365 Deployment Days: A Wife's Survival Story follows a military wife's experiences during her husband's deployment to Iraq exploring the wide-ranging emotions brought about by a loved one's deployment. Through self-exploration Sara Dawalt learns the skills necessary to make sense of her life during turmoil. Her quest for happiness during potentially her darkest year will touch your life.
Hello readers!
Thanks for taking the time to get to know me. I grew up in a middle class family in St. Joseph, Michigan. I am a graduate of Meredith College, a small women's college in Raleigh, North Carolina. After college I married Brandon Dawalt, an Army 2LT, who graduated from The Military College of the South, The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina, and we began our life with the military at Fort Gordon, Georgia. On September 11, 2001, my world was blasted apart by the knowledge that we were now at war and one day, my husband of four months, would have to leave me and go to war. My husband's military career brought us to Fort Hood, Texas at the end of 2001. I had to wait three long years for my fears to finally be realized. Brandon deployed with the First Calvary Division in March of 2004, returning home in March of 2005. During his deployment, I grew as a person and really came into my own, when I could have shriveled up into a shell of a person. I am a pre-Kindergarten teacher with the Killeen Independent School District, a great friend, and a soccer player among other things. I have also survived my husband's second tour in Iraq, only this time not for a mere 365 days, but an incredibly long, 455 days.
When I initially thought about writing about my experiences, I thought I would turn them into a novel, something loosely based on what I had gone through. I decided against writing a novel when the more I thought about it, the more disconnected and unrealistic it felt. In the words of my high school creative writing teacher, Mr. Holt, I decided to "write about what you know." Honesty really is the best policy and thus 365 Deployment Days: A Wife's Survival Story was born. Having tried to calm the fears of parents of my students with snippets of what I did to survive my husband's deployment, I sat straight up in bed and wrote all forty chapter titles down and just started writing. Most of the book was written in about three weeks, and finished over the next nine months.
My goal in writing the book was to help those struggling and surviving or thriving through deployment to know they are not alone or even going crazy. Everyone has a story to tell and if mine has helped even one person, my goal has been accomplished.
For more information about me, events, and surviving deployment visit www.365deploymentdays.com.
Happy reading!
Sara Dawalt
