Home is where the military sends you. Many military families I know have this sign proudly displayed in their homes.

The sight of it makes my civilian friends shudder.

They don’t understand how we can grow to love a place so foreign to our very being; a place we may never see again; a place we dread moving to at first and cry when we pack our bags to go.

Military spouses have a unique ability to make the best out of the worst situation. They can make the tiniest, least desirable housing feel like a home. They understand that home is a feeling, not a place.

Please meet Ann Marie Dombrowski, our newest Salute to Spouses columnist and Marines wife. She joins us after a cross-country PCS move, while pregnant, to a duty station where her husband is away more than he is home.

To say the least, it’s been a tough couple of months. But Ann Marie knows how to make the most of her situation and her home is by her soldier’s side, no matter where that may take her and her two young sons.

Please join her as she chronicles her military family journey through the good, the difficult and the places that touch her heart and eventually will always feel like home.