Therapy to strengthen a bond and succeed

My name is Yolany and my husband was in the United States Marine Corps. He deployed five times. Out of five times I was part of his life four. When I went through it the first one, as any human being, especially wife, he's leaving and my whole world came to and. I had just found out I was pregnant with my daughter and so instead of me enjoying my nine months of pregnancy I was getting ready for him to leave. I didn't know what to do, what to expect, but when he did leave it was horrible.

The first 20-30 days it was like I was lonely. I was afraid. I didn't know what to do. My sisters, they were very supportive all of them. His family were calling every day, his mom, his sister but it wasn't the same. He literally came and ten minutes later were married and the day after my daughter's birthday was.

So, it was like one, two, three, four. After that, I told myself I've got to be strong. I got myself into this. I put on my big girl hat and I said, "I married him and I knew what I was getting myself into." So, instead of making it miserable for him because I knew he had a mission, I know his focus was in this mission, to stay alive, bring his troop back, follow his orders, and focus. So, I told myself I'm not going to be another discouragement, another distraction for him. Instead, I wrote him letters every day. I never mailed them, but I wrote them every day. When he came back I told him and he said, "oh, great, we're going to miss another six months." I said, "no we're not, we're not. I'm going to write a letter every day of what happened." And that to me, that kept us stronger.

When he got out of the service, back in September 27, 2011, he was lost. He felt lonely. He felt like he didn't have support. So, I of course as his wife, I said, "I can help you — talk to me." But, I didn't understand him. He says, "Yolany, you don’t understand what I'm going through. You're my wife. He understand a lot of things, but you don’t understand what I'm going through, how I feel, the pressure that I'm in knowing now that I have family and I have no job, no career, no experiences." And, that's when the problems started.

He had no patience. He was frustrated. We started having problems with money. We started having problems with health insurance. I thought of the worst of him not knowing that inside of him he was fighting his own battle.

So, what happened was, last year in February around Valentine's Day things did a 360 degree turn. We were able to get unemployment, both of us. We were able to get the help that he needed. Therapy has helped him so much. He's looked at so many options. He's done so much. He went to school. He gets his AA in a few weeks. We opened a business. He volunteers as a basketball coach. I volunteer as a ballet assistant. We do event planning. We do so many things for the community and we got involved.

Now, I'm not saying we're rich, but we're happy and we're not happy because we have money. We're not happy because we're in a great place in our life in our time with our kids. We're happy because we understand each other. You have to help yourself before you help others, and when you help yourself, you are helping others.