Michelle Bowler: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Waiting Warriors Podcast. As loved ones of first responders and military personnel, we often face life situations and challenges that many others don’t experience. And while each of us in our experiences are unique together, we can learn from one another and become stronger in this journey of life.

Now, let’s step outta mediocrity. It’s time to thrive.

Hi everybody. This is Michelle Bowler and welcome to the Waiting Warriors. I am super excited for today’s episode. We have Megan Deter House. If you do not know who she is, you really need to hop on your computer. Like right now as you’re listening to this and look up the homes I have made. So welcome Megan.

Thank you so much for having me. No problem. Let’s dive right into it. [00:01:00] Will you how about you start by telling us about your family.

Megan Duesterhaus: Okay, I am one part of a four person. Military family. My husband is a US Marine, and he and I have been married for what year is it? 2018. So we’re going on almost 14 years.

Is that right? And no 13 years, sorry. And we have a 6-year-old son named Henry and a 1-year-old son named Sam. And we are currently living in San Diego, California. Oh, that’s my hometown. We lived here before. This is our seventh stop in our military journey. So we have lived overseas in Okinawa, Japan.

We’ve lived here in San Diego twice. We’ve lived in Quantico, Virginia, camp Lejeune, North Carolina. And before coming here we lived in Leavenworth, [00:02:00] Kansas. That’s our little family in a nutshell.

Michelle Bowler: Awesome. So one thing I really love to talk about is what I think is super important for self-care.

And so I’m curious what you and your spouse do

Megan Duesterhaus: for self-care. So when he’s home or when he’s not home. Both. Both because you have a lot of experience with both. We do have lots of experience with both. When he’s home, we can be a little old fashioned, I think. We at certain times in our lives have taken belt room dance lessons, and we can often be found around our kitchen table playing games such as Rummy Cube or Scrabble or even quick little card games.

We’re big game players, so we will often kinda turn off the TV and the phones and. And just him and I and then now as our son’s getting, our older son is getting older bring him into [00:03:00] games too. But that is something that we have done for years, even through dating and now as a family, it’s just game nights.

I think we both grew up doing that, so that’s a big part of our family life. And we both have theatrical backgrounds. His is in theater and mine is in dance we are a song and dance family. You can find us literally dancing to soundtracks and movies after dinner and that kind of thing, just to kinda get some wiggles and sies out.

And we just like to move our bodies and raise our voices a lot around here. So when he’s home, I think that’s generally how we like to feed our souls. When he is gone, it’s certainly more difficult and there, we are learning and have learned that every separation, every deployment brings unique challenges.

So there’s some times where we’re more connected than others. As much as possible. There, there’s been times where we can communicate a lot. There’s times where we can’t communicate a whole lot. It’s not something that we excel at. [00:04:00] All the time. But I think just keeping aware of what each other needs, whether we need more communication or more, I guess like points of connection throughout the day.

Even if they’re not super meaningful conversations or super meaningful emails, just frequent contact whenever it’s possible.

Michelle Bowler: Yeah.

Megan Duesterhaus: I think we try to, when possible, if one of us needs the other and we’re able to get on the phone or able to get on chat to just to drop everything and be there.

There have certainly been some times on our most recent separation where he’s needed to talk or I’ve needed to talk and we’ve done our best to, to talk, even if it means we’re in the middle of running kids to school and carpool and that kind of thing of just making sure we’re emotionally available to each other whenever possible.

Yeah. My husband is really good at thoughtful gestures, so he’s really good at sending flowers on Valentine’s Day and Christmas and, even though they may be a little [00:05:00] expected now because he is just always been so good at that it’s still a bar high. I think I would be more shocked if he didn’t send something, which a lot of him, but I think even though they’re expected and I know they’re coming, they’re still just really nice.

They’re still just nice to know that when he’s on the other side of the world, he’s still thinking about me and thinking about us and our relationship and, i, unfortunately am not the greatest at mail, so I have tried really hard to to just embrace the mo the mechanisms that we have, such as sending videos and pictures just as much as I possibly can.

’cause getting care packages together is not my strong suit, and he knows that and accepts it. So I try to make up for it in other ways, whether it’s sending him little. Anecdotes, via text or email. And then trying to capture as much as I can via picture or a phone to send through to him.

