How to Write a Personal Manifesto That Holds Steady When Life Won't

The flat tire, the fever at midnight, that bill that you forgot to pay and now they want to add on the late fee. So none of this is the deployment or the separation period that you're in. All of it happens inside of that separation period. It feels like all of this happens at once in a week where we already have nothing left to give. And here's what people don't really say. Separation doesn't send one wave or one problem. It sends all of them at once. And nothing's wrong with you for feeling like that.

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From Others Over Self, it's Hardcore and At Ease, a show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelly Rood. Some fights you just can't win because it's not even a fight at all. It's a wilderness to be navigated. Today I'm going to teach you what to do instead of trying to conquer it. We're writing a personal manifesto, something that holds steady when the season itself will not. You'll hear 3 real lines from my own manifesto, the story behind each one, and how to get started writing your own. This is Hardcore and At Ease. Thank you for spending this time with me today. It's so good to have you over here. I'm in Southeast Michigan, and this past Saturday morning I stood in front of a room of mostly military spouses. Most of them had a husband that were deployed. A few of them were still adjusting to him having come back on time while the others were extended. Now, before I even said anything to address the crowd, I wanted to know what was on their minds. So I asked one single question: What is the biggest fear or change that you're feeling right now? The answers came slow at first. There was a lot of trepidation. Nobody likes to raise their hand in a classroom. What started with one brave woman raising her hand, Soon others were joining in as they were hearing what everyone else in the room was carrying. Each woman had different words, but they were all holding this same heavy weight. These are confident women being brave in a season of uncertainty, and they're holding strong not only for themselves, but for everyone who needs them to. Now, I know that fear from the inside. As I've mentioned before on this podcast, my own military marriage did not make it. And we were almost at the 10-year mark. Now since then I have remarried, and this time to a first responder, and I carry a similar weight now that's different in its details but not in what it asks of me. Being married to a first responder is still being married to a person who chooses a life of service to others. Now on Saturday I wasn't standing in front of those women because I got this right the first time. I was standing there because I know what loving someone in service demands because I'm a veteran myself. And it was important to me to show up and speak to those women because I feel that the women who came before me, well, they deserve the truth to know what I've learned about our time. You may not be dealing with a deployed spouse or a period of separation, but you might be in a season of waiting or a season where you feel like no matter how hard you fight, you're just not gonna win. So, so today I'm bringing you a tool that we can all put in place in our own lives that will help us navigate this wilderness better and stay true to ourselves. Before we get into today's episode, I wanna take a minute to honor one of my listeners. I want you to think about me over here in Southeast Michigan. I've got Lake St. Clair in the background and it is a sweltering 86 degrees outside, but, um, My friend that I'm thinking about today, she lives in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That's right, Kansas. And this is for you, Danielle Springall. She mailed me a box of these custom candles. If you're one of my YouTube watchers, you'll see this beautiful custom candle that she sent to us. There's wildflowers on the label, and these candles were made to celebrate the Women Veterans Engage conference that I was the keynote of earlier this year., and this particular candle celebrates the Wildflower Assessment for women veterans. So Danielle, she is a daisy. I love that about her. And the gift that she sent me is a beautiful reflection of the heart of a daisy. And moments like this, opening that mailbox, pulling out that package, there's a handwritten card on the inside of it, seeing her handwriting. Well, these are moments of proof that we're not walking this terrain alone. So thank you, Danielle. Now let's get into today's episode. Travel along with me back to this past Saturday morning. I'm not sure where you were, but I was on an Air Force base and in a family center and in front of a crowd of people from various backgrounds. Not only did we have service members in the room, we also had veterans, veteran spouses, we had military spouses, who is the bulk of our conversation today,, and we also had extended loved ones. So these are parents that were there and aunts and uncles and others that work on the base that are just simply there to support the community. Now, before I took stage on Saturday, the room heard from the man that the military assigns to give the official reintegration brief. He did a wonderful job. Now, this brief is approved at the highest levels of government, so you can just assume what type and style of brief this is. And he really put me in a moment of flashback because I sat through a very similar version of that same brief about 15 years ago. Back then, I wasn't in a beautiful Family Service Center. I was in some type of makeshift airplane hangar, and, um, there was a few hundred of us crammed in, and we were just waiting as the hours went by. We didn't know when the men were going to show up. I remember being pulled over into a corner so that I could watch this PowerPoint screen that was being projected onto the wall. And that was the