As we march on through another year of war, many service members have already completed more than one deployment. Astonishingly, a lot of these service members are mothers, and they are not only balancing their commitments to their families but to the nation as well.
My Mommy Wears Combat Boots is based the personal experience of a soldier and a mother who was seeking a way to explain why she needed to leave her child again and deploy.
Young children are very limited when it comes to communication skills, and often have a difficult time expressing guilt, frustration, anger, loneliness and sadness and often don’t realize that it’s normal to feel all of this and more as the result of their mom’s absence due to frequent deployments.
Books about mommies going to war are few and far between, and My Mommy Wears Combat Boots is for mothers in uniform everywhere that are seeking a way to explain to their children the emotions associated with deployment and a way to positively channel those emotions when they are away.
Sharon G. McBride is an U.S. Army veteran of 13 years, and has completed three deployments since 2003. As a photojournalist, the author documented events of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Hurricane Katrina.
As the single parent of a three-year-old toddler, she wrote My Mommy Wears Combat Boots based on her personal experience in addressing her child’s negative feelings associated with her deployments.
The author is out of the service now, but she hopes that My Mommy Wears Combat Boots will help other military children cope with their separation from their mothers as the result of this war; because there are a lot of mommies who wear combat boots.
My mommy is in the U.S. Army. She wears boots and a uniform to work. She said that makes me an Army baby. Because she is a soldier sometimes the Army takes her to far away places.