Finding My Way Back

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The military lifestyle demands a unique type of resilience—one that allows you to pack up your life, say painful goodbyes, and rebuild your sense of self in a new location repeatedly. After a prolonged absence from the podcast, I'm finally ready to share what happened during my latest PCS (Permanent Change of Station) from Kentucky to Texas.

What should have been a familiar process quickly spiraled into an emotional and logistical marathon. With children and an aging German Shepherd in tow, this wasn't just another move—it was a military operation requiring morning briefings, a 10-page plan, and the deliberate setting aside of emotions to manage the chaos. The San Antonio housing market threw its own curveballs, from unresponsive agents to unexpected "pet rent" for my elderly dog and tiny kitten.

Just as we secured housing and began to unpack, another military reality struck—a TDY (Temporary Duty) assignment that stretched to nearly 60 days. The irony wasn't lost on me: unpacking boxes just to pack bags and leave again, this time abandoning my family to settle our new home without me. This constant uprooting dismantled the habits that typically keep me grounded, creating a start-stop pattern that impacted my mental well-being.

My journey back to myself hasn't been about starting over, but about starting again—reconnecting with the routines and practices that make me feel whole despite external chaos. If you're navigating your own period of transition, whether military-related or not, this episode offers a raw look at managing expectations, rebuilding habits, and finding your way back to yourself when everything around you keeps changing. Pour your cafecito and join me as we explore what it means to come home to yourself, even when your physical home is in flux.

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Episode Transcript

Joa (00:00):
Oh we could, we could fly.
Welcome back to have a Cup ofJohanny.
This season isn't abouthustling harder.
It's about coming home toyourself, to your voice, to your
breath, to the quiet truth thatyou're still here and you're
not starting over.
You're starting again.

(00:21):
This is your space to reflect,reset and remember who we tell
you are.
So pour your cafecito and let'sbegin.
Vasitos, I am so sorry, I can'tbelieve I left y'all hanging,

(00:46):
but these next episodes I'mgoing to explain to you
everything that happened, butplease take this as my apology.
So I got into the office byyelling out Babe, I'm finally
recording an episode for mypodcast, and that right there

(01:10):
should tell you everything.
So, finally, finally, I'mstarting to get back to myself.
I am starting to get back tothose things that make me feel
like me, make me feel nourished,make me feel like my full self,
Joa.
So that is what we're going totalk about.

(01:32):
I know I missed much of April,but we're going to talk about
that.
That's going to be my themegetting back to self.
Are you all ready?
Of course you are, becausethat's why you came back.
That's why you came back.

(01:53):
All right, macito.
So y'all have heard me.
Before I was PCSing, I had a bigmove to do from Kentucky to
Texas and I accomplished thatand I thought that that was it
right.
I mean, it's nothing I haven'tdone before.
I've been doing this for alittle bit and, yeah, nothing I

(02:15):
haven't done before, but it tookme out right, it took me out
because there were severalthings in there that it was like
oof whiplash.
It was now we had the babieswith us that we had to take that
into consideration.
We had our dog, who is nowolder.

(02:37):
You know we had to take thatinto consideration.
So if you're a pet owner andyou're listening to this, you
know that there's a few thingsthat just change when your pets
go.
When your pets they go frombeing young into their quote
unquote teenage years and thenall of a sudden it's like whew,
they're elderly, right, so yeah,and that's where Lady is at.

