

My next guest today on the Pilot Project podcast is my

former squatter mate, Michaela Goddard. Welcome to the show, Michaela.

Hi, thanks for having me.

So Michaela, can you start by quickly telling us about

yourself?

Yeah, so I grew up in Alberta for the

most part, and I joined the military right

after high school. So I signed up when I was 18 and I went

right away to the Royal Military College. When I was

there, I studied English Lit because the military

told me that.

I didn't need a specific degree to be a navigator.

So I chose one that I was interested in rather than one that's actually

useful. So I studied English

at RMC and I graduated in 2014. And then

after that I was posted to Winnipeg to do my navigator

training or Axo course. And

once that course was done, I got posted to

Greenwood to 405 with you or I guess 404

technically to do the training on the Aurora and

then 405. And I finished my career out

in Greenwood. I retired, actually, December

30 of this, um, past year, so

2022.

Okay, cool. Now, your

husband is Paul, and you were a service couple,

which means you were both serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. How did the

two of you meet?

We, uh, actually met at RMC. Paul was a year

ahead of me in the same squadron, so the college is broken up

into twelve or 13 squadrons, depending what year you were

there. And so he was a year ahead of me. So that

year is kind of assigned to be mentors to the first

years or the year below them. And so I actually

met him my first couple of weeks at RMC, and we became best

friends once we had a little bit more freedom after the first

year orientation period. So, yeah, we became friends, and

we actually didn't start dating each other until Paul

was at his Wings graduation

from Southport and was getting posted to Labrador.

And I was, uh, in Winnipeg at the time on my training.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, we'd been friends for about five and a half years before

we actually got together officially, and then he

proposed five months later. Yeah, which is

great, except the people that didn't know us were a little

shocked, a little concerned.

Yeah. But you'd known each other for we'd.

Known each other for years, almost, at that point.

Yeah.

For a long time. And we were really good friends. And my parents loved

him more than the other people I had dated. So,

I mean, um, anyone that knew us was really excited about

it. But then we didn't get married until 2018, so

we got married just before his posting in GooseBay

was due to come up so that he could get posted

down to the same location I.

Was at, which at the time was Greenwood.

Was Greenwood. Yeah. The timing wasn't just that. We also had to

juggle a lot of other family things. Um, his brother is in the

infantry and was deploying at the time, so

we had to kind of work around trying to get everybody there

for the wedding and have it done before the posting season came out, and there were so

many factors that came into it. So we ended up getting married in February in the

mountains, and everyone was great and

no one got cold, is what they told

me.

So, when you guys decided to date, what was your

initial thought when it came to dating someone in the

RCAF?

Like, we know each other for five years. I'd been in the military and at that

point for five years, and I had dated other

people also in the military, because I guess the nature of

the college of RMC was that it was so time consuming

and so all consuming that the chances of meeting someone outside of it

were like, zero. Um, especially

if you had any time to leave the peninsula.

The campus and go meet people. I also

found a lot of people seem to be

uncomfortable with having, if they weren't in the military,

dating a woman that was in the military. Even though

I was in the Air Force, in my mind, I'm like, I'm not hardcore at

all, I'm not an Infanter, so this should be fine. But a lot

of people seem to have a problem with that. And I get that too, because the

implication is that you'll be moving a lot and that and people aren't

willing to do that and that's fine. So at the time, the fact

that he was in the military almost made it better because he would

understand my schedules, even just things like

terminology and, um, acronyms and stuff

and processes like trying to get a leave pass in and

trying to be able to schedule things around

exercises. That wasn't something I had to explain to him because he already knew

it. So it actually was like a point in my favor,

but it's pretty much all consuming, especially when you get

to your operational squadron. So I never would have had the

time to meet anybody else.

Not that that's the only reason I would fall at all.

But yeah, for me it was like kind of a no brainer because it was something

that allowed us, uh, to start off kind of on the same

footing.

So for you guys, it almost made it easier.

Yeah, I think so. And it helped too,

because pilot and axo training isn't

similar in the steps, but it's similar in the kind

of intensity and focus that you need for those really

kind of concentrated periods of time. And

you still are on a flying schedule. So a lot of that

commonality made it easier for us to understand how we were going

to schedule our lives together too, because everything came down to

schedules. Yeah, for sure.

You decided to leave the RCAF to pursue other

options. Can you tell us a little more about that?

I was kind of two years into my time at

405, and I was feeling like I wanted a different

challenge intellectually, I guess I wanted to

do something that I enjoyed and that I had a passion for.

And submarine warfare studying was like, not doing it for me.

And I was also a little bit worried that if I were to go to

school later years down the road, that none of my teachers would

remember me. So trying to get academic references to apply

for a program would be a little harder. So I

applied for a master's program while I was still flying.

And my first thought was that I wasn't going to get in. And then I got in. And

then my next consideration, because we still weren't married yet and we

still hadn't bought a house together or anything, was that I wanted to

get funding for sure from the military to do

the Masters and if I didn't, I was going to delay it. And then I got the funding,

which I wasn't expecting, so I actually

started my Master's during my check rides

for Moat. So, uh, the Aurora training course.

