The Family Business

Introduction

      Congratulations, you hit the lottery. You have either married, decided to marry, are dating, have birthed and/or raised, or otherwise have an aspiring Green Beret in your life. Lucky you. If you’re reading this book then it's safe to say that your loved one is pretty far down the rabbit hole, so to speak. They’ve either decided that this is a thing that they want to do, or they are “considering” it, and they want your opinion and likely your support. I put “considering” in quotes because they aren’t really “considering” it, they’ve already decided that this is a thing they want to do. They are now faced with the unenviable task of getting you on board. That’s a good thing, as they will need your support. They have chosen a lifestyle that is…challenging.

In 2023, I wrote a book called Ruck Up or Shut Up. It was intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to Special Forces Assessment and Selection. I wanted it to be a sort of manual that aspiring candidates could turn to that would be accurate and comprehensive but wouldn’t give away any secrets. It succeeded, more than I could have anticipated. It continues to be a best-seller and every year more than twice as many copies are published as actual candidates that attend SFAS. Clearly, other people are reading it. That’s great, because it’s a good read. But a lot of those readers are family members, not aspiring candidates. It turns out that lots of people want to support their loved ones in their Green Beret journey. As such, I was, and continue to be, inundated with questions from family. I didn’t write about the stuff that family members ask, I wrote about the stuff that aspiring candidates ask. So this book, The Family Business, is in response to those family questions. I took a survey of the most frequently asked questions and made them each a chapter. Throw in a few chapters to cover stuff that I think is important, some random ramblings, and you have a book.

One of the things that you'll learn is that being a Green Beret is hard. Earning this title is hard. Keeping it is even harder. It will demand much of their attention, their time, and some resources. Sore muscles, blistered feet, and exhausted bodies are the order of the day as they start this journey. They will dedicate their time to training, hard, just for the chance to try out. If they make it, it will send them off to parts unknown to do dangerous missions. They will keep training, leaving for various schools, and managing countless deployments along the way. Innumerable nights away are in the future. It can also be a dangerous life. In rare cases it might require the ultimate sacrifice. I say this deliberately so that there are no illusions about it. Green Berets are elite, but they are not invincible. Sacrifice is a part of the lifestyle. But the ultimate sacrifice is incredibly unlikely. This reality probably looms very large in your mind as you marshal your resolve to support your loved one. Just know that while Green Berets do dangerous things, we very rarely do things dangerously.

Let’s start at the beginning. Finding purpose. Being a Green Beret is a life of immense purpose. It is worthy of all the sacrifice. But, the same way that you are reading this to learn a little more about this new and confusing thing, your loved one is busying themselves with the inevitable information gap that they are now in. There is a lot to learn, for them and you. They are learning about mission sets, Military Occupational Specialties, rank structures, Zone 2 running, strength training, areas of responsibility, mobility and agility, resiliency, Small Unit Tactics, performance nutrition, hydration, sleep, and this thing called rucking. You are about to spend your waking hours being incessantly lectured to about rucking. Rucking technique, pace, stride vs cadence, misery management, and foot care. That’s right, foot care. You might even be asked to snap a couple of feet pics. Not yours…his.

Your information gap is even larger, and it is made worse by the lack of context. Your loved one has been mining the depths of the internet, probably read some books, watched a few hours of YouTube videos, and has a smidgen of an understanding of the task ahead of them. Most of what they know is probably wrong, but at least they know something. You have likely been blissfully ignorant, and now you are faced with providing support to this monumental endeavor. And your support is critical. A lot of guys go through this alone to a certain degree but having a good support system is invaluable. They have to do the work, but even just an encouraging word every once in a while, makes it so much easier. To make matters worse, most of the topics that you are probably wondering about are beyond the scope of your aspiring Green Beret’s knowledge. Get ready to hear, “I don’t know” more than you want to. Way more.

When are you going? I don’t know. How long will you be gone? I don’t know. Where exactly are you going? I don’t know. What will you be doing? I don’t know. How often can we talk? I don’t know. Who are you going with? I don’t know. How are you getting there? I don’t know. Is it dangerous? No, it’s not dangerous at all. That’s always going to be the answer that you get to that question. They don’t want you to worry about them and the truth is that 95% of the time it’s an accurate answer. Not everything we do is hand-to-hand combat, behind enemy lines, covered in mud and blood. So its not dangerous-dangerous, just regular danger. But they keep saying “I don’t know” because they honestly don’t. They’re not being coy or evasive, they really have no idea. That’s one of the things you have to understand about being a Soldier. Information is brokered like a precious commodity. You’re going to have to get used to it.

