Kristin Henderson
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2006 Season

Kristin Henderson has written frequently about military issues, including two cover stories for the Washington Post Magazine, where While They're at War had its origins.

A journalist, an author, and a military spouse, Kristin participates in the Marine Corps' family readiness program, the Key Volunteer Network. She is the Key Volunteer for the company in which her husband serves, passing information between the company's commanders and spouses, and acting as a resource for spouses in need of help or service.

Kristin is a practicing Quaker and occasional amateur racer of Corvettes. She lives in Washington, D.C., and Beaufort, South Carolina.

Bibliography

Driving by Moonlight : A Journey Through Love, War, and Infertility (2003)
While They're at War : The True Story of American Families on the Homefront (2006)

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Welcome to the Sisterhood

Does it get easier?" asked Beth Pratt.

She had a voice that was flat as the Midwestern Plains state she came from. She had a long, fragile neck and a willowy dancer's body that drooped with sadness. She had a husband in a war zone. She was asking me because, twice already, I too had waited for my husband to come home from a war - first Afghanistan, then Iraq.

I was visiting Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of the Army's Fort Bragg, when a friend said he knew a woman who needed to talk to me. He introduced me to Beth.

"This is our first deployment," she said.

Her eyes were wide and blue green and shadowed by her straight, dark hair. She gave me a level look before withdrawing her gaze and adding, "They say it's supposed to get easier but it's been four months and so far it's just been hard. When does it get easier?"

"Oh," I said, and the oh dragged itself into a sigh while I decided whether or not to lie. I wanted to fix it for her; I wanted to make it all right. But I knew the only thing that would make everything right would be for her husband to walk through the door right now, safe and whole in body and mind, the same man he was when he left. So in the end, I couldn't. I couldn't lie to her. When does it get easier?

"It doesn't," I said. "Wartime deployments are always hard."

"Don't tell me that," she said.

But they are, they're just so hard. Eventually you figure out ways to cope - or not. But they never get easy. A wartime deployment is always a mountain, no matter how you climb it. All I could do was tell her some of the climbing techniques I'd relied on to help manage the fear and the loneliness, and listen to her anger and bewilderment as she climbed it now herself. When Beth left, she hugged me. And I thought, Welcome to the sisterhood.

Over the course of her husband's deployment, while she was worrying about his survival, Beth Pratt's own survival was hanging in the balance.

Though I didn't realize it at the time - no one did - Beth had begun to think about killing herself. This is her story.

Continued...