Moat is the Maritime operational air crew training

course.

That wasn't great timing.

Yeah, that's a really intense time in your training.

It wasn't the best timing I could have picked, but it worked out well.

And so I finished a Master's of Library and Information

Studies, which is like a total

180 from flying on the Aurora.

But it was something that I really enjoyed and found that I

really had a passion for. And originally when I had thought

about going to school, part of the goal was that

eventually I would need a Master's anyway if I were going to get

promoted. So I would do it now

and have it done out of the way. And then as I was going

to school, I realized I really enjoyed that a lot more

and I was getting a lot of more gratification out of

that subject area and that work than I would

be hunting submarines

or flying. I did really enjoy flying, but it just

wasn't making my brain work in the same way. And I really enjoyed doing my

masters. And then the next kind of wrench in the

plan, because I had expected that I would stay in probably until

my pension at least. The next wrench in the plan was that

COVID Hit and Paul and I actually had time together,

which never happens. So obviously we

got pregnant as many other

people did. Um, and so we had our son Owen

and I took a year off from maternity leave and Paul took

the first six months off with me. And we had such an amazing time as a family,

like being able to go on

trips together and do kind of whatever we wanted and everything.

And going back to work after maternity was exceptionally hard

for me. I had a very, very hard time and I realized that

I just wasn't passionate about it anymore. I didn't want

to be deployed on moment's notice. I didn't want

to go on exercises where I'd be away for weeks at a time because I was missing

so much from my son's life just being at work.

Um, and so when you combine that with the fact

that I wasn't really getting job satisfaction, I didn't get that same kind

of feel good feeling when I

was at work. It kind of became a no brainer for me to put it

in my release.

If you love the job, it makes those sacrifices

easier to bear. But if you found that it's become

something that you're not passionate about anymore, it's a lot harder to make

those sacrifices.

Yeah, exactly. And it was just getting to the point where it wasn't

worth the time and energy that we were spending on

it for me to stay in a job that I really wasn't

loving anymore. And the other big thing is we were both trying to

fly at this time. So Paul is, um, he

just got off of 413 Squadron for search and rescue, so

he's a Cormoron pilot, so his schedule was all over the

place. He'd have night shifts, he'd be on call on weekends, or

he'd be, um, out in the day, and he'd get a call out

ten minutes before shift ended, and then he'd be gone for next

8 hours or more. So then if you add on to

that with the Aurora hours of flying, like eight hour flights,

six or eight hour flights and getting pushed

for serviceability and that kind of stuff, it ended up that

we didn't have. Reliable childcare in terms

of we did have childcare for my son,

but asking them to watch him

from seven in the morning or six in the morning, even if I had

to go in early for a flight till whenever one

of us could get home just wasn't really a feasible

like. Especially not for a one year old that needs

that routine and getting to bed in their own house and

all that other stuff. So it became just like an absolute

nightmare trying to schedule Paul's work

schedules with my reintegration training and

my flights and simulators and everything, and it wasn't

working.

So it sounds like the writing was on the wall.

Yeah, definitely.

You mentioned a second career. Now that

you folks are here in Portage la Prairie,

you're having to sacrifice that career until you can

find childcare in order to support Paul in his flying career.

Do you find that difficult?

Yeah, we had kind of had the expectation that we would

be able to find at least part time childcare, and I would be able to kind of

easy my way into this new career and this new field, even if it

was part time, just to get my feet wet and see kind of what

area I wanted to work in. Because it's pretty like there's so

many different ways that I can apply my schooling.

So I was really looking forward to that, too. And

it also helps when you move to a new place to have

a cohort of people. So when we moved

here, the families here have all been amazing, but there's no,

like, I don't have any kind of job

satisfaction or meeting new people and working with new

people. It's all meeting with

the primary aim, basically, of making new friends

for me and for Owen, unlike other postings that we've

had, where I will get posted into my own job

and I'll make work friends and

acquaintances and whatever, there's none of that.

And so then it's not a good way to

start, I guess, because it's quite isolating. When

you don't have a job, you don't have this mechanism

that's built in to meet people. You really have to go out

of your comfort zone, set up play dates with random people that

you've never met and just hope they're cool.

Well, when you're posted somewhere and you're part of

the posting, like when you're in the military and you get

posted, you basically have an automatic set of friends

you're going to make. You're going to meet a bunch of people who, uh, you have at least

one big thing in common and you're

going to make like it's very easy.

Exactly. There's so much commonality between you and

someone else in the military that even if you

have never been posted the same place and you've never met before, you have those people that you

can talk to about things.

You have similar experiences.

Yeah, exactly. So you have that innate link between

you. But when we move, so Paul will go to

work and then it's just Owen and I hanging out and as

cool as that kid is, it's not

mentally stimulating.

Yeah.