(03:01):
So it means more potty breaks,it means she gets anxious just a
little bit more and she needsto be consoled a little bit more
, and all of that kind of stuff.
And then with the babies aswell, I mean they're not babies,
they're grown.
But I mean we say babies.
Of course that's likeadditional as well, where it's

(03:25):
like we have to kind of likecorral the troops, as I like to
say, before we stop and thenbefore we go, so that way we're
all connected, we all understandwhat we're doing.
As I like to say, we allunderstand what we're doing when
we hit target.
I militarized the crap out ofthis move.
You, you don't understand LikeI had briefings in the mornings,

(03:46):
briefings in the evening withthe family, just to make sure
that we all had sharedunderstanding of the situation
and we all understood our rolesin this mission moving from
Kentucky to Texas with a layoverin El Paso.
So that way we can go and havea little bit of fun.
So, all jokes aside, I meanwhat I didn't take into

(04:11):
consideration was the emotionalwhiplash of the PCSing period,
and I already knew this fromtalking to my therapist that
just saying goodbye is very hardfor me.
It still is.
Like you heard me saying I'vebeen doing this for quite a
while now.
I should be like really apt atit, but like I was telling my

(04:32):
therapist a while back, I waslike it just it doesn't get any
easier for me that whole part ofsaying goodbye to this set of
people, some who I have learnedto love deeply and see them as
family, right, and it's just now.
To have to break away from thatand start anew is no easy task

(04:54):
and if you all listening havehad that experience, you can
relate to this.
You understand that there's agrieving process that happens.
No one is going awaypermanently, right, no one is
dying, but it's like you justknow that you will not see these
group of folks that you havebonded with and you have learned

(05:17):
to love for a very long time,if not at all, right.
So it is a big emotionalwhiplash, something that I, just
because of the sake of the moveand the sake of so many moving
pieces, like I wrote out thisplan that turned into like a 10

(05:39):
page dissertation with all thestops, what we were going to do
and then the different thingsthat we needed to do there
logistically for our move, andit was exhausting.
So, kind of looking at thatplan, I understood like, well,
Johanny, you don't have any timefor your feelings during this
move.
That's something that you willhave to push to the side and

(06:00):
that's kind of like what I didintentionally so not
unintentionally like I've donebefore where I kind of like just
shoved them off to the side.
This time I was like you know, Iunderstand that I have emotions
, I understand that I don't havetime, for soon as I got in,

(06:32):
there were several things thathappened.
One was that the housing marketwas difficult.
I didn't understand exactly howdifficult it is.
Once again, I've done thisbefore, right?
So I was not intimidated at allby it.
I knew like I would be able toget into a house right away.

(06:56):
I just knew it, you know.
But that was a false assumptionthat I proved false when I got
over here.
Because, you know, but the waythat the houses are arrayed in
this city is so unique andsomething that I had not
encountered before.

(07:17):
Okay, and it is like it's inloops, right.
So you have like an inner loop,you have an outer loop, you
have another outer loop, right.
And I know that I wanted a goodneighborhood, good schools for
the kiddos as one, but I alsodidn't want it to have like an
hour long commute, so I wantedto have like a happy medium.

(07:39):
If somebody was going tosacrifice, it was going to be me
in my commute, right?
But of course that's not.
I'm not jumping in on thatright away.
So of course I'm going to tryto find something that is close
and it's also a goodneighborhood and has good
schools for the kids.
So I went about it.
I saw, like that this was goingto be a long endeavor to do

(08:03):
that.
So I was like I'm going to haveto ask for what we call house
hunting days here.
So I asked for house huntingdays, what we call house hunting
days here.
So I asked for house huntingdays and long and behold, right.
Usually it doesn't take youthat long, people, usually it
doesn't, but it did.
If you're from San Antonio, Iwant you to listen to this.

(08:25):
I want you to like help me out.
Am I the problem here?
Please tell me if I'm theproblem here, but I swear it was
on the ninth day that I foundsomething, and it was a mixture
of a lot of automated housesright that were on the market,
as well as houses that werereally being looked after an

(08:45):
actual human, not an automatedsystem.
So I had to deal with both ofthose.
I had to get certain apps forthe automated houses.
I had to wait for phone callsfor those that were just solely
being kept by humans and, mindyou, one of those houses which I
really loved and I reallythought, yeah, they'll call me

(09:08):
back.
They never did.
I like, in my heart, I put 80%of my hopes into this rental
house, to be honest with you,and that was like perfect.
You know it's far away, not toofar away, in a good
neighborhood.
We're kind of close to Randolphnot the base where I'll be