Part of this is deliberate. The Green Beret mission set is often shrouded in secrecy. Some of it is actually classified. It’s a legitimate Secret. But some of it, especially the “pipeline,” is deliberately mystified. It's not a secret, per se. We just like to be mysterious. There are some excellent and deliberate resources that can shed a lot of light on the pipeline. Ruck Up Or Shut Up is one of those resources. But that stuff usually only sheds light on the things you don’t care about. You probably don’t care how heavy The Sandman is, but your loved one certainly does. The who, what, when, where, and why stuff that you want to know about is part of that information economy that gets held in reserve. Once you get to an operational unit, that information is hard to come by because the military operates on a “hurry up and wait,” “need-to know,” and “knowledge is power” basis. You see, if I tell you everything that I know, then I no longer have any power. So I keep that information to “preserve my position.” And let’s not forget that we are a contingency force. The military exists as a “just in case” asset, so not knowing what’s next is just a part of the lifestyle.

But there is a lot that we do know. And the entire goal of this book is to tell you this stuff. I plan to tell you about the pipeline, which is what we colloquially call Selection, the Q course, language school, and SERE school. We’ll discuss team life, deployments, and schools. We will talk about war. We’ll talk about chaos and calm. We’ll delve into marriage, and family. We’ll talk about retiring and a second life.  We will talk about the beginning, the middle, and the end. The good and the bad. We hope to share everything that is important to you and while we won’t likely be able to give you all of the answers, we can at least give you enough information so that you can ask better questions of your loved one…that he won’t be able to answer. But at least you can have a better idea of what he doesn’t know, what he does know, and what waits around the corner for you both.

Who am I to be telling you all of this stuff? It’s “we” actually. My wife, Kristen and I are teaming up to tell you this story. It would be less than helpful to just have my perspective. I know what I know really well, but I was gone for most of it! Kristen has been as much a part of this journey as I have. Yes, I carried the ruck, but her burden has been, in many ways, much greater. And I got all of the tabs, badges, and awards as a prize for carrying my burden. All she got was me. But to be honest, I’m a fucking delight so it’s a pretty even trade-off if you ask me.

But I don’t want this book to be just my opinions and perspective. My opinions are good, despite what my wife says. I am rarely wrong, but they are just my opinions. So they can inherently be biased. This may surprise you, but Green Berets tend to be strong willed and defend their opinions vehemently. To support my opinions I will endeavor to represent the topics with as much objective empirical data as I can. Where that data doesn’t exist, I will do my best to be measured and reasonable. When that fails, I have a real plan. I have enlisted the help of my wife, my secret weapon. She is probably the smartest person that I know, has served as my editor for my other books, and just so happens to have been by my side throughout my entire career. So the plan is to present a topic and let us each take a swing at it. I will introduce the topic and write my take on the topic, full of vulgarities and tangibly bad opinions. We’ll just call these the He Said sections. Then Kristen will take a swing at it for full transparency. We’ll call these the She Said sections. So you get to see both sides. He said and she said. Hopefully at the end of the book you will have a good understanding of the topic and how normal and reasonable people can see a topic differently, yet somehow both be correct. Or both be wrong. But either way, you’ll learn.

But who are we? Well, I’m a retired career Green Beret. I served a little over twenty years. I have done all of the schools, deployments, and assignments that you would expect of a career Soldier. And Kristen has been by my side the whole way. We met in college as freshmen, baby-faced teens, fell instantly in love (at least I did), married as we graduated, and I whisked her off to start our Army lives together to some shithole Army town. This year we celebrate our 32nd wedding anniversary. We survived. I would argue that we thrived. We, by all accounts, had a successful Army career. I got to do all of the cool things that I always wanted to do, and we stayed together for all of it. We raised two amazing and successful kids, made houses into homes, and we actually really like each other. That’s no small feat, as the military can be demanding as hell and being an elite special operator is even more demanding. More time away, higher operational tempo, and more stress than we should rightfully bear. But we survived and we took notes along the way. So we want to share our notes with you.

We want you to go into this endeavor with your eyes wide open. As you will learn in the coming pages, there are many challenges, and the rewards may seem minor by comparison. The Green Beret is just a hat, right? It’s more, and we’ll explain as we go. But we need Green Berets. We make good Green Berets from good Soldiers. We make good Soldiers from good citizens. And we make good citizens from good men. So we need good men first. I firmly believe that a good man is only truly good when he is made whole by a good woman. There are probably more than a few parents reading this book to help support their son in his Green Beret journey, so this comment is most poignant with wives and girlfriends. But even parents will no doubt recognize the wisdom of this philosophy. Men are made to be with women, and we are at our best when we find our better halves.

So welcome to the family. The Family Business.

