Getting Resourceful as a Late Career Milspouse
Getting Resourceful as a Late Career Milspouse
Get ready to discuss how and why Late Career Milspouses are nowhere near the default messaging for milspouses, and why we should care about this!
The future of this category of milspouses is in our hands, and my guest today shares her infinite wisdom on how to get resourceful.
This is Episode #6 of The Heart of a Milspouse Podcast series highlighting Late Career Milspouse/Milso stories + their experiences ♥️
Topics we cover:
👉🏻How Manda Lynn was backed into a professional corner, and where she took it from there
👉🏻What it's like to meet your future spouse at 12 years old, but spend nearly lifetimes apart
👉🏻Playing catch up as a Late Career Milspouse
👉🏻One important question to ask yourself in conversation with other milspouses
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Meet Manda Lynn McVey!
Manda Lynn is Armed Forces Insurance 2022 Fort Polk Spouse of the Year, Founder & COO of Healitary Spouse, LLC, a Spouse Master Resilience Trainer, Holistic Wellness Practitioner, Behaviour Change Specialist, Fitness Nutrition Educator, and Yoga & Meditation instructor with a background in both the medical and culinary industries with over 3,000 volunteer hours under her belt leading military spouses to reconnect with their intuition in order to achieve overall wellness and resilience through a variety of modalities.
A native of Colorado, Manda lived a rather nomadic lifestyle prior to becoming a military spouse making her an extremely resourceful person she finds joy from sharing resources with fellow military spouses, creating art, and reading pretty much anything you can consider to be a book.
Armed Forces Insurance 2022 Spouse of the Year
https://msoy.afi.org/about
Learn about Manda Lynn's services on Sofia Health
https://sofiahealth.com/shop/manda-lynn-mcvey/
For more information on the Disaster Preparedness kits for Fort Polk,
send Manda Lynn a DM on Instagram
Get Acronyms and Abbreviations sheet from Manda Lynn!
Email a suggestion to thehealitaryspouse@gmail.com
Manda Lynn would like you to know that Military OneSource now has an app!
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The Heart of a Milspouse Podcast is hosted by Jayla Rae Ardelean, Late Career Milspouse Mentor.
Let's chat! @mil.spouse
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Consider supporting the podcast below by buying me a coffee ❤️
TRANSCRIPT: Getting Resourceful as a Late Career Milspouse
[00:00:00] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Heart of a Mil Spouse podcast. Today I'm joined by another special guest on the Late Career Mil Spouse Series. I have Manda Lynn McVey with me today. Manda Lynn is Armed Forces Insurance 2022 Fort Polk, spouse of the Year, founder and COO of Healitary Spouse llc, a spouse, a master resilience trainer, holistic wellness practitioner behavior change specialist, , fitness, nutrition educator, and yoga and meditation instructor. She has an incredible background and we're gonna get into some of that today. Just very prolific when it comes to certifications in the wellness space. Hey, Manda Lynn. Hi, how
[00:00:44] Manda Lynn McVey: are you today? I'd say what? . .
[00:00:47] Jayla Rae Ardelean: I'm so good. How's it going over?
[00:00:49] Manda Lynn McVey: It's going well. Just getting back into the swing of things after having a little bit of a hectic month with some with the military spouse of the year, week in dc. We [00:01:00] have a town hall every year, so I was there. That was exciting to be there with so many amazing, wonderful humans. And then getting over Covid.
[00:01:08] Manda Lynn McVey: I. So that's always fun
[00:01:11] Jayla Rae Ardelean: as a result of that travel, right?
[00:01:14] Manda Lynn McVey: Luckily, the husband has not been doing a lot of work right now. There's not a lot of rotations coming through, so he's been able to be home and help. So that's a nice change. Yeah, I'm
[00:01:25] Jayla Rae Ardelean: glad, I'm glad that you have the space to be sick. I know that's such a weird thing to be grateful for.
[00:01:30] Manda Lynn McVey: But it's not the weird thing thing. .
[00:01:33] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Okay. . But yes, I know that we have spoken, but I just wanted to congratulate you on the podcast in a, in a public setting for. Becoming one of the spouse of the year winners at the Fort Polk installation. I know there's so many different installations, and I'm still not totally sure how that whole process works, but I mean, it's, it's just incredible to see you moving forward in this space and becoming, I don't [00:02:00] know, more of who you are and sharing more of who you are with everybody, and I'm excited to see where you go from here.
[00:02:07] Manda Lynn McVey: Thank you. Yeah, the, the process is a little confusing even for me still. So if anybody's interested, they can go to m soy.afi.org. That's M s O y, afi. And it talks about the program and who the recipients are and who all the winners were for the installations, the branches, as well as the overall military spouse of the year sarah Strader, who is Space Force, and that is amazing.
[00:02:33] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Oh, yay. Okay. We've got some Space Force, . Mm-hmm. . That's awesome. Okay, so you've been on this podcast before and I know that we have. Bonded over the fact that we are both late career mil spouses. So today I want to focus in on that specifically. Cuz I know you are a big proponent for self-advocacy when it comes to hunting down and finding the right resources.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Jayla Rae Ardelean: But I also know that you have been put in position. Of needing to find those resources simply because you were a late career mil spouse. So we can kind of get into that today. But first, let's start with how you met your husband and what was your awareness level of military life before entering it as a spouse yourself?
