![]() Mental load is a significant contemporary issue experienced by many working mothers. These thoughts are based on my experiences during operational deployments where I consistently struggled to reconcile my strong desire to deploy with my inner guilt of being an absent mother. I do not posit that fathers or anyone without children are not faced with competing priorities this is a personal observation. Upfront, this is a reflection piece and will not resonate with all readers and certainly not all mothers. To this day, I still do not know how I managed to say goodbye to my first born baby. My first deployment to the Middle East was six months following the birth of my first child. I have deployed on three Middle East deployments and a few shorter regional deployments. I am a mother of three girls, wife to Adam (a member of the Royal Australian Air Force) and I am an Army Officer. I also felt I should share my thoughts with fellow cluttered minds. After about a month, I had established a new routine and felt a sense of calmness, I knew I needed to develop a way to unclutter my mind once I returned to Australia. Deployments have always provided me the opportunity to unclutter my mind and focus on me, as an Army officer and as individual. I had been here before, twice in fact, I knew it would be hard, but I knew it was what I wanted and needed to do. I turned around for one last glimpse of my beautiful family, my three girls held back tears. As I proceeded down towards security, I felt a big lump in my throat and immense pain in my heart. I eventually pulled myself away, gave my husband a last kiss and walked towards the escalators at Brisbane International Airport. I hugged them tight, so tight that my four year old complained she couldn’t breathe. ![]()
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