(09:29):
working at, but, you know, good,good enough.
So at least, uh, my husband,the kids right, have access to a
base that is close by and and Iwas like, and I can do that
commute, that that's easy enough, you know I can sacrifice in
there and it.
They never called me and I waslike, do I have the wrong number

(09:49):
?
I went by the house again,double check, no, it wasn't.
I left a message.
I sent emails.
Nothing, absolutely nothing,right, mind you, I wasn't
waiting on that.
But I, you know, I was kind oflike half-heartedly going
through the motions.
So, because I really thoughtthat that house was going to

(10:14):
come through, you know, I don'tknow, I don't know why I was so
hopeful, like that.
I should have like seen all thesigns.
I saw the signs, right, but Ididn't.
I didn't see the signs, andyeah, then after like a day or
two of waiting.
I remember, like talking to myhusband and being like they're
just, they're not going to callback.

(10:35):
I was like I can't believe theydon't want my money, what?
What is going on?
Like these people don't wantrenters to go see a house, and I
was so close to buying that onebecause I was like, fudge it
all.
I mean, if that's what it takes, you know, then let's do it.

(11:00):
We already have a house.
But I was like that's cool,that's okay, I'll take over this
mortgage.
My husband has the othermortgage already.
It's too easy.
Let's go that way then, Ifthat's what it takes to find a
house and send totally.
But once again, I prefer arental because of the military

(11:20):
lifestyle and all of that.
That way we can just pack it upand go and don't have to worry
about maintaining something orleasing something to other
people.
It sounds exhausting, right?
That's because it was right.
The month of January was superexhausting for me because it was
a culmination of the movesaying goodbye, the emotional

(11:46):
toll of saying goodbye and thenjust the prepping of the
emotions to be part and meet anew team, you know, and then
having all of that come to ascreeching halt because now I
have to get the family settledand it's not as easy as I
thought it would be.
That was the month of Januaryfor me.

(12:07):
All in a nutshell, people, allin a nutshell, and moving on.
I finally got a place, but itcame with a lot of fees.
Tell me, am I the problem here?
I have not rented a placebefore and I've done this for a

(12:28):
while where I require, like, apet rent and all this other
stuff.
Mind you, I have had pets sinceI can remember, since I was
like a Sergeant E-5 in the Army,you know, with my kid, because
I wanted my kid to have theresponsibility of a pet and
being able to build empathy overtaking care of something, of

(12:52):
someone, right, so that way hecan grow into a better human
being.
So I knew pets were importantin our household, so I did that
early on.
But throughout my rentalhistory I've never come around
pet rent until here.
So now I am paying $100 worthof pet rent for my elderly

(13:19):
German shepherd that hides onthunderstorms and my little
four-pound kitten.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm likehundred really.

(13:44):
Have you seen these pets like?
Do you know that all they do islounge.
But you know, like that, thiswas like the one house I was
like we'll take it.
We'll take it because it's likewe can't.
We can't be going back andforth Like I had like very
little days left.
I was like if we don't pickthis one, you know, then there's

(14:06):
nothing else.
Go to a hotel, wait for thewhole buying process to work
itself through, you know, andall of that.
So we ended up picking thishouse and now we're in this
house paying the pet rent alongwith the human rent and every

(14:26):
other fee that they could findto charge us for.
Yeah, I'm still a little salty,if you haven't noticed.
But then comes the news that Ihave to go TDY for an unknown
amount of time, go a temporaryduty location, and I'm like,

(14:50):
okay, okay, it can't be morethan two or three weeks, right,
I mean too easy.
I've done TDYs.
I did TDY quite often.
In my last studio assignment,too easy.
I was there for almost 60 dayspeople, almost 60 days, like a

(15:10):
week shy of 60 days.
Okay, I don't know my new house,I don't know the city that I
just moved into, shoot, I don'teven know the unit I'm in, you
know.
But I'm going to go on this TDYwith them.

