Season 1, Episode 8

Remaining Flexible as your Family's Transition Plans Change
with Selena Conmackie
Join us your way! 

You can tune in to the With Pride & Grit podcast on your preferred podcast platform or watch the videocast on Youtube.

Meet our Guest: 
Selena Conmackie is a WordPress website designer and also helps small and medium-sized businesses with digital strategy — including social media management, email marketing and paid ads.
 
Selena’s also co-host of 15{ish} Minute Coffee Chat on YouTube, Chapter Ambassador for the Association of Military Spouse Entrepreneurs (AMSE), and a regular blog contributor for Spouselink.org.
 
Additionally, Hauoli-Socially Inspired LLC is proudly celebrating its achievement in becoming an officially recognized Military Spouse Owned Enterprise.
 
When Selena isn’t hosting a workshop, learning the newest Instagram trend, or adding a plug-in to her client’s websites, you can find her spending time with her “ohana” (family), drinking coffee out of one her many Starbucks’ mugs, binging Real Housewives, or having therapy sessions with her rescue dog, Coco.
 
Show Notes:
In this episode, Selena Conmackie joins Jen in a discussion about the challenges that families face during transition. She sheds light on the advantages of relinquishing certain decisions amidst the process. Selena underscores the importance of acknowledging that both hardships and smooth moments are inherent to any transition. Selena also shares her own experience of thinking she was done with the military lifestyle, but circumstances changed and she had to reassess what being “done” looks like. She wants people to remember that circumstances can change, and they may decide to pursue a different milestone before exiting service.
 
 
Selena also believes that the most valuable source of guidance can be found in veteran spouses themselves, as they possess unique experiences and perspectives. Reflecting on her personal journey, she discusses how her sense of self transformed over the years as her husband embarked on his military career, and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their lives. Their decision to remain in their current location, instead of relocating, was the culmination of extensive discussions and careful deliberation. Each family’s experience with military transition is unique and nuanced, underscoring the need to make space for both difficulty and ease during the process.
 

If you can't find community locally, find it virtually in communities, join anywhere that has the same like minded type of person that you are.

Selena’s Top Transition Tip:

“What helped me and my spouse the very most was tapping into other veteran spouses because they know exactly what you should look out for. And every veteran spouse’s story is different. You’re going to get a perspective that may fit in from this one and a little bit from veteran B.”

Resources & Mentions from this Episode:

It's that uncertainty of knowing where we stand within the military community when we are identifying ourselves... like a sense of, oh, okay, I don't know where I fit in. Do I fit in here?

Pride & Grit is a Trademark of Hinshaw Consulting Group, Inc 2018© and Pride & Grit Consulting, LLC. 2022© All rights reserved.

Pride & Grit is a Trademark of Hinshaw Consulting Group, Inc 2018© and Pride & Grit Consulting, LLC. 2022© All rights reserved.