Really? Right. So a lot of the stuff that I was craving

that I wasn't getting in my job

and that I really found through school, I'm not able to

continue to pursue because you can't leave a two

year old at home, I'm told that's a

bad idea. So we really need to like we

were waiting and we're on every waitlist.

Possible, so that's harder.

It wasn't a part of the posting that I was expecting because I was

just really excited for this next chapter because for me,

it meant a new career, a new chance

to contribute and to make

new friends and everything like that. That part wasn't scary,

but when you get there and then you don't have anything to

do, if you know what I mean. Obviously you have tons of stuff to

do because you're setting up your life in a new place, but you don't

have that career purpose. It makes it really

hard.

Yeah, for sure. A major challenge of being

a service couple is postings. You, uh,

were posted apart while engaged for three years. How did you make

that work?

A lot of FaceTime and

skype and things. So for the first year that we were apart, I

was in Winnipeg and Paul was in Labrador, so we had a

two hour time difference. So that

worked out a little bit better because, uh, by the time Paul was

having dinner, I was getting off work so we'd have a chance to

talk while I was working on dinner. And he was kind of

starting to wind down for the evening. So we'd usually plan to

call each other and even if we didn't sit and talk

for very long, we always kind of made an attempt to make sure that we

talked for at least ten minutes mhm a day, whether it was on the phone or

whether it was a video call. And then once it got posted

greenwood it made it a lot easier in some ways because we were in the

same time zone. So with that, again, we

would FaceTime every day. And you didn't even have to

be sitting there. Like, when you have a video call and you're like, really intent

that's all you're doing. We would just have FaceTime on while

we're doing stuff, while we're cooking, while we're reading, while I was doing

homework and studying, that kind of thing,

just so that we could talk as if we were in the same room. That

made a big deal. And then basically all of our

time off was spent visiting each

other. So, um, I think Paul,

between work and visiting me from Labrador, he got, like,

the Air Canada elite status for like,

50 legs in a year. It was just a

lot of visiting back and forth and just making that

conscious effort to spend time together. There was a couple of

times where we had overlapping exercises and the time

change would just be nuts. So at that point, we would just send each other

messages. And whenever you could answer, you could

answer. And those parts were kind of hard, especially

when you get used to being able to shock every

night. But it was just something that we both understood had to

happen. We both knew it wasn't going to last forever.

That was kind of it.

We did manage to see each other quite a bit at the

time. The Griffin Sims

were in Gagetown. Okay, I think they still are, but so

he would come down to Gagetown and then I'd be able to go out to New Brunswick or he'd

take extra leave and come to Nova Scotia. Anytime there

was a, uh, reason to come south

or for me to go north, it would work. So we did

manage to see each other more than I had expected to in the first little bit. But

when we were Winnipeg and was that

was pretty hard. I think we only saw each other two or three

times that year.

Yeah, that's tough. So you got

married. You both are in the same place,

but now you have to manage the schedules of two different

people who are flying and maintain a relationship. How did

you guys do that?

For the first little bit, it was almost like he wasn't there

because he came down to Greenwood. We bought a house,

but didn't get it till the summer. And he went on his cormorant course.

So I had his dog now, and.

My dog, which was in England, part.

Of it's in England. Yeah. So the Sims are in England. And that

week that they had Sims in England, the one week on course you can't take

leave was the week that we got possession of our house.

Oh, perfect.

So I moved both of us into our house

and after that, once he got back in the fall,

we basically have a shared calendar and we would write

out we started initially by writing it out on paper, like who was

flying what day and whatever, trying to figure out who would be making

dinner and who not. But Paul's schedule is changing

so much because at the time, they only had four first

officers for the Cormorant and one was usually gone for training.

So he was on call at least half the month,

if not more, depending on the month. So it ended

up just being that we didn't bother with writing down our schedules

anymore. We would just kind of have

like a talk in the morning or the night before, figure out who

was where, if we needed anyone to come and look at the dogs, if we were going to

be gone for a while and go from there. So once we

got into that rhythm, um, it made it a little bit easier because we

knew what days to expect that we would be gone,

what days we would have time together. And when we didn't have time together, we

made it very purposeful.

So we'd make sure we'd go out on dates together and

go exploring, do stuff that we enjoyed, uh, even if it

was just like watching a movie at home and having some popcorn.

And anytime that we had a chance

to take time off together, whether

it was like, okay, you get to leave early on a Friday, or

we requested overlapping Christmas leave to make sure that.

No one was like we were both.

Not on call for one chunk of time together, so we knew

we couldn't get called out, which was nice. Um, but yeah,

it just took a lot of coordination and last minute changes

because you can attest to the schedule

changes all the time on both parts. And

if you think it's going to be a quiet day and then all of a sudden Paul would

get a call out and he'd have to go fly up to northern Quebec,

then, well, guess him alone for dinner tonight, probably for breakfast

tomorrow, and he's going to be sleeping when I get home. And that was

probably the hardest part is that we didn't often have night

flights. And then when we did, it was scheduled, whereas he was

on know, half the nights. So he would

get called out and leave and he'd be gone for however many

hours it took for the search and then he'd be sleeping

the day. So we'd kind of lose a day with the night shift. So

that's one of the reasons too, we're happy to be here is there's no

more night flying except scheduled night flying. So that

helps.