Michelle Bowler: But I like that though because you, that’s just you playing to your strengths.

And I think it’s good for us [00:06:00] to remember that even though it’s super hard and there are so many things for us to do, that doesn’t mean we have to do everything. Because I could see myself getting really overwhelmed with making care packages too. ’cause right now I’m in a phase where I really hate going to the store with the kids by myself.

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s like as much as I would want to go and get all these cute, fun things for him. I seriously just dread taking my kids to the store right now, and I think that’s, it’s just a phase that I’m in right now. But I like what you say though, because there are different ways that we can still show.

We’re thinking about ’em and. Loving on him.

Megan Duesterhaus: Yeah, I think I admittedly would beat myself up quite a bit that I know other spouses were sending pretty extravagant things. And I will admit I’m horrible with timing packages for birthdays or Christmas. I think he got a Christmas package like mid-January.

Like I’m just not [00:07:00] great at it. And I think there’s a part of me that’s come on, he’s far away doing a really hard job. I need to get my act together. But I also think. There’s grace on this side as well. Yeah, and I am doing the absolute best I can and he knows, so I think just. Making it count when we can get one put together and putting in things that I have a hard time sending junk that I know is just gonna get tossed aside or left behind.

So I try to make the package, when I do send something, I try to make it as meaningful and special as I possibly can. But I think this is our third very long deployment and we’ve done lots of little. Many separations. I think we are at a stage right now that we know, I think we’ve accepted that we’re not gonna be our most connected right now, and that is a season of life.

We are comfortable enough in our marriage to know that when he returns, we will find ourselves reconnected with some work and that, [00:08:00] with, we will find ourselves back into a more connected. Place and that right now we’re just living two very separate lives and sometimes the effort in trying to remain present in each other’s lives fully while you’re apart can be exhausting and can sometimes not be over overly healthy.

If I’m trying to spend all of my time keeping him appraised of what’s going on here and he’s trying to spend all of his time appraised of what’s going on there, we’re not present in our lives. Yeah. I think we’ve found ourselves at a place in his career and in our military journey that this is just a season of life in our marriage and we’re not overly connected and we’re not overly in sync, but it will come to an end and we will come back together just as we have.

I. Every time. So I think we’re learning to show ourselves grace, that we don’t have to stress ourselves out remaining perfectly connected and perfectly in sync and perfectly on the same page. And that it’s okay to live our separate lives, not separate, but to go on and live our lives [00:09:00] as best we can while we’re apart, and then we can come back together.

Michelle Bowler: Yeah, I really love that. I don’t think I had. I thought of it exactly that way, but I think that’s a really important point just because I think that helps you accept the military life a lot more because you’ve accepted that there are ebbs and flows to it. There will be times where he’s around more and it will be awesome, and you’ll have.

That connection and the optimal amount of time. But but I think it’s, that’s a really amazing point. An important point to, to accept the ebbs and the flows of it.

Megan Duesterhaus: Yeah. I think when we were younger, I think there was this desire and this pressure and this expectation that our. Marriage will remain a constant, right?

Yeah. Whether he’s here or not. And that’s just not realistic. If someone is not in your [00:10:00] life on a day-to-day basis, your relationship is not going to stay the same. That is just a reality. And I think we found ourselves, stressing ourselves out, trying to maintain a certain level in our relationship when we were far apart and both going through a lot of stress.

And so I think. Deployments has seasoned us, and time has seasoned us that and I, we have a very strong marriage, so there’s no concern that we won’t be able to come back together even stronger. So I think we’re just a little more comfortable now saying, okay, like this is a season of our life where we’re apart and our marriage is just gonna simmer below the surface in some ways.

While, until we kinda, can come back up for air and keep swimming. Yeah. If that makes sense.

Michelle Bowler: Yeah.

Megan Duesterhaus: So

Michelle Bowler: that’s amazing. I love that. Okay, so what what do you guys do to stay connected as a family with all the dish?

Megan Duesterhaus: So I think one of the biggest things. We do for [00:11:00] him is to send lots of pictures of even just really mundane things.

We have a one year-old baby, so every day is something new. Yeah, so just not trying to take those for granted and make sure that I mention or send pictures kind of evidence of new milestones as much as I possibly can. And we try to just send him. Thoughts and texts. My 6-year-old loves to get on the phone and just text him a bunch of emojis and just to let him know that we’re thinking of him.