last thing that I wanted to do, sit in a briefing and try to watch some screen. I was waiting to see my spouse's face. I had this 1-year-old kid that was toddling around and headed for the electric cord. I was not in the best environment to receive this vital information. And at that time, I remember thinking to myself, this is really good content. This is really important stuff. Why am I just now receiving it? You see, at that time, as much as I wanted to see my spouse's face once again, I wanted him to be home, but I also knew that I wasn't ready for him to be home because his mid-tour visit brought just as many red flags as it did smiles. Now, watching that briefing on Saturday and having those memories arise once again, well, I remembered exactly what it felt like to be that spouse on the receiving end of the brief. The official presenter did a very good job. He told them to expect irritability, sleepless nights, uh, desire and an expressed need for more personal space. He also told the families to give their loved ones grace to give them about 90 days to move through the transition period. He also listed off the red alert behaviors to watch for, such as thoughts of suicide. Everything that he briefed was true. All of it is very useful. Now, I was asked to speak as a complement to the other presenters, and so I found myself holding many things true at the same time. The content that the room heard, it wasn't wrong, and yet there was a lot that just simply wasn't being said. And so when it was my time to address the room, here's where I started. To my military loved ones, you are not in a time that has a finish line. You're not in a fight that you're going to win. You are in wilderness. Wilderness is not a road with an end that you can see when you keep driving. Wilderness is terrain that we live in. Sometimes we live in it long after he's even home, because the reintegration period is its own stretch of the same ground of wilderness. Now our instinct is to fight it, to conquer it. We want to be victors, and we want to get through it fast. And I lived on that instinct for years. If he just comes home, everything will go back to normal. Wilderness does not work that way. You see, you don't defeat terrain, you navigate it. And so instead of handing that room a checklist, I handed them a way to build a map. And that map is what I want to hand you right now. A personal manifesto is not a plan for getting through a deployment faster. A personal manifesto is not a checklist that will help you accomplish something. A personal manifesto is a short list of things that you know to be true. They even hold true on the days where nothing around you agrees that those things are true. In my company, we're working on a full workshop of how to build a manifesto, and I had my first try on Saturday to see how the audience received it. I shared with the room 3 lines from my own manifesto, and then I told them the story behind each one. So here they are for you to hear also, in order. Line 1: It is hard to do hard things. Think of how these spouses feel getting the kids dressed, getting them fed, getting them out the door, doing it alone every morning, every morning, day after day after day. Where are her shoes? I face this own fight on my own front door almost every day., and it's such a breath of fresh air when there's someone else that can ease that burden just a little bit. You see, caretaking for someone else, like taking care of a child, that makes separation even harder. When we struggle with caretaking, it doesn't mean that we're falling behind. It means that we're doing something hard, and hard doesn't need a full explanation. Things feeling hard, Well, that's not proof that you're failing. So the manifesto line that we're talking about, once again, it is hard to do hard things. The story that I shared with this particular group has to do with root pulls. So if you can imagine yourself as a flower or a plant, and your job is to get stuck in the ground and to reach your bloom up out of the ground and feel that sunshine on your bloom. We knew that the separation wilderness was going to be hard, but oftentimes there's a thought that comes into our mind. Why is it this hard? And that's the question that this manifesto statement digs deeper into. We knew it was gonna be hard, but why is it this hard? And so I simply asked the room that question, and one of the respondents mentioned that this is not their first deployment as a married couple. But it is their first deployment with a child. So that is a root pull, something on top of the wilderness that's making it that much more difficult for her to get into the sunshine. If you add onto that, and I can share this because this young lady is a good friend of mine, their daughter is a foster child and they're working on adopting her. So when you add in not just the caretaking of a child, But the adoption of a foster child into the home, that has its own set of challenges. So we went from the separation wilderness challenge to having to deal with the caretaking root pull as part of that. And now we're dealing with the fostering root pull on top of that. Sometimes when we're living in these moments, it's hard for us to realize why it feels so hard. And a third-party person just asking healthy questions can help us flesh out those layers that we're dealing with. I wanted to give my friend advice in that moment. I simply wanted to help her feel more at ease with what she was dealing with. You can't problem solve in a moment like that, and simply repeating line 1 from my manifesto, that does the job. I can look right at her and say, "It is hard to do hard things." Oftentimes the person across from you could use a little bit of encouragement as well. So sometimes I like to follow up that line by saying, "And you're doing a great job." Are you a woman who has kept everyone else standing while your own foundation cracked?

