The holiday season brings magic, tradition, and excitement for families around the globe year after year. However, for military spouses, this season can often be met by a constant reminder of what is missing from their homes and holiday tables when a service member is deployed.

As a proud active duty military spouse for the last fifteen years, I have personally endured multiple holiday seasons with my husband, Ben, deployed. He actually deployed as a naval aviator aboard the USS Carl Vinson, the Monday after Thanksgiving in both 2010 and 2011. Due to this hectic work and deployment schedule, we were forced to think outside the box and come up with our own new and creative traditions.

Here are just a few of our takeaways that helped us both sustain the separation while keeping our spirits up, as well as a few we’ve learned from friends in similar situations along the way.

Holidays Can Be Celebrated on Any Day

As I briefly mentioned above, my husband Ben deployed the Monday after Thanksgiving two years in a row. In an effort to keep the holiday, and in our case, Christmas spirit, alive, we celebrated what we called “Christmas in November” the weekend before he left.

We went all out: drove to a local farm and cut down our tree, brought it home, and decorated it while blasting Christmas music and baking Christmas cookies. We even exchanged gifts all before he left that following Monday. Doing this was a lift for both of us emotionally, and it acted as a nice distraction from the looming separation date ahead.

We clung tight to the notion that a holiday is simply just a date on a calendar, and that any holiday could be properly celebrated early, late, or whenever worked for our crazy schedule.

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Turn to Friends and Family When You Are Lonely

For the deployments in 2010 and 2011, we were stationed in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Fortunately, my hometown of Annapolis, Maryland, was just a four-hour drive away. For Christmas those years, I packed myself and our Labrador retriever up a few days before Christmas, and we headed north to ensure I could surround myself with family and friends for the actual holiday.

Keeping myself surrounded by familiar faces and traditions from the past helped keep my spirits up, despite the fact that I was missing my husband tremendously.

While in Maryland, I did my best to keep the calendar packed with fun commitments without overextending myself. Coffee dates to catch up with childhood friends, happy hours with colleagues, and going to see holiday plays with my family were just a few of the activities I looked forward to.

On holidays where I couldn’t make the trek back home, I wasn’t afraid to ask friends in our squadron who were in the same boat if I could join them and their families for their holiday festivities. I spent Easter Sundays, Valentine's Days, and other holidays with fellow military spouses and their children, which was mutually beneficial to all of us.

Get Creative With Ways to Connect on Missed Milestones

In the weeks leading up to my husband’s multiple deployments, I would go to the store and buy cards for various holidays, birthdays, milestones, and anniversaries. I handed these cards to him to bring in his suitcase before heading underway, with dates on the envelopes for when he was to open each card.

This way, he had a card to open on Christmas, his birthday, Valentine's Day, and more while overseas. He did the same for me. Small gestures like this didn’t take much time or effort from me, but really did go a long way in the end to help us stay connected.

Another way that I celebrated his birthday was by creating a SpeakSake account, which is a unique phone number that friends and family can call into to leave voice messages. Once all of the messages are received, SpeakSake burns a CD of all of the messages and mails it to the recipient on the date of your choosing.

For my husband’s birthday on January 5th in 2011, I had friends and family from all over the world call in and leave him messages wishing him a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Birthday. He received this CD in advance of the holidays, and it was such a lift to his spirits when he was feeling down about being away.

Give Yourself Permission to Feel Everything

Despite all the best efforts to keep holiday traditions alive, there were some days and even weeks when I just wasn’t feeling in the spirit. There is no “right” way to navigate the holidays while simultaneously enduring something like a deployment or extended separation.

Some days, I felt strong and centered, and others, I was simply trying to just get through each day. I learned over time to give myself grace and not be afraid to politely decline things like large gatherings, holiday cocktail parties, and more that might feel overwhelming. Getting dressed up for a holiday party just isn’t the same without your spouse in tow.

Military spouses are incredibly resilient, but that doesn’t mean we have to be unbreakable. Allow yourself to feel all the feelings that may come with a holiday season without your significant other, and don’t be afraid to say no to things that make the sting of the separation more intense than it needs to be.

Deployments always have an end date, with the homecomings always bringing the sweetest of memories and reunions.

The truth is, the holidays aren’t defined by where we are or what’s under the tree—they’re defined by who we hold in our hearts. Even from thousands of miles away, that connection remains unshakable.

So this year, whether your holiday looks quiet, chaotic, or somewhere in between, remember: you’re not alone in missing someone special. You’re part of a community of spouses who understand exactly what it means to love someone in uniform and to carry that love through every season, near or far.

Suggested reads:

• Saving Like a Pro: Money Saving Strategies That Milspouses Swear By
• Surviving Solo Parenting During Deployment: How Military Spouses Can Thrive Through Separation
• The "Invisible Deployment": Emotional Lift of Homefront Leadership