So it sounds like a lot of scheduling and, um

flexibility.

Yeah, scheduling flexibility and like remembering to do cute

things.

Yeah, I was going to say intentionality.

Yeah. So one of the things we did while we were apart was

we'd send each other like, you know, the Hallmark Corny

love cards, like thinking of you and stuff. They always have

puns on them. Sometimes they're really cringe. Yeah.

So we would send those to each other all the time because we both like getting mail.

Who doesn't like getting mail? So then we'd start doing that. When we were

living together too, we would just leave them on the pillow or like if we're going away

on an exercise, I'd leave a couple scattered around the house kind of

thing. Just as a reminder. Right. It's a nice

way and it's better I find it's better in some ways than just

like a text. Because the text you get used to

texting back and forth and I don't feel like you get the

same kind of connection. Whereas if you're doing that a really cute

thing or you buy their favorite dessert. Paul would usually buy me

flowers and have them set up before he'd leave

on a course. So I'd have something nice in the kitchen to look at while he

was really you have to be cute

and a little disgusting about it

to really keep it happy. Yeah.

What's been the hardest part of being a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

Not, um, being able to plan ever. Like

trying to plan family vacations or getting to see our families at

all. We've both been away from our families for twelve

years and not lived remotely

close to them. So trying to plan

times when we can go see family and we can take that, uh, time

together as well is

always frustrating because there are always constraints. Right. It could be nice for

you to go and see your brother's birthday, but

that's not going to line up with Christmas leave or summer block leave

or someone's on a course or whatever. So there's no

ability to do a kind of long term planning. The other thing now that we

have Owen too, is thinking of schooling

and those long term plans that people

that don't have to move as often, you get to

plan that. You get to decide, like, I really want my kid to go to

this school, or I really want them to be in

this sport or this club. And

you can have that reliability of, well,

we're going to live here for the next 15 years. So we know that they're going to be

in this school district. Yada. Uh, yada. Yada. For us,

we aren't even sure if we're going to be in this province when no one starts school.

And if we are, we don't know how many grades he's going to do.

Right. So it's such a crapshoot trying

to find and plan for your future.

That that's probably the most frustrating part. Because

every time you get settled too, like, you'll get settled and comfortable and you'll

be like, okay, maybe we could stay here and then something will come up

and you'll get posted. Or even if you don't get posted,

something will change that will affect those plans. So there's no

sense of long term stability in

the sense of plans. I mean, obviously there's long term stability

in Paul's career and some things remain

constant. Any kind of like family planning and stuff is

just a disaster.

Yeah, for sure. What has been the

best part of being a spouse to someone in the RCAF?

That's kind of a hard one, I think, on an

individual level, like, between Paul and I, I love

seeing him when he is really thrilled about

his job. So there's a couple times, like his first couple of rescues,

especially the first rescue that he got where

someone it wasn't a search, it was actually a rescue.

So he got someone got them to medical aid

and they survived. That was such a rush, I think, for

him. And seeing him so happy and so proud of that was really

awesome. And then the other thing is, as much

as we complain about postings, having a chance to live in

different places around the country has been awesome. We loved

Nova Scotia. Neither of us are from there. I'm from Alberta, Paul's from

BC. And we absolutely loved living in Nova

Scotia. And I never would have moved there. Like, what would make me move

there, right. There's nothing else that really kind of

pushes those boundaries and gives you those different kinds

of experiences, like being told

you have to go live there for three years or more. Right. So

I think that part's been the best, those two things. Yeah.

What has been your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

One of our friends is going to be a little bitter about this. Not going to lie.

When Paul was up in Goose Bay flying on the Griffin,

it's quite a small squadron and everything. And they knew that I was also military

and also air crew. So when I came up to visit

the Christmas after we got engaged, his

Co approved me to go fly with them. So I

got to go in the back of the Griffin and we went up to the Mealy

Mountains, which is just outside of, um, Goose Bay,

and landed on a mountain and went and got up. So we've

got like a selfie of us together on a mountain.

That was pretty cool. And none of the other spouses could do it because they weren't

military. That's why one of our friends is going to be really

salty because for the longest time, we didn't

tell her it happened. Um, but yeah, I think being able

to see him work like that is super cool. And the helicopter

pilots get to do the mountain flying course in Penticton,

which is super cool. They just get to go learn how

to land on teeny tiny pieces of mountain and

do weird helicopter. But so I got to fly with

him to there, and they actually let me sit in the front seat

and fly a helicopter with him in the back

and just there to watch and whatever. It

was a lot of fun.

That's really cool.

Yeah. And we got to go scare a mountain goat.