I think one of the biggest things we, there, there’s two big things that come to mind as far as us staying connected as a family. We do a Sunday FaceTime. Technology these days certainly allows us to communicate every day. Yeah. Like we, we can text and we can talk if we wanted to. We have found that day in, day out communication is not only.

Unnecessary, at least for our family. But it can be a little burdensome, right? To have to sit down at the end of the day or maybe in the middle of your day or an awkward part of your [00:12:00] day because of time changes and work schedules and that kind of thing. To then have to rehash everything that’s going on can be really exhausting.

Yeah. And so kind of part of our way of kind of each kind of just moving on and living our lives is that we have a once a week FaceTime session where we we put him up on the television and we all sit on the couch and we tell funny stories and he can see the kids being silly and misbehaving and he can be part of our family time on a Sunday afternoon.

It’s a time that works really well for his schedule. And it’s a time that works really well for our schedule. We can just coexist as a family via technology. Yeah. And that’s been working really well versus trying to, do a quick, hurried conversation every day. And we certainly text back and forth every day.

But we save meaningful conversations. And updates for kind of that once a week chat. And then the other thing we use a lot, and I don’t know how widespread available it is to all service members, but we’ve now used it on [00:13:00] two deployments is the United Through Reading Program, through the USO, where the service member can record reading books in front of a video.

Device of some sort. I’m not sure what they use a computer probably now, but and then the USO packages up the recordings of dad reading books and then they send the books with the recording to the kids and they are huge. Yeah. For my son, they were both, both our two long deployments. When a package of books comes, my son cannot wait to sit down and read books with dad.

So I think beyond just obviously the FaceTime, I, they don’t have I feel like as much I. Awe, inspiring this to them. I don’t know how else to say it, because we do see him weekly. Via FaceTime. But I think there’s just something about knowing that he took his time out of his schedule to sit down and read books and chat about what he’s doing.

Just, it means a lot to me [00:14:00] as a mom and a wife. It means a lot to my kids. We pull these videos out all the time, whether he’s home or not. Yeah.

I have told a lot of fellow spouses that if your deployed spouse is in a place where they have united through reading, to have them do it. ’cause it really it really is an amazing program for the kids and our family has really benefited greatly from it. Yeah.

Michelle Bowler: I know the last time that my husband had to be gone and I have three little girls and he, we didn’t have the USO but he just recorded himself reading some stories.

And even now that he is home, it’s just in the middle of the day even, just daddy’s at work, it’s, Hey, I want daddy to read me a story. And so we whip them out all the time.

Megan Duesterhaus: Yep. When my son was younger, that it alleviated the bedtime reading. Routine in some ways, ’cause when you’re on your own and you’re doing dinner and [00:15:00] bath and books and cleanup and nighttime stories and everything else, it’s nice to be able to put on a DVD of Daddy.

So nice reading a book while you can do the dishes. Yeah. Yeah, I think however you, you do it it’s really a valuable I think for the family. Super. Awesome.

Michelle Bowler: Okay. We have to talk more about the homes I have made. So for those of you who are listening who don’t know, Megan has an amazing blog and she’s on Instagram.

I haven’t even checked anything else. Are you on

Megan Duesterhaus: I’m on everything else. Yeah. But I’m probably, I will say, like I’m a busy mom, right? A busy blog, like life is just busy. My social media presence is probably somewhere where I struggle a little bit. I am on my blog two times a week, which I know is old fashioned, but that’s where I like to be.

And I do post, when I post a new post of the blog, I do post it on Facebook, on Pinterest, on Instagram, on Twitter. So I’m everywhere, but I am most present. Probably on my [00:16:00] blog and on Instagram are my two main. Awesome.

Michelle Bowler: So it’s simply just the homes I have made.com Really amazing stuff.

Yeah. Tell us what it give us like a better idea of what it is, how it got started and all that fun stuff.

Megan Duesterhaus: So it. Is exactly what it sounds like. The homes I have made started as a way to chronicle all of our different places that we’ve lived, not necessarily from a scrapbook, family Blog Chronicle, but literally from a, here are the ways I have created a home in each house or condo or apartment that we have lived in throughout.