Perhaps in your life as a veteran, you know what it's like to be the one in the room who carries the weight that nobody else sees. You're built for that. And you deserve a community where you embrace who you are when you're not performing for others. Mission Wildflower is a newsletter built by and for women with military experience. Twice a week, bring a little joy and understanding into your life. Take part in real conversations about the situations you're navigating, the choices that don't have good answers, the permission to build a life that's truly yours and not just what the terrain around you demands. We publish twice a week. Go to shellyrood.substack.com and subscribe. Mission Wildflower is powered by others over self.

You're listening to Hardcore and at Ease with certified business and life coach Shelly Rood. Now back to the show. Now the second line that I shared of my own manifesto is: This is not a season to conquer, it is an adventure to embrace. For anyone who is experiencing a period of separation, it is important for us to realize that the woman who we were before he left, she is not coming back. You see, seasons don't run in reverse. The same way that you can't turn back your age to last year's birthday, no matter how much you want to. Well, that holds for you as you move through your life, and it also holds for the people around you. As much as we want our person back, the version of our person that returns will never be that same person because During the separation period, we have changed and they have changed. So the first move is to recognize that change has already happened instead of fighting it. The change in ourselves has happened. The second move is to either grieve or celebrate that change. Not all change is good and not all change is bad. Sometimes you do both in the same week. And the third move that we want to make when we're in separation wilderness is to embrace the woman that the wilderness is creating. The woman that the terrain is making you into. She's not a downgrade. She's new, and she's yours to become. When you can let that happen, you can find a deeper sense of peace in your own life. Let that happen, not just for yourself, let it happen to your loved ones that are around you as well. So that second line in my manifesto: "This is not a season to conquer. It's an adventure to embrace." On a more casual note here, I use that same line with my kids when I pick them up from school. Let's say I have to run groceries. I tell them, "Hey kids, we're going on an adventure!" And I use that word intentionally because I know that if I say we're going to the grocery store, what are they going to do? "No, Mom, I don't want to go!". But when I tell them we're going on an adventure, then it opens their minds to all sorts of possibilities, and it also becomes my responsibility to fulfill that promise that I made them. So now my mood is lifted because it's no longer just a boring trip to the grocery store. It's an adventure where we're trying to find the magic red ruby in the middle of the produce section. Simply reframing what we have ahead of us can go a long way with helping to embrace our situations. Once again, line 2: This is not a season to conquer, it's an adventure to embrace. Now the third line of my manifesto that I shared is: Healthy female friendship is the treasure of wilderness. Healthy female friendship is the treasure of wilderness. Think about the woman down the street who remembered that it was your birthday. That means a lot, especially when you're dealing with the separation wilderness. She's not just nice to have around you. She is part of the reason that you're able to still stand and make it through your week. You see, when the marriage ends like it may, and maybe you'll become a widow, when your kids are grown or when they're just out of the house, or maybe you don't even have kids, that woman, that healthy female friendship, she's still gonna be there. I added this line to my own manifesto: Healthy female friendship is the treasure of wilderness. I added that line after reflecting on a very difficult point in my own life when I was going through a divorce. The reason for the divorce was my husband's alcoholism. He was drinking on the regular. Things had gotten very bad. He was not admitting to the problem that he had. Boundaries were being crossed, like drinking and driving, emotional, verbal, some physical abuse. And while I felt like I was strong enough to handle most of it— I've told this story on the show before— it got to a point where I started to see it being pushed onto my child, and I couldn't let my child deal with alcoholism of another that wasn't being controlled. The part of that situation I really want to bring home here is being in my lawyer's office and filing those divorce papers. She was interviewing me on the grounds for divorce, and when I mentioned alcohol, she shared with me that she's a former alcoholic, and that brought me a lot of hope and also helped me to be seen because she understood the intricacies involved. With substance use and abuse. Now, in that meeting, she