It was great. It was a lot of fun.

Every time that course comes up in interviews, everyone

talks about how incredible it is. That's like the best

flying you'll do in your life.

Yeah, it's unreal. And they have these little helicopters. They remind me of like

little sports cars because they're just like

the cockpit bubble basically and the rotor

plates in the tail and then you just go they were doing like

canyon runs and stuff. It's definitely

super cool. And that company is so

professional and so nice. And

everyone that I talked to, they just rant about that course

because they're like, everything's so smooth, everything's so well planned.

We get to do such cool flying. Yeah, it

was cool. It was a good chance. Cool.

So for a final question, I want you to think

about a young pilot or a young air

crew member. What piece of advice would you give

them to help them have a successful family

life?

I think you really need to be purposeful about

your work life balance. That's something that is

really easy to ignore. Especially when you're young

and either single or kind of newly married. When you're

in that young family stage where maybe you don't have kids yet, maybe you're thinking

about it, maybe you aren't thinking about it. But you're newly married

because you're new and gung ho and usually you're

during an upgrade process or working

towards your goals. It's really easy to

get sucked into work is

life, mhm, which it isn't.

Not to be harsh, but when you retire, the

RCAF is going to continue on without you. Right.

You are not the make and break piece of the entire organization.

So you need to take time for family that you're never going

to get back. Those are things you really need to focus on. And

especially with kids too. When you start to have kids, take the

time off. A lot of people I know

didn't take parental leave even though they're entitled to it and they can

because they wanted to continue on with their flying. But the

planes are going to be there when you get back. Yeah, right. I agree.

It's totally okay to love your job and to be passionate about it and

to volunteer for things and volunteer out for trips. But

you have to check in with your partner and make sure that they're not

missing you. Right. Like, they're going to miss you a little bit, but if they feel

like they're missing huge chunks of your life, take some

time. Take some time to focus on that. And also

remember that they're going to be the ones that are sticking around with

you and kids or your early years

of marriage. You're not going to get those back. So make the most

of them and you can still enjoy your job, and then you have

a much better, ideally healthier

relationship when you come out of it at the end.

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for taking the time

out of your busy day. I, uh, know you're super busy with Owen and everything else

in life and getting settled in this new place, so thank you so much.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.

Our final guest today is my very good friend, Lindsay

Olson. Welcome to the show, Lindsay.

Thanks for having me, Brian.

So, Lindsay, can you start by quickly telling us about

yourself?

So I grew up in a small

town called Portal Bernie on Vancouver

Island, BC. I

moved to Victoria, BC, which is

about two and a half hours from my hometown,

just after graduation. And I

attended Camosin College.

And I was one of those people that didn't

know what I wanted to do with my life. So I

took a one year certificate

program and office administration,

and was hired by the

BC government shortly after. I worked for the

BC government for ten years,

uh, and held five different positions. And

during my time with government, I discovered

that I have a knack for writing.

And so that sort of propelled my career

forward to where I am today as the

Director of Communications for Southern Health Sante Sid,

which is the Southern Health Authority here in

Manitoba. I was

a dancer growing up. I have three children,

and of course, I'm married to Nils, who is

a maritime helicopter pilot by

trade and currently an instructor here, uh, at

three CFFTS in Portugal

Prairie, Manitoba.

Awesome. So how did you and Nils meet each

other?

We met through Plenty of Fish,

which is an online

dating platform, or it was a very popular

online dating platform back when we m met twelve

years ago. I have no idea if it still.

Exists, but it's definitely one of the originals.

Yeah, it was very common back

then.

Yeah. Once you guys started talking

on Plenty of Fish and you met him,

what was your initial thought when it came to dating someone in the

RCAF?

So that actually prompts a bit of a funny story.

So, prior to meeting Nils through Plenty Of

Fish, I had been on a date with a Navy

guy who explained in great detail

what deployments look like and all

the comings and goings. And I thought to myself,

nope, I have no interest in that. Why

would I want to be with someone who's gone most of the time?

So I just wanted no part of that.

And fast forward to meeting

Nils. He was actually very

strategic about not mentioning that he worked

in the military. He

vaguely mentioned that he worked in aviation and

eventually disclosed that he was a pilot.

And, uh, it was actually the day that we were

supposed to meet that he had. Mentioned that he was

on a course. And that triggered something. I

realized that the course that he

was on was the same course that this Navy guy had been

on. And I just thought, oh my God, he works in the

military. And so I confronted him

by text. And you know, when

know texting, there's those three dots and then pause

and then three dots. And so that went on for like five

minutes.

He eventually just said yes. And

I had this out of body.

Experience where I thought, okay, I

have 20 minutes before I need to catch a bus to meet this

guy. And I really like him. I can tell

that we have chemistry. I'm either

going to get on that bus and meet him

and accept whatever comes next, knowing

that he has the potential to change the

course of my life forever, or

I run for the hills.

Right.