[00:03:22] Manda Lynn McVey: So my husband and I have actually known each other since we were 12. , which we went to middle school and high school together after graduation. We never really like hung out in the same crowds or anything. We were just friendly, like acquaintances. After high school we lost touch for oh a decade, you know, or so maybe.
[00:03:42] Manda Lynn McVey: and then we actually got back in touch via the magic of Facebook. We both like commented on a common friend's post about something ridiculous. I think it was about food or something, which anyone who knows me will not be surprised that that comment at all, because they all know I'm a giant foodie and I talk about [00:04:00] all things food whenever possible.
[00:04:03] Manda Lynn McVey: So anyway, that being said, one of us messaged the other and was just like, Hey buddy, how you been? You know, and we started talking and then it just kind of bloomed from there. Over the course of the next year and a half, we stayed in touch while he was actually stationed overseas. And I was. Getting out of a very awful relationship.
[00:04:21] Manda Lynn McVey: So I was very much like, I am not interested in anybody not talking to anyone. famous last words. . Right? . And we were, you know, well, and he was not too recently divorced, but he was pretty recently divorced as well. So he was also very much in the same frame of mind, which led us to become confidants for each other as well.
[00:04:44] Manda Lynn McVey: You know, we. When we needed a friend or a shoulder or whatever we'd call and we'd talk. And once he came back stateside, we talked a lot. And then one day I actually sent him an email, , I couldn't even like, bring myself to say it on the phone that I [00:05:00] had feelings for him, but that I didn't want it to affect our friendship.
[00:05:03] Manda Lynn McVey: And he replied, simp. I'm so happy you said this because I've been trying to figure out how to do it for months. . Oh, . And so literally like the next day, we were a couple and then, you know, next thing I knew I was moving to live with him. And then we were engaged on, you know, the following New Year's Eve, which was only like two months, three months later.
[00:05:28] Manda Lynn McVey: And. You know, we were married like eight months after that. So we did have one of those like whirlwind military romances where everything seems to move very quickly. But in essence, we were having a long distance relationship for about a year and a half before we actually said, I want to be in a relationship with you.
[00:05:47] Manda Lynn McVey: So, you know, give or take , much of it outta that. So that was in 2016 when we got married. So we're coming up on our six [00:06:00] year wedding anniversary. My husband is coming up the month before that, literally to the day on his 19 year service anniversary. Yeah. And that my friends, is the definition of a late career mil spouse.
[00:06:16] Manda Lynn McVey: right?
[00:06:16] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Heck yes. It's and we are, we're so similar when it comes to our timelines because we're coming up on seven years together. Five years married. Y'all are on your six year wedding anniversary . So we actually like met our spouses around the same time, which is kind of crazy cuz when you just think about, you know, The tracks that people take.
[00:06:38] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Like who, who knew that we would know each other eventually. Nobody knew that. But here we're ,
[00:06:43] Manda Lynn McVey: And never been I it a duty station. It's all been via Instagram that we met, you know? Yes, yes. That's important thing, I think here to get out to people too, you know, make connections where they're available.
[00:06:54] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Right, right. And I know so many people as a result of just making those connections [00:07:00] online and not solely relying. Where you're currently living in your duty station and those kinds of circumstances. But the other part about that I wanna highlight is that, so how many years? I can't count how many years had he already done when you guys met?
[00:07:16] Jayla Rae Ardelean: That would've been
[00:07:16] Manda Lynn McVey: 13 years. 13 years, yes. And for most of that, as I said, he was married to somebody else, like they were married when he enlisted. They had been married for years before that. So it was a decision that they took on together. It was a journey that they took together to learn how to be a military family.
[00:07:38] Manda Lynn McVey: You know, I don't, obviously, I wasn't in their life, so I don't know how active in that she was. I don't know how much of the resources and things that even I know that she actually searched out or was instructed on, or. But judging from my friends that have been with their spouses for a similar length of time, I can assume [00:08:00] that she had a basic understanding of the general things that you need to know.
[00:08:04] Manda Lynn McVey: Like, I don't know how to get on Tricare's website,
[00:08:09] Jayla Rae Ardelean: you. Why there's the use of so many acronyms or Right, what even some of those acronyms stand for ,
[00:08:17] Manda Lynn McVey: right? Why you need to have TRICARE East and TRICARE West and where the line is in the states. That means a difference, you know? And it used to be tricare, north, south, and West.
[00:08:26] Manda Lynn McVey: It wasn't even, you know? So because of that, My husband literally had like no idea what to teach me ever because he either didn't know it existed, didn't think it would be useful to me, and didn't understand that I might need to know it in the future. Yeah,
[00:08:47] Jayla Rae Ardelean: it's like they don't understand where the gaps of knowledge actually are, and so then they can't really help you.