(15:31):
Nothing I haven't done before,mind you.
This has happened to me beforequite a few times.
I don't know what it is, Iguess I just I bring that energy
a few times.
Uh, I don't know what it is, Iguess I just I bring that energy
wherever I go, I don't know why, but but I'm like, okay, let's
go, let's go.

(15:51):
You know, um, I unpack thingsout of boxes so I can pack them
in bags and take them with meand off I go, off.
I go completely disconnectedfrom the new house.
I just came into the new city.
I just moved into my own familywho is still trying to settle.

(16:15):
So of course there's guiltlingering there because now I
have left them to deal with thison their own, you know.
So this right here, and I hope,like, if you don't understand
the military, you don't know themilitary, like, you kind of
start to get like a feel forsome of the things that we go

(16:38):
through and that is like a bigthing that we go through and
that is like a big thing.
And that's why, like militaryfamilies, they're so precious,
especially if they've been solidand together for a while,
because these are things thatthey go on a regular basis.
Every time their trooper has tocome out for whatever mission
or whatever thing that ishappening, the family just gets

(17:03):
kind of like not left behind.
That sounds bad.
But they are left to do thesettling, to do the stabilizing,
to do the household things,kind of like on their own, you
know now, with the support of ofthe unit, because the units
usually have a structure that iscalled like a family readiness

(17:27):
group of some sort, you know.
But in my case it was like likewe don't know the unit, you
know.
So that's a little.
It's a little different.
It's a bit of a of an obstacle.
That is there as well.
But once again, my husband, he'sa veteran, he's a retiree, so
it's like he knows what he'sdoing.

(17:48):
It's still, though I feel theguilt because he shouldn't have
to do it on his own, but heunderstands it.
He understands it both from thesoldier aspect and from the
spouse aspect as well, becausewhen we get married we get
married in the thick of it.
We get married in one of myhardest assignments when I was a

(18:10):
first sergeant, so hecompletely understands the
sacrifices that one has to makeand things of that nature it's
still, it takes a toll.
And now, mind you, I haven'treally processed my emotions of
saying goodbye, saying hello toa new team and so forth.
And now here I am in this newmission and things of that

(18:32):
nature like resiliency, innerwork, kind of like spiritual
inner work that goes through inorder to be able to function,
and that's what I did.
It took me like a week to settlewhen I was TDY in that mission

(18:54):
and then I kind of like had tocome to myself and be like okay,
Johanny, let's take it like onehabit at a time, because I knew
that these are the habits thatkeep me sane.
So, since I've been uprootedtwice, in a sense, in this
instance, my habits kind of hadstaggered, they haven't been

(19:16):
consistent for them to work.
Kind of had staggered, theyhaven't been consistent for them
to work.
It's kind of like, oh, let meuse this example, because we're
going through colds right now inmy family.
So it's kind of like not takingyour jarabe, your cold medicine
, continuously and then you missit and then the symptoms comes

(19:38):
back, right, and then you startit again, right, and then it
eases up a little bit.
But then something happens andthen you stop and the symptoms
come back even worse, right,it's kind of like that with the
habits, because it was kind oflike this whiplash start, stop,
start, stop and so forth.
So after being a week there, Iwas like, okay, stop, let's

(20:01):
regroup, because we need to dosomething, because we got to be
able to function now in this newrole and kind of push away and
step away from the old one andthinking about the old one and
what happened back there, and Iwill tell you more about that

(20:31):
and how I approach that on thehabits that kept me sane, which
is the next episode.
I'll see you all on the nextone.
Bye.
If today's episode spoke to you, share with somebody who's
finding their way back too, andif you haven't yet, visit
haveacupofjohanny.
com for more stories, blog postsand the books that started it
all.

(20:51):
Thank you for being here.
Until next time, be soft, bebold and always have a cup of
johanny.