Military and disabled veterans' spouses get ready to register for jobs!

When I lost my job in January of last year, I headed to One Stop, looking for help finding work as the spouse of a 100% disabled veteran. When I walked in the door there was a table right there for spouses. I was greeted with a big smile and the man asked how he could help me. Keep in mind that the last time I was unemployed, thinking I could collect unemployment, was many, many years ago, so I was a bit overwhelmed. The first shocker was when the man asked me where my husband was deployed. I answered, "Vietnam" and his smile quickly vanished. He said, "We're here to help the spouses of Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers, not Vietnam ones."

It didn't matter at all my husband was disabled and couldn't work, we lost income because there was a big difference between what he made working and what he was making on VA disability. It didn't matter that we depended on my income to keep our heads above water, or the fact that while I was working back home in Massachusetts, I made more money than he did. Nothing seemed to matter. I was sent in with the rest of the people looking for jobs without any help at all.

The second shocker was when I received a letter from the Unemployment office telling me I wouldn't be getting unemployment either. I worked since I was 14, but after working two years for a church, there was no safety net to catch me. The church didn't have to pay into the system, so I got nothing.

I tried to work my way through the maze of signing up for work under my husband's service connected disability but that never seemed to work very well at all, as you can see. I still don't have a paying job. My job is taking care of my husband, making sure he's doing what he's supposed to be doing, and working as a volunteer while I try very hard to turn this over 25 years of experience, training, licensing and certification into something that can pay my bills. Being alone in all of this is very hard trying to learn what I have no one to teach me about. I've been in a place where I just don't fit in anywhere.

I've invested more than half my life in helping people and their families with PTSD, but spent too little time knowing what else goes into technical things, like my website, which thankfully an angel named Bill Rice, had the patience of a saint and developed my website for free, guiding this technical idiot every step of the way. Turning this into something that would pay me for over 70 hours a week worth of work has been nearly impossible.

Then there is the embarrassment of the comment I get from people when they ask what I do. "Oh, you're a volunteer" as if this is not really a job! They complain about their own jobs until I ask them how they would like it to do what I do without a paycheck. Going for personal loans, like the mortgage is a nightmare because I don't have an income, but because I made more than my husband and handled all the finances, the bulk of the debt we had was in my name. I had to stay off many financing agreements because of this and my credit score was lower than his.

It seems as if I am living in a different world trying very hard to keep trusting God to get through to the right people to help me out because I feel so lost in all of this. I keep waiting for the grant to come in that I was told about last year, but for whatever reason, this keeps getting pushed ahead and I'm told to keep waiting.

It's gotten to the point where I know I have to try to find a paying job and cut way back on the work I do online. This is disheartening beyond belief. Five years after moving to Florida so that I could turn this into something feels like it's been one failure after another. What hurts more than anything else is that I know a lot of powerful people and very few of them want to support me or help me. They don't watch my videos to know what I do, read the blog to know what I know or take me seriously at all. Most of this is because I am not a rich person and have no power at all to do anything for them in return. The other factor is that I am a female and only married to a veteran, not one myself.

This step can help spouses like me when it seems the rest of the country is only interested in helping the Iraq and Afghanistan families survive. The older veterans families have been forgotten about just like the older veterans have been passed by. I really pray to God this is not just one more of the things that sound good for all disabled veterans' families and military families only to find out we still just don't fit in.

Spouses get federal job boost next month

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Aug 12, 2009 17:31:05 EDT

A rule that could help military spouses get jobs in the federal government quicker will take effect Sept. 11.

The final regulations published in today’s Federal Register implement a Sept. 25, 2008, executive order allowing federal managers to hire qualified military spouses without putting them through the normal competitive hiring process.

Those eligible include spouses who relocated with their service members because of permanent change-of-station orders, unremarried widows or widowers of service members killed on active duty, and spouses of service members who are 100 percent disabled as a result of active duty.read more here
Spouses get federal job boost next month