[00:08:54] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And I had a very similar experience, so I am not Jeremy's first [00:09:00] marriage either. And you know, I also have step kids. So there's that whole other element in the picture. But it was very similar where, you know, they met while he was still very early on in his career. Mm-hmm. , it wasn't a decision that they made together, but it was so early on that she had to assimilate.
[00:09:19] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Had to assimilate fast. Mm-hmm. , and then once you bring kids into the picture, that's a whole other element. Mm-hmm. . , but she, you know, she essentially had to go through her own learning process, but it was still very early on in his career. So I just don't think it's the same level of, it's probably not the same amount of learning that needs to be done, but anytime I would ask him questions about how to operate Tricare and like what to do in this case, blah, blah, blah, he doesn't know the answer to it because, He never had, first of all, the service member isn't a member of tricare.
[00:09:50] Jayla Rae Ardelean: They don't know. They are like through a completely different system and he never had to, had to or wanted [00:10:00] to tell his ex-wife how to do that. Like she had to figure it out on her own too. So it's kind of like you're put in this position of needing to. Learn a lot and learn it really fast in order to get your needs met.
[00:10:14] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And sometimes it's just really easy to give up actually and just say, right, you know what, I don't, I don't care enough to like, go, go through with this .
[00:10:22] Manda Lynn McVey: Absolutely. You know, and you had asked what my knowledge was of being a military spouse or you know, of the military community prior to becoming a military spouse, like what my knowledge was of that.
[00:10:37] Manda Lynn McVey: I have an aunt who is a 20 year veteran spouse. I have a best friend who's basically a sister who, you know, married a marine three months after we graduated high school and they're still married today and he retired, you know, like four years ago. So he is like 18 to 20 years service. [00:11:00] But all that being said, I still only had like the most superficial level of knowledge.
[00:11:08] Manda Lynn McVey: Right. You know, because I wasn't living in their house on a daily basis, experiencing all the things. And even if I had been, it wouldn't have pertained to me because I wasn't the spouse. That wasn't my life. So I would hear the things that they would talk about and I'd be like, yeah, that sounds annoying.
[00:11:24] Manda Lynn McVey: And then . Luckily, I never used that whole, you knew what you signed up for line on either of them, because I know that nobody ever knows what they're signing up for whenever they take on any kind of arrangement, regardless. But that's its whole other can of worms I guess. But it really boils down to, I think like our service members don't know what they don't know, so they definitely don't know what we don't know.
[00:11:51] Manda Lynn McVey: So we have to be able to identify those things on our own and find ways to get those answers.
[00:11:59] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Yeah, and I think this [00:12:00] came, this came up in my conversation with with Lindsay as well because mm-hmm. , she was coming at it from a marriage angle of, you know, developing a little bit more compassion for your service member.
[00:12:09] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Like, it's so easy to want to fault and blame them for not telling you that specific piece of information that you needed. . That would've been helpful to know after going through this entire processor mm-hmm. this entire experie. But you know, she brought it around and said, okay, well, like, that's great, but they don't know what we don't know.
[00:12:28] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And so that's, that's kind of what you're forced to reckon with over and over and over again. Mm-hmm. . And you can either let that cause more turmoil within your marriage or you can kind of accept it and know that you are being put in a position of being your own advocate. And becoming, becoming the resource for yourself that you wish you had.
[00:12:58] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Cuz as we all know, [00:13:00] military life is, you can pack so much into a calendar year. So many different things can happen in that time and it feels like. I mean, we're about to celebrate seven years together. I'm like, we haven't been together for 10 years. Like that's, that's amazing for the amount that's happened in seven years.
[00:13:18] Jayla Rae Ardelean: I can't believe it's only been seven years. ,
[00:13:21] Manda Lynn McVey: right? Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, are you sure it hasn't been two decades? You know? And with he and I specifically, because we have known each other since we were 12, I think sometimes. The concept of time gets extra skewed. Yeah, , because we have conversations about when we were in high school or something that happened a couple years after we graduated, you know, because we stayed in contact with a lot of the same people.
[00:13:42] Manda Lynn McVey: We just didn't stay in contact with each other. So we have these conversations that span three decades, but we've only been together for six years and we've been through so many things together, plus, Experienced the same life events at the same ages, like in our twenties and our [00:14:00] thirties that were happening to our friends, like the passing of a loved one or you know, one of our really close friends having a child or something that we both happen to like be able to go and see the child in the hospital or something.
[00:14:13] Manda Lynn McVey: You know, you have these life experiences that you shared. They weren't part of your marriage. And so we're really like blah all over the place when it comes to our concept of how long we've been together. So I love that .
[00:14:31] Jayla Rae Ardelean: I know when you've known. Well, I don't have, I, I don't even know how to relate to that because I don't, I don't, I haven't known anybody that long.
[00:14:40] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Well, I guess, I mean, I do still have a couple friends from From junior high. Mm-hmm. . So I guess, but still that's like totally different. But I would love to know what are some of the particular challenges that you've experienced as a result of being a late career mil spouse other than needing to learn something like Tricare obviously, [00:15:00] or the medical system.