So it came down to five minutes and I thought to myself,

okay, I'm just going to run for this bus. If I catch

the bus, I'm going to accept whatever comes next.

If I miss the bus, then we were never meant

to meet. So obviously I caught that bus

and.

The rest is history.

That's so funny. I'm actually crying

from this story.

I mean, it did change the course of my life.

Right.

You just know that, uh, having

enough background on what military life was like,

just from hearing from other people that I had been

on dates with, I just knew that whatever plans

you have in life, they will change.

Yeah, for sure.

If you're in a relationship with someone who's in the

military.

Yeah, that's absolutely true. As much as we

live in a world now where

more and more rightly. So both

people's careers are important, uh, we try to strive for equal

importance. The truth is, if one person's in the

military, everyone else in the family's life revolves around

the demands of that job. It's just the way it has to be.

Absolutely.

So you mentioned that you work as Director of communications for

Manitoba Southern Health. And you and Nils have three

kids. How have you found balancing employment,

parenthood, and being married to an RCAF pilot?

It can be very challenging. Some days

are fairly routine and other

days require extensive planning and

coordination. When Nils

is on a cross country, we call

those survival days. Those are the

days when we let the laundry pile up and the house

get dirty and you just prioritize what needs to

happen. And what needs to happen is getting

kids to school and daycare and work

and then dinner extracurricular. And we

are not above asking for help. We learned very

early on that we are fortunate to have

a robust family

military network here. I mean, I

can't even count on I don't have enough hands to count. How

many times you and Melissa alone have

helped our family in times of need.

And that's just one of many families that

steps up to the plate to help us.

Yeah, we're so fortunate here in

Portagello Prairie at the school because

people have the extra bandwidth to help each other.

And I found that this place has been really great

for almost recuperating from the

crazy life of operational flying, and

we can all help each other out a little more. And it's been really nice.

I couldn't agree more, Brian. It's been an incredible experience.

So going back to when you met, very shortly

after you met nils left for his operational training

unit to follow it up. He was quickly sent away on a

nine and a half month sale. What was that like for

you?

It was a big eye opener. You don't realize how

long nine and a half months is until you're in the thick of

it. And during that time, I had a

lot of time to reflect on what our

life might look like moving forward. So we

did not have kids at that time. And I

just kept thinking to myself, this is only the

beginning. This is going to get more challenging

as time goes on. What will this look like with

kids? There was a lot of reflection that

happened during that time, so it was

tough, but I think I always knew that it could

get tougher. And so I kind of was

thankful for the position that I was in and that I

did not have kids and that I was able to carry

on with my job no problem while he was away.

But it must have been really difficult because how long had you been

together before he went to the, uh,

East Coast to get trained on the Seeking?

We had only been together for two months before

he left. And leading up to his

departure for seeking training, he

just kept mentioning that he was going to go on a

training course and it would be a couple of weeks,

and then it was a couple of months. And then, um,

true story is that it was seven months, but he just didn't

want to lose me, and he wanted to

ease me into the idea that he would be coming

and going frequently, which is exactly what

happened.

And then he came back. And how long was it before he left on that

sale?

Two weeks.

Two weeks. So you were together again for two weeks and then gone

for nine and a half months?

He had a few deployments prior to that big

okay. Yeah, he had, uh, like a two month and a four

month, and he was always home for a couple of

weeks in between. And then, of course,

that long sale. And after he came back, we got

married.

Yeah. Wow. So that's a

lot of time apart. How did you two

keep things going during those times?

Communication was key. We had previously

established really strong communication

skills prior to his leaving

and his time in Halifax training

really solidified, uh, the importance of

connecting every day in whatever means were

available to us. So that, uh,

texting, FaceTime, emails. We

even wrote letters, postcards. Oh, my gosh, I

think I got a postcard. I have, like, a box

full of letters and postcards from that time.

I should take that out sometime.

Yeah, you should.

Yeah.

We made a point of having some

form of connection every day, even if it

was, hi, thinking of you.

I'll talk to you soon.

So those deployments kept coming, and Nils sailed or

deployed on ships a total of five times while you've been together.

Can you tell us about some of those experiences?

When I look back on,

uh, the time of deployments, there's

one deployment in particular that sticks

out to me as being especially

hard, and that was the last deployment he

was on before we got posted to Portage La Perry,

Manitoba. It was a five

month sale. Our first child was

not even one, and I was pregnant with our

second child. So I was in the process

of returning to work following

Matt leave, and our daughter was going to

daycare for the first time ever. So

there was a lot of change happening. And

we quickly discovered, or I quickly discovered

that when your child goes to daycare for the first

time ever, they catch every virus

known to man. So our daughter

was just constantly sick,

and nothing could have prepared me for that

experience. I

ended up burning all of my vacation days

within the first two months. So I had to have a

really awkward conversation with my boss about my

situation being essentially a

single parent at the time, and obviously

not being able to send our daughter to

daycare. So I found that really challenging

and just a huge eye opener. I didn't realize that

she would be sick so often.