asked me if I had any friends that would take the stand and would testify about the extent that the drinking had gone to. And she prefaced that conversation saying that it is very difficult to divorce on grounds of substance use. You have to prove things like inability to keep a job, abuse of the other, for instance, being arrested for driving under the influence. And while all of those issues did exist in my marriage, I couldn't point to any proof of it. Did he drink and drive? Absolutely. Did I ever call the cops? No, I didn't. Did he ever get pulled over and have a DUI? No, he didn't, despite hundreds of known instances of that happening. So without any official paperwork to be able to present to a court, it came down to character testimony. And I immediately thought, absolutely, I have so many women that have been around me over the years and have witnessed what this relationship has looked like. Now, I assumed that this was just part of the divorce process. This is what we have to do in order to file the paperwork and move on. Well, I sat down with 3 different women and spoke to them about the situation and what I needed in order to file the paperwork, and that my lawyer had requested character testimony from witnesses who had experienced my husband's drinking in excess. The first woman said that while she knew that it was an issue, she was uncomfortable testifying, and so she declined to "Walk alongside me in the divorce proceedings." I felt heartbroken, but I understood. It's a very uncomfortable situation. The second woman I sat down with told me the same thing, and I was very surprised. I thought we had had a deeper relationship. And then when the third woman said the exact same thing, it was really a moment of understanding. I share this with you because it wasn't a matter of whether or not they had witnessed things that would have helped me. It was a matter of whether or not they were willing to do a hard thing for a friend, and they weren't. I struck out 3 times. Now, as you know, I did go through with that divorce, and we did it on common grounds instead of alcohol, but it was there that I learned what the importance of healthy female friendship really means. Now, that was well over a decade ago, and I'm glad to say that I have intentionally crafted my female friendships at a much deeper level. So I now know and have high confidence that if I were to ask a certain group of people once again those same questions, I know in my heart that they would be there for me. And that is why this line has earned its place on my manifesto, that healthy female friendship is the treasure of wilderness. You see, those were the 3 lines from my own manifesto that I shared, and then I opened the floor and I asked the room to share a line that they might include on their own. The Commanding General, she spoke up first, and I love that she did. Hers was just one word, Grace. She said that in hard seasons, she leans into grace first for herself and also for everyone else that's involved. There is one more line of my manifesto that I'll share with you. I'm sure you've heard me say it more than once: You cannot have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person. That one has helped me to walk out of many conflicts with my dignity still intact. So there's 4 lines that I just gave you from my own manifesto: It's hard to do hard things. This is not a season to conquer, it's an adventure to embrace. Healthy female friendship is the treasure of wilderness. And you can't have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person. Maybe I'll publish them formally, and as I compile everything, do a formal manifesto to the public. I'm not sure yet.. But for right now, I want to share with you that they have helped guide me in wonderfully positive ways over the past 10 years. Now, your lines in your manifesto will look different because your wilderness looks different than mine. The important thing is that we go ahead and get started in understanding what we believe. So write down one thing that you know is true, no matter what type of shade life is throwing at you. And then keep going one line at a time, and soon enough you will have a manifesto to be able to stand on that belongs truly to you. This is what Tactical Center work produces when we do it on paper. You see, Tactical Center is that bullseye, it's the thing at the heart of being hardcore and at ease that we want to embrace. Every time you sit down to write a line for your manifesto, that's you choosing to come back to your center on purpose before the difficult terrain asks you to, so you'll be better prepared for that moment. This is how you build one. Now I wanna tell you why it matters, because a manifesto only works if you understand what it's protecting. When I was addressing that particular group of military spouses on Saturday, I mentioned to them that when the separation period ends, we get handed a false sense of control. We can feel it, we can dream it, we can believe that everything that was missing is about to fall back into place. He's back! Everything's going to be right in the