[00:15:01] Jayla Rae Ardelean: What has been like unique to you that you don't see in every military spouse lifestyle experience.
[00:15:09] Manda Lynn McVey: Okay. Well, one thing that I have experienced at this installation specifically that I did not experience at other installations or in a lot of communities, and I don't know if it's the people at this installation or if it just is the individuals I'm running into or whatever, but here, People very much including the people in my husband's unit who most of them know that we've only been married for a few years will look at me and just talk to me like I've been in the military for two decades. Like I've actually been in the military, like not even just this spouse, but like I've been in the military for two decades and I'm like, I understand three of the words that you said and the other seven things, I don't even know what they mean. You know, and those three words together in a sentence don't make sense.
[00:15:59] Manda Lynn McVey: So [00:16:00] I've had to very much make it a point to try to somehow work into a conversation how it's crazy that my husband's been in a service for so long, but I'm still so new to this situation. You know, just find ways to like manage to work it in the conversation that I've only been a mil spouse for like six years and that I haven't been hanging out, learning all the things since, you know, 1999 with Ron. So over 2003.
[00:16:31] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Well, and I think =what, what you're highlighting too is that there are a lot of different types of military spouse experiences, but the default, the common one is that you've been doing this with your partner for as long as they've been in the service.
[00:16:48] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Mm-hmm. , like that's kind of the default and. I mean, I think they're little, they're little like nuances to that. You know, maybe you met your spouse when they were only two years in, or one year in about [00:17:00] to finish up ROTC or whatever their track was. And so it was still relatively new. But. That's the default.
[00:17:07] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And like we are nowhere near .
[00:17:10] Manda Lynn McVey: Right.
[00:17:11] Jayla Rae Ardelean: That default. And we're nowhere near the default messaging that happens for spouses in that position as well. Mm-hmm. . Because there isn't, there isn't a level playing field when it comes to expectations and what you're learning as you're moving through that experience.
[00:17:29] Jayla Rae Ardelean: It feels like you're constantly catching up. And I've been in those situations too, especially early on in our marriage. Once people found out that we were newlyweds, they wouldn't talk to me about military life at all. That was their invitation, quote unquote, to then stop discussing military life because I had not experienced anything according to them yet, and it would make them I don't know, old or like they
[00:17:59] Manda Lynn McVey: or like it was [00:18:00] pointless because you wouldn't understand.
[00:18:01] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Yes. Yeah. It's point. Yeah, that's a better way to put it. Definitely. Like it would just be pointless to describe what it is they're talking about. But yeah. At the installation that you're currently at and. You know, needing to like work that into a conversation.
[00:18:15] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Mm-hmm. Do you think that there is, like, what do you find helpful or useful about using this term late career mil spouse, and how do you, like, how do you see that term kind of like, Progressing in the future. Cuz first of all, I'm really proud of it. ,
[00:18:33] Manda Lynn McVey: right? Yeah. I'm real proud of it too
[00:18:36] Jayla Rae Ardelean: because I do, I know cuz I need, I just needed a way to describe my experience that I knew matched other spouse's experiences, but there was no, we're not a new spouse and we're not a seasoned spouse and we're somewhere in the middle, but we're all, we're in the middle but we're also not like other spouses who are in the middle . Right. You know, so we needed a, we needed a way to [00:19:00] like um, create this category. So how do you see that being really helpful to other spouses in the future or perhaps in these kinds of conversations?
[00:19:09] Manda Lynn McVey: Well, so I think going back a little bit to what I said, that I think it is a bit of a nuance at Fort Polk, JRTC that people assume that you're, you know more about military life than you might a lot of the time, because J RTC and this installation specifically have more late career service members. Like that are well seasoned, higher ranking, you know, senior NCOs and higher level officers. And there's, you know, there's a load of like warrant officers around here.
[00:19:47] Manda Lynn McVey: And warrant officers are few and far between at most installations, and that's because of the nature of the installation itself. So thinking on that a little bit more, I think it really does go back [00:20:00] to just, so, like you said, so many people have that parallel life with their, their hero, their service member, that they have technically been quote unquote in the life the same amount of time or very, very near to it.
[00:20:14] Manda Lynn McVey: So they just assume everybody else in the room has that same situation. So sometimes people will say something, and even if. Something I understand, but something that I only have started understanding recently or something that I can instantly recognize a younger spouse or a newer spouse might not grasp the concept of that.
[00:20:39] Manda Lynn McVey: I try to be really situationally aware about those conversation points and specifically point them out, like if we're at a table for. You know, if there's a, say a mil spouse appreciation event or something more all at a table, somebody says something, I will point it out and I'll say, you know, I've only been with my husband for about like six years, [00:21:00] even though he's been in for 19, so I don't really understand what you're talking about.
[00:21:03] Manda Lynn McVey: Could you explain it to me a little? And because, you know, those of you who know me and know my platform for, you know, running for MSOY was I advocate for resource education and education of military spouses. How to advocate for themselves, right? So I can't back down from those situations when I have an opportunity to be the voice for the other spouses that might be at that table that might be lost and afraid to raise their hand and point it out they don't get where that conversation is going, and then it makes the other spouses hopefully slow down and think about. And be just a little more aware moving forward when they're using acronyms or when they're using specific terms that, is this a blanket statement that everybody can understand? Like saying, you know, shut the front door when somebody's, you [00:22:00] know, says something and you're like, oh, joking around with them.