She also suffered from reoccurring

ear infections, but we didn't know that they were ear

infections at the time. So she would get sick, and

then she would get really sick. And

so there would be lots of

sleepless nights and me trying to

work with her home during the day while she

was extremely, extremely ill

and frequently.

On three occasions, uh, she was admitted to

the hospital because of how sick she

was. So you can imagine how stressful

that would have been as a first time

parent and trying to maintain a full time

job and just not having that support

person. You really lean on your other half in those

times, especially making tough parenting

decisions. So it was just

incredibly challenging. And the whole five months is just a blur

for me. There was one day in particular

that sticks out in my mind. I ended

up contracting gastro.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

So I had one of those nights where I was up all

night puking. And I remember waking up the

next morning to this knock at

our front door, and I hopped over to the

door, and I answered the door, and it was my neighbor. And

she just took one look at me and was like, oh, my

gosh. You're not okay. She's like, I'm coming

in. I'm going to help you. You need my help.

I'm not taking no for an answer. And she

just packed a bag, and she took my daughter for the day,

and she said, you need to sleep. You go to

bed. And I remember waking up at 06:00 p.m..

That day. I slept the entire day, and I

woke up at 06:00 p.m.. And my

neighbor was sitting at our dinner table.

Feeding our daughter dinner,

and I just cried.

I was just oh, my God. I didn't realize how much I needed

help, and I don't think anything could have prepared

me for what was to come.

Right.

And from that day forward, she showed up

every day.

What a great neighbor.

Yeah.

Honestly, my takeaway from that experience

was, you, uh, need a person or

people. You need a community that can help

you when your spouse is deployed, especially when you

have children. Nobody can or should

have to do it alone.

Yeah. If you don't have kids, it can be very

lonely. And obviously, if you do have

kids, it can be incredibly overwhelming.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

And just the sheer I did not

prepare for

what was required to keep

my head above water during that time.

I don't know why we did not

realize that simple tasks like

grocery shopping and cutting the

grass and doing laundry, walking the

dog, there are not enough hours in the day

to do all those things and be a parent

to a toddler and work a full time job. So

we learned very early on that you need help or you

need hired help. And those are

survival days. Right. You got to do whatever it takes

to get through them and to give yourself some grace to not

expect that you can possibly do all

those things. You have to get help.

And it's not forever. It's just that period of time

when you need to accept all the help that comes your way.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think an important thing to remember,

too, you keep listing off having a kid and

working and trying to keep everything going by yourself. And

you were pregnant.

Yeah, I was very pregnant. Very

pregnant with our second child.

So I was like, that's exhausting.

It was so exhausting.

Yeah.

Having a sick toddler, and

those were some really tough days.

I really like what you said about the importance of

help, and I think that just highlights

how important it is to have a support network to make sure

that before your partner is

deployed, to make sure that you have that

support network in place, you have those people you can count

on.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. You need people and

you need to know when you've

reached your limits. And I learned that

very early on. You're not doing yourself or

your family any favors. If your glass is empty,

if your basic human needs are not being met,

then you need to do something about it.

Yeah, 100%. What has been

the hardest part of being a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

It's all the unknowns. There's always a

curveball. You don't know what it is or when it's coming.

It could be something as simple

as breakdown. Um, during a cross

country, your spouse is supposed to be home

in two days. You've planned accordingly and

then they break down and they're gone for a week.

And I mean, this

just really solidifies that need for a support

network and just knowing when

to let some things go. Like maybe you're not going

to get to hockey practice this week

or you're not going to make that

lasagna. Instead you're going to get a takeout pizza or

whatever.

It's just flexibility.

Honestly, you have to be so

flexible when you're a military family

and when you're married to a pilot

in the RCAF. Every day

has its challenges and there's just so many

unknowns.

Mhm and those are just the small things. On top of that, you've

got the big things like postings and

all kinds of things that can unexpectedly change

your life in huge ways.

Oh yeah. It can be pretty overwhelming when you

think about what's next and just

that feeling of just not knowing. I mean, you

can have all the plans in the world and ultimately

that decision about where you're going next isn't

always up to you. Mhm so that's a lot to

accept.

Yeah. How do you deal with those unknowns?

I think our move to Portage la Prairie

is a good example of I was

very, very nervous about that move. I had

never been to Manitoba. It was a

lot of unknown for me, leaving

the only place I'd ever known, which was Vancouver

Island, BC. I grew up there and so

that was a really tough move for me.

But I quickly realized that

were many perks to

moving out of that comfort zone and

establishing friendships and

relationships with other military families.

Because we didn't have that in Victoria, as

I had previously mentioned, we really didn't have a support

network there. But here in Portugal Prairie, it's a

really small community, so you don't really have a choice.

Like you make those connections right away. Mhm and

it's been a very positive experience for me. So I

think that that has sort of changed my

thought pattern on postings and

just knowing that wherever

we go next, it's going to be okay, you're going to make

a connection. And if you don't, you have all these prior

connections and they're going to help you guide your way

and you're going to fall back on those experiences and realize

that you didn't have to survive that.

