I never knew I could find a connection to other people like me. Then I found Bloom. My sister started first as a blog writer, then started The Bloom Room podcast with her other milteen friends. I was in 7th grade at the time, ignorant of many things in the world. I knew at the time my sister joined something related to being a military kid, but I never knew the impact this blog had on kids all over the world. As I grew older, I learned more about what my sister did by reading

They pull themselves into what they cannot see (Sea) pond, or river at all The celestial uncontrollable Which demands a Dance, this chaotic Impossible Request requires Perfection that cannot be achieved From the methodic pattern A flowing pace to Contradict, to meet The tides rising falling, Swing forward, and back Never the same stroke twice; And done again and again, The rhythm of a life Of one who doesn’t stand on stable Ground, new water is rushing and Restarts the stro

Moving can feel overwhelming, but breaking a PCS down into tangible moments by making sense of all the things you feel and experience along the way can make the journey a lot more manageable. So, what does moving actually feel like? Thinking back on my life, to me, moving feels… Like the sound of packing tape wrapping up boxes Like the smell of cardboard wafting through an empty house as we construct cardboard box forts Like the beautiful sights of passing scenery on a long

The following essay is the first place winner of our 2026 Month of the Military Child Writing Contest. The theme was "The Beauty of the Military Child Experience." Congratulations to Rachel R., a high school freshman! My dad (a U.S. Naval Academy graduate with 20 years of service) has something he always tells me to remember: “Who deserves the truth?” When he retired, adjusting to civilian life in Dallas, Texas, was excruciatingly painful. After moving 8 times in 15 years of

The following essay is the second place winner of our 2026 Month of the Military Child Writing Contest. The theme was "The Beauty of the Military Child Experience." Congratulations to Hayden M., a high school junior! If you were to walk into any school hallway or public space, you could hear someone making the assumption that they know everything they could know about the world. They assume they know the way the culture ebbs and flows within the people of a place they have ne

The following essay is the third place winner of our 2026 Month of the Military Child Writing Contest. The theme was "The Beauty of the Military Child Experience." Congratulations to Isabella A., a high school senior! A dandelion can put down roots anywhere with tiny yellow blossoms that are almost impossible to remove. Their long taproot allows them to grow prolifically, blooming wherever the wind carries them. Modest yet beautiful, dandelions brighten even the darkest groun

When I was about 8 years old, my family got stationed in Seoul, South Korea. As many moving stories go, my parents had been almost positive that we would be sent somewhere else, such as Florida. Even now, I can vividly remember looking at houses to buy there with my dad. As you can imagine, our orders came as a complete shock, but the two years we spent in Seoul were some of the richest and most interesting of my life. Even as a kid, I learned so much and immersed myself in a

The thing that everyone focuses on when you’re a military child, when meeting new people, is always the plethora of places you’ve likely lived—for myself, sprawled across a handful of countries across a handful of continents, I’m doubtlessly familiar with the details of how cool and interesting it was to get the opportunity to live abroad. But the adjective I hated the most was when they would say I was lucky. Off the bat, I don’t have any problem with the word luck; I’m luck

I grew up between time zones, measuring years in PCS, learning that “home” could be a mailbox I learned to stop checking. I became fluent in starting over, new hallways, new faces, new versions of me introduced like I had always been there. Now I’m eighteen, standing at the edge of something louder than moving trucks, where goodbyes don’t come with return dates and I can’t follow behind anymore. They call it becoming an adult, but I still carry every place I left like stamps

When you think of loss in a military aspect, most people think of veterans, war, and soldiers. But how about those who aren’t actively training for war or those who aren’t directly in military service? Most don’t think of military children as those who have experienced loss. But, loss isn’t always death. As a kid, I lost many things. Jackets, toys, et cetera. In a way, that’s still a loss. In the military sense, I have lost some things as well, but it is nowhere close to othe

This article was sent to us by Sabela M., an 8th grader Marine Brat stationed in Virginia. Do you have a story to share with your fellow military teens? Visit our guest contribution page to find out how you can submit to Bloom! Sabela and her mom when they went to Romania to get away from the sirens for a bit. When my parents told me we were being stationed in Israel, I didn’t really know much about it or what was in store for me. I just knew I felt sad, because it meant sayi

Around two months ago, I found out that I would be leaving my current station of almost three years and moving back to my previous station this summer. This would be my first move after my dad’s retirement, and this news excited me—the thought of returning to a place I was so in love with, leaving my small school, and getting to reunite with my friends again. However, I recently realized that this would be my last move before I go to college. Never before have I had my futur