[00:22:02] Manda Lynn McVey: You know? Or is it saying, Some weird acronym that nobody's ever heard before, and you're like, I don't know what X K P T two means. You know, like that's because that's what every conversation sounds like to me. ,
[00:22:16] Jayla Rae Ardelean: are you sure that you're supposed to, I'm pretty sure that there's like an ownership over your service members are supposed to know the acronyms.
[00:22:23] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Like you're not always supposed to know what those are. , right?
[00:22:26] Manda Lynn McVey: Well, Ron doesn't even know half the time, and I'll be like, what is, what does that. So he has a training tomorrow and I said, what is that? And he's like, I know that the last letter stands for doctrine, but there's like four letters in the acronym, and I was like, you should maybe figure that out.
[00:22:45] Manda Lynn McVey: And he's like, well, I'm going to the training tomorrow. Hopefully they'll tell me.
[00:22:52] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Confusing for everybody. .
[00:22:53] Manda Lynn McVey: Yeah, nobody can follow along. So if you're a military spouse, you should really take that into consideration and not [00:23:00] throw those acronyms out. Just because you are familiar with them. I have a list of hundreds of acronyms that I have been compiling for the last six years, and it's about to get published.
[00:23:12] Manda Lynn McVey: like I'm about to put a link to it on my Instagram for everybody else, . Sometime in the next couple of months, I've just put out a few feelers to get some more acronyms from other services included, because right now it's mostly Army, but yeah. You know, I, I think that moving forward, using the term late career spouse, instead of saying, I've been married to my husband for six years, but he's been in for 19, if I could just sit at a table and say, I'm a late career spouse, so that's a little confusing to me.
[00:23:42] Manda Lynn McVey: People would be like, oh, that wasn't so much information. Here, let me help you. Instead of, why are you telling me how long you've been married to your service member? And, you know, give all this extra info that they don't need just to understand why you're asking the question. But
[00:23:56] Jayla Rae Ardelean: what you're trying to provide is context.
[00:23:59] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And in those [00:24:00] conversations, like when they, you know, spit off five different acronyms and just kind of expect you to know what it is that they're talking about, they're also missing context. So I think that's the part of these conversations that I'd love to see, like shift in the future because mm-hmm.
[00:24:16] Jayla Rae Ardelean: There are going to be more and more and more late career mil spouses. We're not going to decrease. We are going to increase over time.
[00:24:25] Manda Lynn McVey: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:24:26] Jayla Rae Ardelean: This category of spouse is just going to get larger and larger and larger. So I, I think you're right. That it, it would be so cool to just sit down and to say this is who I am. This is the category of spouse that I am. Because then that is also letting the other people know what the context of that is and they can ask questions. Mm-hmm. like, oh, okay, how old were you when you met your spouse? Or How many years in were they when you met? And they'll kind of know the the indicators to get [00:25:00] specific on so that they know what kinds of context may be missing from what they're about to discuss or talk about, or just not assume that every spouse in the room has had the same experiences as them.
[00:25:12] Manda Lynn McVey: Yep.
[00:25:12] Jayla Rae Ardelean: But I think what you're saying too about the current installation that you're a part of and that most of those service members are well into their careers and you know, officer level or just kind of have been doing this for a very long time.
[00:25:27] Jayla Rae Ardelean: That changes the environment too. Mm-hmm. , because you're gonna see, you're gonna see less , late career mil spouses in that environment. Yeah. And you're not gonna see very many like, brand new spouses either because everybody is so, so far into their career, so, right. It's true that this, this changes across environments too, across different military environments.
[00:25:52] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And we're not even talking. You know how it changes across branch to branch, right? Either
[00:25:58] Manda Lynn McVey: duty station to duty station, [00:26:00]
[00:26:00] Jayla Rae Ardelean: yes. Right. Like this is just one place that is very, you know, army specific and it, it doesn't even, you know, it doesn't even talk about how like these joint base installations, for example, where you know, the list that you're compiling, like, yeah, most of those terms are army related. That just speaks to the level and depth of the language that we are expected to learn per branch. So like you could make that same list. For Air Force . Mm-hmm. or for the ?
[00:26:33] Manda Lynn McVey: My last duty station was a joint base, so a lot of the things that I have on there are also Air Force, I think. Just, it would just be things that I would catch, like driving around the installation, I'd see a sign that said something, so I would be like, okay, thanks for the acronym with an arrow. Like, I hope I never need, whatever that is, I'm gonna go home and Google that, you know, to make sure that I [00:27:00] might not ever need it.
[00:27:01] Manda Lynn McVey: You know, ,
[00:27:02] Jayla Rae Ardelean: maybe I, maybe I'll need it. I dunno.
[00:27:06] Manda Lynn McVey: I don't know if I need it because I don't know what it is. So. Panic.