You embraced it, you enjoyed it, you made

friendships, you embraced that community.

You put yourself out there, you get involved. It can

be whatever experience you want and you have to

make the best of the hand that you're dealt.

What's been the best part of being a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

I think it just goes back to those connections,

honestly. We've made lifelong friendships here

that I have no doubt that we will continue to stay

in touch. And that level of

friendship just goes so much beyond the average

friendship. It's a family. And even your own

family doesn't understand you like another

military family does. It's impossible to

explain. These are people that are in the same

walk of life as you and they know exactly where you're

coming from. It's just a bond that it's an

honor to be able to make those bonds and

establish those friendships. So that's a huge positive.

Yeah, I think we all have that shared

experience of this lifestyle and those life

experiences. And even though we come especially at a

school, from like a varied background of

fleets and locations, we all understand the life

and we can all understand the hardships that each other

are going through and kind of help each other through

them.

Yes, it is a lifestyle.

What's been your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the

RCAF?

The coolest experience I've had to date

would be mountain flying with

Nils in the Okanagan. So I actually got to

fly that helicopter, which was equally

thrilling and terrifying.

So I recognized that that was a really unique

experience that I got through

Nils being a helicopter

pilot.

That's really cool. It was you and Nils and you got a chance to fly the

helicopter?

I did, yeah. He was sitting in the back and I got to sit in the front

and actually fly the helicopter.

Oh, with the instructor?

Yeah, with the instructor. Yeah, of course.

That's so cool, though.

They're very intentional about getting the

spouse in the front seat for a 2030

minutes flight. And I think they are very

aware of the impact that that has

because leading to that point, it's just training,

training, deployments. And then all of

a sudden, there's just 30 minutes in

your life where you get to be there

experiencing just a piece of

what they go through and the thrill

and also the terror

flying in the mountains. I'm sure it's nothing that

compares to what our spouses go through and

when they're operational, but it really is a life changing

experience.

It is really cool when you have a chance to bring your family

flying because you have

a concept in your head of like, yeah, well, they're a

pilot, they fly airplanes, they fly helicopters. That's what

they do. But to actually have people come

and see it and feel what it's

like and hear the noise and uh, just

be present and be part of. It is such a cool experience. It really makes

it real.

I think it is an experience. There's no better

way to put it.

So I want you to think about, for example, the young

pilots that we have, uh, here at the school. What piece of

advice would you give to a young pilot to help them have a successful

family life?

So, two things come to mind. The first one

being that communication

and maintaining connection with your family

is so critical.

No matter where you are, it's so.

Important to use whatever means are available to you to

stay connected with your family. Even if all you have

time for is a quick

text or email. Hi, I'm thinking

of you. I'm okay. How are you

guys? Love you all, talk to you soon.

I mean, that's everything. It's everything to your family

to hear from you. Even when you're in different time

zones and it's hard to connect, it's

just nice to know that that other person,

your other half is out there thinking of you.

Both of you are not in

ideal situations. You're both going through

tough times or having tough days.

So it's important on

both parts to.

Maintain that connection in whatever way possible.

And especially for the kids. We are very

intentional when Nils is away,

even if it's just overnight, to do a quick FaceTime

with the kids and say goodnight to them so that

they know that wherever he is in the world, he

will always take time to connect

with them. The second thing

is to help your family foster a

connection with another

family, whether that be military or

just another family in the community. You need

to have a support network and it's so

critical to help your family foster that

connection and just to know that they have

that support system because something

always comes up. You will always need to fall back

on that support system and just knowing that

you have that one other person or

family that can help you. It's a live or

die situation. Honestly, you can't survive

without it. It takes a, uh, village to raise

a child and it takes a robust

family military network to raise

a, uh, military family.

Yeah, I agree with that completely.

So those are the two pieces of advice

I have.

Um, awesome. Well, Lindsay, that does it for this

interview. I just want to thank you so much. I know you're extremely busy

and I really appreciate you taking the time to be here and answer a

few questions.

So happy to be here. Brian, thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you. All right, that's going to wrap up our

episode on Military Family Appreciation Day. I

hope you all enjoyed getting a bit of the spouse

perspective. For our next episode, we sat down with

Greg Gerling to talk about his time in Afghanistan on

the Ch 146. Griffin listeners will remember

Greg from our Christmas episode from last year. He's

got some very exciting stories. You don't want to miss it.

Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard on the

show? Or would you or someone you know make a great guest?

Reach out to us at

[e-mail]

or on all social media at ah

atpodpilotproject. As always, we want to

wrap things up by thanking you for listening and for sharing the

show with your friends and by asking for your help with the big three

that's like and follow us on social media. Share with

your friends and follow and rate us five stars wherever you

get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for

listening. Keep the blue side up. See you.

It engineer shut down all four. Shutting

down all four engines.