world again! And when that doesn't happen, when it doesn't happen the way that we pictured it, disappointment starts to move in. It starts small, like a want for how things used to be, and that want, it compounds. Without noticing, your daily posture can take on a very quiet shadow of emptiness. Your sense of self-worth can start to wobble because you handed that job of cultivating your self-worth to something outside of your control. And most of life is outside of your control. It just is. You cannot control illness, you cannot control when things break down, You cannot control what another person does with their time, their attention, or on their phone. A manifesto protects your innermost self inside of all this chaos, and it works even better when we pair it with one more tool: the Circle of Control. So the Circle of Control works by sorting your worries into two different piles. What you can act on and what you cannot. I'm in the process of building a fancy graphic, something that really speaks to my audience, but here's the idea behind the circle of control. Inside of your circle, you have things that you can control. You can control your actions. You can control how you respond to what happens to you. You can control your mindset and your attitude, your daily choices. Outside of your circle, there's things like what other people do, what other people say. You can't control outcomes. You can't control how something landed regardless of the intent that it had. I'm teaching the circle of control here because when you are choosing words for your own manifesto, I want you to reach for the ones that live inside of your circle. That's where your power lives. I'm building out this full breakdown of the tool on Mission Wildflower, so when you're ready to sit with this for longer than just this podcast episode that you threw on while you're driving, then head over to missionwildflower.com and you'll be able to read through this a little bit better. As you're building your own manifesto, make sure that we're focusing on things that are within your Circle of Control. A manifesto gives you something to believe in that belongs to you and only you. It trains your brain so that when life throws something at you, we have healthy thoughts that are firing first, instinctively. For example, if one of your lines in your manifesto says, "I am a whole person and not just a body." I am a whole person and not just a body. Well, that line can be the thing that keeps you from blaming yourself for somebody else's unfaithful choices. It can be the thing that guides you away from keeping a conversation with somebody who's not your spouse. Our manifesto can help us with other people's behaviors, and it can also help us with our own boundaries. It can help us so that we are avoiding decisions that are irreversible. Your manifesto becomes a private mirror for the moments when you're tempted to lead even yourself astray. As we wrap up our episode today, I want to share that this Saturday, that event was really hard for me. My military marriage didn't survive. For years after my divorce, my belief in marriage was destroyed. Without a manifesto, I stopped believing in things like trust. I stopped believing in personal sacrifice. I stopped believing in other people's ability to lead me. And looking back now, I can understand that season differently. I can understand my choices differently. I was taking my beliefs apart. I was in this deconstruction period so that I could rebuild them on something solid. My prayer for you is the same one that I carried into that room on Saturday, that you build this foundation for yourself so that one day you can stand on it and you can look towards the sun with the rest of us. A personal manifesto is a really good place to start for having a strong foundation. Now, before I let you go, I want you to continue this Exercise: Write down one line this week. Go through your Pinterest boards or your Instagram accounts of all those inspirational phrases that you've been saving. Make them mean something more. Choose one thing that you know is true regardless of what the day could possibly throw at you. So that's your assignment. Find one statement that you can add to your manifesto. The full written version of this workshop is gonna go out on missionwildflower.com this Wednesday. It includes the 4 manifesto lines that we talked about today, as well as the circle of control breakdown. Missionwildflower.com is free to follow. I would love to have you jump over there and subscribe. That's all for this week. I am Shelly Rood. This is Hardcore and at Ease. And I'll see you with a guest next Tuesday. Until then, stay hardcore, be at ease, and trust the process. You're listening to Hardcore and At Ease. Keep the conversation going at join.othersoverself.com. Curious to know which flower you are? Take the Wildflower Personality Assessment for Women Veterans right now. On any device, do a simple web search for Wildflower Personality Assessment for Women Veterans. Start loving yourself more today. Search for Wildflower Personality Assessment for Women Veterans.