[00:27:11] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Well, before we close up, I do wanna take a moment to talk about how many career pivots you've had to make. And I think what's so interesting about your career path, at least to me, is that it's not degree related necessarily.
[00:27:27] Jayla Rae Ardelean: It is like certificate based mm-hmm. and. You know, before we hit record, we were talking about how you've done the equivalent of like a doctorate, but like that's not, that's like the number of years of study that you've done and different tracks that you've pursued. So I'd love to know kind of how many pivots you've had to make.
[00:27:47] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And I would also love to know like the moment if there was one when you decided that you wanted to support military spouses specifically. Cuz I think that's so interesting late [00:28:00] career mil spouses in particular. Mm-hmm. . If we have had to make so many pivots as a result of marrying our service member and our own careers getting off track, then we kind of like , some of us make this natural shift into the military world that we don't really feel a part of.
[00:28:16] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Mm-hmm. . And so we, we like infiltrate ourselves in that way, but Right yeah.
[00:28:22] Manda Lynn McVey: Like, how can I help everybody else? So my first career, like. I went to college for a year and decided that my major wasn't right for me. So I took a year off to decide what I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted to do something in medicine.
[00:28:36] Manda Lynn McVey: So I went to school for medical assisting, and as we discussed before we hit record, that was before certifi or before degrees were available for medical assisting programs. You could only find certification programs in the country. And literally the year after I graduated, they started offering degrees.
[00:28:54] Manda Lynn McVey: But I worked in that field for several years in various capacities. I basically became the equivalent of [00:29:00] an RN through working in clinical trials and all the extra certifications that I had to get to be a clinical trial nurse. And that started to suck the soul out of me. And I was like, a lot of my patients were high risk and I was losing patients all the time.
[00:29:14] Manda Lynn McVey: And I decided for my mental health, I needed to just back away. So I stopped and I went to culinary school. And then while I was in . Right.
[00:29:26] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Culinary school. Y'all like completely different fields.
[00:29:29] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Yep.
[00:29:30] Manda Lynn McVey: Because I love food and I like sharing food with others, and I know how happy food can make people and I know how it can bring communities together and it can bridge gaps between, you know, like.
[00:29:42] Manda Lynn McVey: If you go to a different country, what is one of the biggest things that you experience and purposefully seek out when you go there to experience-- their food.
[00:29:52] Manda Lynn McVey: And it indoctrinates you into their culture when you're eating their food and seeing the way that people behave around a table so you can [00:30:00] really understand what's happening.
[00:30:01] Manda Lynn McVey: And I'm really interested in that aspect. But I just love food and so I went to culinary school. I got a divorce while I was in culinary school. And so when the time came from my internship and I was offered an opportunity to go to Alaska from Arizona, I was like, that's pretty darn far away. I'll take it.
[00:30:20] Manda Lynn McVey: So . And then I stayed there for seven years-ish. And after that I left and I just, I went to New York City and I lived in various different places around the country working seasonally in culinary. And then while I was doing that is when Ron and I started dating. And so then I moved to live with him.
[00:30:43] Manda Lynn McVey: And I had started working at Starbucks actually at some point during that culinary travel experience. And I was on track to become an assistant store manager, which is basically a manager in training, a store manager in training. And when we got married and had a little one [00:31:00] and I couldn't get childcare and I couldn't get my job to understand that I was a military spouse and that my job was like, my life was unpredictable. Even though Starbucks has an initiative to work with military spouses and they have military stores, it still is based on your manager, your regional manager, and everything that's happening in the moment, right? Just like every job ever.
[00:31:23] Manda Lynn McVey: And so I just stopped working. The only childcare I could get was babysitters that were charging more per hour than I was making. So what's the point? And so during that time, I obviously was like, well, what am I gonna do with my life? I have these two, literally, like not even opposite ends of the spectrum, but two different libraries like not even the same page or a different book, like two different libraries of education, , you know, And I was, I, I had also learned that I had celiac disease [00:32:00] along the way, which means I can't eat gluten and I have to control my diet. And I healed my body from being very, very, very sick. Like to the point where I could not function pretty much at all and very, very, very overweight.
[00:32:11] Manda Lynn McVey: By just eating the right foods, I had healed myself. And I had a lot of friends that started like shooting me messages. Hey, my cousin just found out that they can't dairy, can you help them? No. You can't find, they found out they can't have garlic. Can you help them? Because they knew that I had a personal experience, that I had medical knowledge so I could understand what foods they could and couldn't have based on their medical conditions and that I had culinary knowledge so I would inherently be able to search out like acceptable replacements for that food that they couldn't have.
[00:32:44] Manda Lynn McVey: And I was like, there's gotta be a way to mix all this together. So I. Went to the internet, you know, the old Google machine, and started searching and searching, and I found holistic wellness and I was like, this, this is me.
[00:32:59] Manda Lynn McVey: This [00:33:00] is everything I wanna do. This is everything that I already know, but this is a way to merge them together and give me the pieces to like, It was like I had a tu that was missing half the pieces on the inside, right? I had the frame, but I only had half the inner pieces and this gave me all those pieces to finish that puzzle.