She Said

My husband is truly an optimist. Or more actually, an idealist. I am not sure that his “congratulations” are in order. If your spouse/son/boyfriend is on the path to becoming a Green Beret or has already passed Selection, chances are this is just another in a long line of hair-brained ideas that he’s had during his lifetime. Maybe this just happens to be the next thing on his list.  It may be more of a “here we go again” situation. You’re likely used to it by now. If it wasn’t the Green Beret, then he would have been planning a trip to climb Everst, or looking into deep sea fishing off the coast of Alaska, or considering becoming a wildland firefighter. And chances are, he would have done one of them successfully. So while I won’t congratulate you, I do admire your ability to stick with him through this next ordeal. Lord knows someone has to. These kinds of men need you. And your contribution to his life is necessary.

When my husband asked me to co-author this book with him, I asked him if he was sure that he knew what (and who) he was asking. I have never been one to romanticize being a military spouse, and even less so the wife of a Special Forces soldier. I tend to be a realist. Glamorizing this life would be not only a lie, but very detrimental to anyone who might read this book. So I will have to be completely and totally honest about everything; no rose-colored-glasses. And if we are going to go on this journey together, there is no other way. Because who in their right mind would set out to sugar-coat or even to entice other women to hitch their wagon to a man who has signed up for that kind of commitment?

All of that being said, I am co-authoring this book with Dave because someone probably should and it might as well be us. You will be better served if you go into this with eyes wide open. Maybe I am giving you the impression that I am not a fan of being a military wife.  Nothing could be further from the truth. I am exceedingly proud of my husband and of the family and life that we have created together. But again, there are no rose-colored-glasses here, not anymore anyway. If you’re setting off on this adventure as someone who is going to support this dreamer of a man, then maybe learning what worked for us can help. Maybe you will use this as a how-to manual, or possibly as a cautionary tale. Either way we made it; we survived and there were even times that we thrived. I would not change a thing about our story.

Of course when he came to me with this idea, I headed straight to Google to show him that it had already been done. I was wrong. I couldn’t find any, to be honest. What I did find were a few fictional stories of Special Forces romance novels that I’ll have to add to my Kindle as research comparisons. In my Google search, I did find many written by conventional Army spouses though. I am not certain why there hasn’t been more written by SF spouses.  Because contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of SF couples that successfully navigate this career and thrive. I can’t account for why this book seems to be a bit of an anomaly. Surely there is someone out there who was way more dedicated to their husband’s career and navigated all of it better than we did. I actually know there are because I know those women personally. They are phenomenal. They are these unstoppable forces for good and the betterment of other women, families, and soldiers. They serve on councils, committees, and boards. They truly serve the community everyday. But I guess their husbands just have other hair-brained ideas for them. So that leaves you with me. And I am determined to share the secrets to our success. At some point while writing this book I hope to figure out what exactly it is.

We have broken this book down by topics. Dave was the one who came up with that list. And I have to be honest when I tell you that of those topics, I could fill a thimble with what I know about train-up, the Q course, additional schooling and so on and so on. I know very little about any of it, apart from basic knowledge. My sections of the book don’t exactly align with his. What I do know is what it took for me, for us, to survive intact through each of those phases of life. I can’t say that it even mattered which school or phase he was in. The advice may change and vary a bit but all in all, I will describe how we survived and what it took to thrive as a person, as a couple, and as a family.

We do not have a unique story, really. My advice is not cutting edge. It is basic, but it is sound. And it worked. At the time, I didn’t know that we were forging a path for our relationship and our family. Each day was its own battle. Each day was its own joy. And with each day we tried to make the next correct decision. We, like thousands and thousands of other military families, were doing the best we could in whatever our given situation was for that day. And we did it well enough to make it to the end of a career with our family intact and healthy.

What you will get from me are the authentic reflections of a wife, a career woman,  and mother who was supporting a soldier who chose a challenging career. I will give you my honest opinion. I will tell you what worked and did not work for us. I will tell you how we managed to stay together in a post 9/11 military career. I will tell you the personal stories of our struggle and our triumphs.  If you're the parent of a man who is going through this military career, you will get a good idea of what it will be like for his family and how you can support your son as well as his family. I feel responsible for giving you an accurate account because this may be the only advice you get. I will neither encourage you, nor discourage you from this life.

While reading, keep in mind that my husband and I have very different opinions and approaches to just about everything.  While we have enough similarities to keep a marriage of three decades going, we remain opposites in a lot of ways. For example, Dave tends to live by exacts: There is one right way to do things, one way to succeed, and it is exactly his way. I tend to live in a shades-of-gray mentality.  While I have my own strong opinions, I realize that there are many ways to achieve a goal, or solve a problem.  I am not saying that Dave is close-minded. But he is exact. You will see this in our writing and our approach to this military life. There are times when I read his writing and I’d love to put in an eye-roll emoji so that you know at that given statement, I just think it’s too much…too exact. But then I’d need to let him come up with his own emoji to let you know what he thinks I’m being ridiculous too. And that would make for a very confusing book. So take that for what you will, knowing the end result is a happy and successful marriage.

And welcome to the Family Business.