There’s a strange kind of quiet that occurs with endings you’ve been expecting your whole life. Not a sudden ending — not the kind that interrupts or unravels quickly — but the kind that comes up on you slowly, almost like turning a page in a thick book. The kind that you grow up knowing will happen “one day” without ever actually knowing when that day is or what it will actually feel like when it arrives. My dad is retiring from the Marine Corps this year after 25 years of s

My family has been lucky enough to be stationed in Singapore for about 5.5 years total, across two tours, and we absolutely love it. Being stationed here is definitely different from other OCONUS duty stations, but there is so much that Singapore has to offer, especially considering it’s only about the size of Chicago and showing up on a map like a little red dot. Installation Amenities “It’s not a base, it's a place” is something we commonly say over here because of how sma

There’s a popular trend on most social media platforms, based on the concept of “lost faces”, having memories of loved ones but being unable to remember their faces. I never thought about it twice, because I always assumed I was exempt. While trying to work through my amazing writer's block, I searched through my memories for something of relevance. The most I could remember were snapshots of specific places in my mind. The more I thought, the more I could remember. One pic

As school ends and summer comes around the corner, I know it’s time when many military kids are getting ready to pack up and leave the place they once called home. I know this can be a difficult process for us all, no matter how many times we claim we are 'used to it.' So I wrote this version of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but as 'Twas the Night Before the Move, because I know so many military kids can relate to these feelings. Twas the night before the move, in a ha

“121!” Nina shouts out another trail marker, but her originally peppy, satisfied tone has worn off into a blunt statement of fact. One marker in 10 minutes, yep, seems about right. This hike will never end. My stomach is pinched by the hip strap of my bag that I pulled too tightly to myself, my shoes get increasingly heavy with every “not–so–dry” patch of mud I step into. I’d rather just stop here and sleep, there’s no point to this anyways. Maybe we took a wrong turn, I hav

A beautiful nature trail at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. “The land knows you, even when you are lost.” That is a quote from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Most military children would guffaw at the idea -- we're always moving consistently, adapting to entirely different environments, constantly being the outsider in what feels like a fortressed community. How could the land know us? If we are peo

In a life with so much change, so much inconsistency from year to year, living on base has been my rock. From year zero to fifteen, I always knew that, no matter what, I could come back to base at the end of a long day, safe from any problems in the outside world. Living on base was my ultimate refuge, the only constant between each new duty station. No matter how new or uncomfortable the outside world looked from year to year, I always had the Commissary, my favorite Freedo

This article is part of the Bloom Spotlight series, where we aim to recognize current and former military teens who are doing amazing things. If you know a current or former military teen (regardless of age) who is impacting the military community in a way that deserves to be recognized, visit our Bloom Spotlight page . Leah Scarmeas is a senior in high school who is heavily involved and accomplished in pageantry. She holds the Miss South Carolina Teen USA title, achieved thr

When was the last time you compared yourself to someone around you? Comparing yourself to other people isn’t always a bad thing. Comparison can be constructive if it motivates you to do better, but more often than not, it can become a dangerous habit that must be broken. Comparing myself to others is something I personally struggle with, so I understand how it feels. I understand the discouragement it can bring. It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole of comparing yourself to ot

Recently, I had a conversation with my friend about our last few months of high school. As we discussed the changes we would soon face and the last few months before graduation, she said something that resonated with me. She explained that she was having a hard time being in the present, knowing that soon her community would completely change. At that moment, I realized that what she said applied to me not only as a senior in high school, but also as a military child -- and t

Currently, as a teenage girl living in the suburban Midwest, my life is stereotypically boring. I live in what one may argue is a copy-and-paste suburban house, go to my local public high school, play a sport, and am part of the school musical. My daily routine doesn’t really vary; besides the occasional plans with my friends and family vacations, my life is calmly repetitive. If you look at the definition of boredom itself, then my current situation can undoubtedly be deem

I learned early that goodbye is a language spoken quietly in parking lots, in driveways full of cardboard boxes, in hallways where lockers close for the last time. Being a military kid means you grow up measuring life in school years and duty stations, friends who stay for two years, sometimes one, sometimes just long enough to learn their favorite song before they disappear on a new map. But this year feels different. Senior year sits heavy in my hands, like a suitcase that