[00:33:22] Manda Lynn McVey: So, and ironically, the school that I found is literally like 45 minute. Drive from where I grew up in Phoenix, like my whole life . And I found them online and I was like, of course,
[00:33:35] Jayla Rae Ardelean: I was just about to ask you, , do you think you would've found that convergence had you not entered military life? And it sounds like the answer is no because it was right under your nose.
[00:33:46] Manda Lynn McVey: Well, so I used to drive past it every day on my way to culinary school actually. And I there's also a college of naturopathic physicians in arizona in Phoenix that I would drive by that's right next to [00:34:00] Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, which is where I ended up going, or very near it. And I had actually, the first thing that I looked up was what it took to get into that college was the naturopathic physician college, because I thought that that would be a realistic way to go to do natural healing, but still work in medicine, like in a medical aspect.
[00:34:22] Manda Lynn McVey: And you had to at least have a bachelor's. Which we've talked about. I don't have , so, because culinary schools, when I was going also didn't offer degree programs. So I was like, well, that's, scratch that. And then that's how I became, you know, I searched more and I found sweet. Huh. So maybe I would've gotten there, maybe I wouldn't have, but I know that I probably would've been on a more culinary related path and wouldn't have had to stop if I wouldn't have married Ron.
[00:34:53] Manda Lynn McVey: Because I would've gone back to Arizona or maybe stayed in Denver with my family where I was living when we started [00:35:00] dating. And I had potential to work in some really high end restaurants doing some really top dollar, top-notch stuff because of the skills and experiences that I did have when I worked in culinary outside of Starbucks.
[00:35:11] Manda Lynn McVey: So I'd be in a very different place. But once I did that, you know, I also started looking for other things. I had initially thought maybe I'll just become a yoga teacher. That's something I can take with me everywhere I go, you know, or maybe I'll do this. And I found a yoga training through Vet Toga.
[00:35:28] Manda Lynn McVey: So I took that and I did all these other certifications while I was on my way through SWEHA. So that's, and a couple of them were actually incorporated into my program, which is why I now have like seven certifications. That all happened within like a two year program or two year timeframe. But that being, There during one of my classes you had to identify your potential client, and since we're all being coaches, they said, who do you wanna coach?
[00:35:55] Manda Lynn McVey: Who do you wanna help? Who do you want to impact their life and help them wake [00:36:00] up better tomorrow, every day? And literally, the only answer I could come up with was military spouses because I'm teaching wellness and resilience and they're, so, intertwined. and those are like, you can't be resilient if you're not well mentally, physically, and spiritually, and you can't be well if you're not resilient.
[00:36:27] Manda Lynn McVey: And those are like being resilient is those like. Key aspect of being a military spouse and call it what you want. You know, call it flexible, call it open-minded, call it optimistic, or you know, realistic or whatever. But we bend, we don't break. And we shift with the wind, but we come back and we're always stronger after whatever it is that we've encountered.
[00:36:52] Manda Lynn McVey: And even if it's letting yourself cry on the floor for hours like that is being resilient because you're not holding it in and trying to act like you don't have [00:37:00] feelings. You're allowing yourself to have those feelings to be that person. And that was the moment when I decided that I wanted to help military spouses.
[00:37:11] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Oh, Manda Lynn. Are you crying?
[00:37:15] Manda Lynn McVey: A little
[00:37:20] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Well, I love the Genesis journey that you, that you took us on, cuz I think you know what I was alluding to and what I've found is that as a result, Needing to make so many career pivots, whether they are self-inflicted or cause we married or a service member. I'm just seeing that there's a pattern now that like eventually we find our way to supporting those who are just like us and it doesn't have to be late career mil spouses, just military spouses in general, but. It's a, it feels like almost [00:38:00] a natural progression or a pattern that I'm seeing. Which is funny cuz like we never expected this piece of our identity to formulate. Like I never thought I would be a military spouse. Most of us didn't see that for ourselves.
[00:38:14] Jayla Rae Ardelean: And because we're meeting our service members like so late in their career and so late in ours. That's especially true , right?
[00:38:23] Jayla Rae Ardelean: We didn't Right.
[00:38:24] Jayla Rae Ardelean: We did not seek this out. No. You know, we happened to meet or to know in your case, like meet or know people who were already doing it and like their, their career was just a fact that could not be changed.
[00:38:39] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Mm-hmm. . But clearly we fell in love with those people and that was just something that we were going to need to come to terms with and to deal with. And so like this progression to, to then assuming that facet of your identity and taking it to the next level where you're [00:39:00] supporting those around you who match that identity as well and who are clearly struggling in some area that we have, you know, taken on to coach them in is, I mean, it's so beautiful, and it's admirable and it's all those things. But I think what I wanna highlight is that some of it is actually out of necessity, ,
[00:39:21] Manda Lynn McVey: right?
[00:39:22] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Like , we're here and we want to support all of our military spouses who come in, you know, come into our spheres and come into our corners of the internet.
[00:39:33] Jayla Rae Ardelean: But it's, it's not something that we saw, like, it's just not something that we thought would would happen. It just kind of like, Do you know what I mean? ?