Our military journey as a military family, it started at our third duty station right when my son was born. So we were in Quantico, Virginia, and I had gone from being a very busy. [00:17:00] Workaholic, full-time graduate student, working full-time busy to suddenly having a brand new baby, finishing grad school and moving and having nothing to do.

And I know saying that you have a new baby is nothing to do, but when you’re used to working full-time, a brand new baby is nothing to do in the beginning. So I felt really lost. And it was right around the time when Pinterest was exploding. And I just discovered this world of DIY blogs.

And for a long time my background is actually in health and fitness. And for a long time my husband encouraged me to start a health and fitness blog, but it just never really resonated with me. But I almost in an instant, I can literally remember the day that it happened. I had this crystal clear vision.

Of how I had a unique niche in the DIY home decor organization community by being a military [00:18:00] spouse and having literally to create a home every one to three years in places that maybe aren’t the most beautiful or most desirable, base housing or small apartments living overseas and that kind of thing.

So I felt like I really had a unique. Angle to contribute to the DIY world. And that unique angle is just because you are in a certain spot for just a few years, it doesn’t mean it can’t look and feel like a home to you. And so I have made it my mission to embrace every house that we’re in and put our own unique spin on it and make it.

Look good, but also function really well. Like I try very hard to lay out furniture and install systems that really make the house work for us. And all of this, of course, is within the context of completely undoable, right? Completely removable, complete, completely [00:19:00] renter friendly. So I really like to show that no matter how long you’re living somewhere, and I.

And even if you don’t own the house, there are still lots of things you can do to make it feel more like home. And so my blog chronicles not only our homes like I said, we’re now on home number seven, so you can go back and look at all the different homes that we’ve lived in and what I’ve done.

But it also serves to empower other people. That there are lots of things you can do within you, within the confines of your living situation to feel more comfortable in the space that you’re in.

Michelle Bowler: And the listeners can’t see me, but just the whole time that Megan is talking, I’m just like nodding my head and my eyes are getting bigger and I’m just getting so excited because we have we’ve been married five years.

Almost six years and we’ve moved five times. And so I know, like I, I know the stuck feeling that [00:20:00] we can feel when we’re moving all the time because you just feel like you can’t do stuff. And my eyes and heart and happiness was just all opened up when I found your blog because it. I thought that because I was a military spouse, I was going to have to kinda live with that and like that, as that was gonna have to be something that I dealt with of just not always being super happy with my home.

But I love that you have given us the tools to create a home because I can do work, but I’m not super creative. Good. Yeah. But I love that you just have straight ideas and details on how to do different things. So if you are out there listening and are like me and you’re just like, I just.

Need some ideas on how to brighten this up and or if you are all feeling [00:21:00] even if you just are finding yourself feeling a little bit resentful towards your home situation and happy at all. Yeah. Please go check out what Megan is doing because it seriously, it’s a huge game changer.

Megan Duesterhaus: I, I really think it is. I think it’s been really interesting for me. This is something I’ve always done and I think I, I learned to do it. Our very first studio station was Okinawa, Japan, and we literally got on a plane two weeks after we got married and moved over there, and I found myself and my husband deployed almost right away.

And I found myself alone in Okinawa, Japan, living off base in this. Very sterile apartment with not much to my name. And my mom literally said to me, if I send you a sewing machine, will you use it? And I said, yes, I will. And she sent me a sewing machine and I literally, I sew curtains, I slip covered, our government issued furniture.

I did everything I possibly can. And it changes how you see the outside of your house, right? Yeah. Like when you feel more comfortable and more at [00:22:00] peace. Where you are living, I feel like you’re better able to step outside and really embrace the outside of where you’re living. And I can’t tell you how many fellow spouses I have had into my house after house.

And it, and literally it doesn’t occur to them to decorate. It doesn’t occur to them that there are things they can do. I think a lot of people know they can paint, right? But there’s more that you can do besides paint. And it’s been really exciting for me to empower fellow spouses. To say, yes you, there are things you can do now, be prepared.

You’re gonna have to take it all down and you’re gonna have to do it over and over again. And that can sometimes get a little exhausting. I will admit this is the house that we’re in now. I don’t wanna say I’m losing my steam, but it can get exhausting. Yeah, to re-figure things out over and over again.

