Nurturing Resilience as Military Teens

You’re sitting with new friends. Everything’s completely fine until a story comes up; a memory you don’t share with everyone else at the table, a subtle reminder that you weren’t a part of their lives up until recently. You bounce back after a few seconds, but that moment leaves a lingering feeling that you’re left out on years of memories that you alone don’t share with them, and that there are core memories between them that no amount of explaining will get you in on. These lingering thoughts may even lead you to feel as if you don’t belong in this group of friends who seem to have known each other since kindergarten. 

While this may not have specifically happened to you, this can be a common experience among military teens. Feeling a lack of connection is something I have personally experienced, especially while moving around during high school when everyone else already had tight-knit friend groups they’ve stuck with for years beforehand.

All that to say, I understand that being a military teen can be difficult. But learning how to overcome these disheartening situations is crucial to becoming stronger individuals. How else are we supposed to grow resilient as military teens? The title of “being a military kid” does not automatically make us resilient. Rather, enduring and overcoming moments like these truly is what makes us resilient. 

This is often an overlooked part of becoming resilient as a military child. While persevering through deployments is certainly a real struggle many of us go through, the aspect of navigating unfamiliar and sometimes awkward social situations as teens is often overlooked. These social challenges we may encounter are one specific part of our lives that allow us military teens the chance to truly embody resilience. 

By overcoming these seemingly small but nonetheless impactful experiences, we are able to greatly add to our strength and resilience as military kids. And this can simply mean learning to not let discouraging moments of temporary disconnect with our new friends and peers get to us so easily, but rather to be grateful for the memories we made while we were elsewhere, and to continue living our lives to the fullest no matter where we are.

Even through unfavorable circumstances we face as military teens, we can adopt and nurture traits that will build us up and make us more resilient individuals. And these traits of resiliency, adaptability, and determination will stick with us for the rest of our lives. Nurturing our resilience through these difficult instances is what makes us truly resilient people.