[00:39:44] Manda Lynn McVey: I do. Yeah. It's even. Even if you know someone who's not a late career spouse, that's, you know, an entire career spouse and they made the decision together for their service member to join the military entire
[00:39:57] Jayla Rae Ardelean: "Entire career spouse" is that what we should [00:40:00] start saying?
[00:40:00] Manda Lynn McVey: Yeah. Instead of seasoned, cuz seasoned makes them sound old and they're not necessarily all old, you know? , that's true. I had a true, I actually had a seasoned spouse tell me that they were like, I feel like season makes me sound old and I'm not old. I'm. Like experience, you know, I have a lot of knowledge,
[00:40:15] Manda Lynn McVey: but like you even see people who are like real estate agents that have been married to their service member the entire time that they've been in service that are now focusing at some point in their career, realized that they should get like the VA loan certification, take those courses and use that knowledge to educate other families and spouses and veterans on how to use their VA loan benefits to the best of their advantage. And they might only even work with people who are using VA loans. Yeah. And they don't do regular real estate, you know, Yeah.
[00:40:52] Manda Lynn McVey: And it's just because they realize they're a real estate agent. They have this skill. They know that every time they try to buy a [00:41:00] house, unless they're being their own real estate agent, they can't find somebody that has the information that they need, even though they should have it. And they're like, I have this knowledge. Why don't you have this knowledge?
[00:41:10] Manda Lynn McVey: You know? Yeah. So then they just start offering it to other spouses and other families. Mm-hmm. . So, yeah, I do get what you're saying. It's just like this saying that comes. a lot of the time, and you're just like, inherently, like, I am providing to others the skills that I have acquired while I've been here.
[00:41:29] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Mm-hmm. as a result of self-advocacy, right in, in many respects. You know, in, in figuring out how to make the lifestyle still work for you and your career and your desires. And then, you know, turning that outward and helping others do it too. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's a requirement by any means.
[00:41:52] Jayla Rae Ardelean: I just, it's just a, a pattern that I've been noticing. So I thought I'd absolutely take a moment because [00:42:00] it clearly was a pat, like you fit the pattern as well, so. You could have done, you could have done a lot with your two libraries of of edu sets of education and skill sets and things that have nothing to do with military life like you could have but you didn't.
[00:42:19] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Like, that's not where you're at now. So it's just interesting to see people's evolution process and like how they get to that point. So thank you for sharing
[00:42:26] Jayla Rae Ardelean: it's just, it's something that happens to us and I don't know
[00:42:30] Manda Lynn McVey: when or how or why, but it.
[00:42:32] Manda Lynn McVey: Yeah.
[00:42:33] Jayla Rae Ardelean: Yeah, that's just where we are. Okay. Well, do you wanna share with everyone where they can find you online and if you have any like, special things coming up that you wanna talk about or maybe not. I don't know. I happen to know something .
[00:42:49] Manda Lynn McVey: So other than the acronym list that I'm going to publish on Instagram, which is at the heary spouse, I am working on a [00:43:00] podcast that hopefully will be launching and that podcast is going to be focusing on resilience and readiness more than it is the wellness aspect of things. Because I think we all have probably plenty of podcasts that revolve around wellness that we listen to or people we follow on social.
[00:43:19] Manda Lynn McVey: I will have like a wellness highlight. You know, once or twice a month, but it'll be how wellness and resilience are interconnected, really. And I'm actually also right now working on disaster preparedness kits for the people and families PCSing to Fort Polk during hurricane season. So if anybody is interested in donating or knows any organizations that might be interested in helping sponsor that or donate products to it that are disaster preparedness products they can also message me on Instagram at the Healitary spouse. My email is the healitary spouse gmail.com.
[00:43:59] Manda Lynn McVey: My [00:44:00] services are available through Sophia Health, and you can go on sophia health.com and look up Manda, Lynn McVey. Or you can just go on my Instagram and click the link in my bio. That's probably the easiest way to find.
[00:44:15] Manda Lynn McVey: If you go on Sophia Health and you can't find my name, you can type in PCs , because I have services specifically catered to PCS stress , and that'll be one of the things that it'll bring up my name. It'll bring up my name Also for PCS, it'll bring up all the other practitioners that are on there as well that offer like mental health, coaching for PCs, stress or, you know, diet, all these links, whatever,
[00:44:37] Jayla Rae Ardelean: all these links are in the show notes. Y'all. So don't, don't, don't fear. They're all there. So go, go check Manda Lynn out if you are not already connected to her and. Yeah. I just thank you so much for coming back on the podcast to chat about this, and I'm so excited for your upcoming podcast. It's gonna be incredible. I can't wait to hear it [00:45:00] and yeah,
[00:45:00] Manda Lynn McVey: and be on it
[00:45:01] Jayla Rae Ardelean: well, and. And I might be featured on it. We might talk about this all over again, but , it's never enough. It's never enough. Never. All right, y'all go check Manda Lynn out. Bye
[00:45:18] Manda Lynn McVey: bye.