And to have furniture that doesn’t fit and curtains that aren’t long enough. And I think we all get it, but I think I have learned, and the thing I try to communicate to my friends [00:23:00] and via my blog is that it’s worth it. It is worth it to re him your curtains so that they fit your windows, because you’ll feel so much better at.

To be relaxed and feel at home, which will then allow you to go out into your community and feel more at home in your community. So yeah, I think the biggest thing I try to communicate is that you’ve got permission to do this. Yeah. Is I know, I think our instinct is it’s not worth it.

It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of time. It’s all gonna come down Anyway, yes, those all those things are true, but I also think the amount of peace and comfort. That creating a home provides is worth all of those things. Yeah. Is worth all of those inconveniences.

Michelle Bowler: One thing that my husband likes to say is as far as is it worth the money?

He’s would you rather pay for this? Or would you rather pay for therapy later on? That might be the options.

Megan Duesterhaus: [00:24:00] I have a post on my site and you probably have to search for it, but I think it’s called, I don’t even know what it’s called, but I go into this whole concept of when the life out there, right?

‘Cause I think if you’ve been doing this long enough, you’re gonna get stationed somewhere you don’t wanna be right. It’s just the reality and it’s happened to us a couple times and I have found that when the life outside my door is not what I want it to be, when the life inside my door is, it just makes dealing with it all so much easier.

Yeah. And I think the example I give is when we moved to Kansas, and I’ll say I love Kansas now, but I didn’t wanna move there when I first found out we were moving to Kansas. And, as awful as the life outside my door felt when I walked in the door and I saw my striped curtains and my pretty pillows.

It just made me feel at home and it allowed me to really embrace our life in Kansas. Yeah, it’s, I always say it’s worth it. It’s absolutely worth it. That’s what I’ll tell the husbands every time.

Michelle Bowler: Awesome. But really guys, you just [00:25:00] need to go check it out. She not only has ideas on how to make your house a home in a rent friendly way, but she has printables you can buy that are super cute.

She has different courses, like if you, if you are a little money tight and you can’t just go buy fun decor things, she has little courses that teach you how to sew, simple home decor things, which I think is really awesome. She even has, which I just found today, I can’t believe I haven’t found it before and I signed up for it.

There is a crash course to your kitchen. Conquer your kitchen crash course and it’s like a five day series on how to make your kitchen better, which I’m really excited for. So there’s a whole bunch of free content, there’s things you can buy. It is all around just a super helpful place. So you should definitely go check it out. To finish out though, I do always like to end with one question. What is your key to [00:26:00] thriving that you want to share with waiting warriors?

Megan Duesterhaus: Yeah, I don’t wanna sound redundant by saying, making a home. Yeah. But that would be my first answer. But I think part of why I started the blog in the first place is because I needed something.

And I think a common thread that I hear when chitchatting with all of my fellow military spouses at least is that we can often feel a little bit like second place in our family, that their careers come first and our careers if they even exist, certainly come second and. That has certainly been the case in our family.

My husband’s career drives the bus and I have had to put my original career on hold and my blog has become my second career. And there are times where the blog causes me a lot of stress and there’s times where I wish I didn’t have quote unquote the call of work that pulls me away, maybe from our family or, the kids, but at the same [00:27:00] time, I need something for me in a. In a lifestyle where so much is driven by his career and his choices, and frankly the choices of the Marine Corps that are made for us. I need something that is mine, all mine that I can own and work toward, and that can come with me. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a job.

It can be a hobby, it can be a passion. But I think it’s really important to be able to hold yourself up on your own two feet. When your rock is not there, having something that feeds your soul, feeds your creativity is really important. So I know a lot of us I don’t wanna use the word resort ’cause it’s not the right word, but I know a lot of us just fall into the mom role and stay there and say that we’re just mom or we’re just our husband spouses.

And that’s not true. I feel like we can have something that is just ours, that brings us life, brings us joy that we can cling to when being mom is really hard and when being the [00:28:00] spouse Yeah. Is really hard. So I. would say To, to thrive in this type of lifestyle, you’ve gotta have something that really lights your fire that you can cling onto when life is really hard.

Michelle Bowler: I love that. Thank you so much Megan. I have had just a blast and I hope this was super helpful for all the listeners I know. It has been really helpful for me. So thank you again and we’ll talk to you next time. Bye.

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Until next time, have an awesome [00:29:00] day