The Milspouse Battle Rhythm: Communicating Resilience Throughout the Deployment Cycle

Military spouses (milspouses) enact resilience through communication before, during, and after military deployments. Based on an organizing framework of resilience processes (Buzzanell, 2010), this study examined milspouses’ communicative construction of resilience during an increasingly rapid military deployment cycle. Narratives from in-depth interviews with military spouses (n?=?24) revealed how resilience is achieved through communication seeking to reconcile the often contradictory realities of milspouses who endure physical, psychological, and social difficulties due to prolonged separations from their partners.