What is motherhood like in the military? For me, lonely. I feel my husband John’s absence as acutely in our daily routines as in special events—at dinnertime, on the first day of school, and at our children’s birthday parties, when I am their only parent.

One military spouse, as we are known, had to leave her son with a military neighbor she barely knew so that she could drive herself to the hospital to give birth, because her husband had just left for a training exercise. “We all need to feel like we belong and are connected to others, and I struggle with loneliness and detachment in this lifestyle,” says Meghan Moretti, a mother of three, whose husband has served for