To be good - or not.

"You do not have to be good."

Those words, from the Mary Oliver poem Wild Geese, stopped me dead in my tracks four years ago. You do not have to be good.

I was the wife of a soldier who had been diagnosed with an operational stress injury. Even though his trauma had occurred years earlier, in 2021 his personality, his patience and all of his interactions with the people and environment around him changed in a matter of months following his formal diagnosis.

In the following year, I tried to make being good my job. I thought if I stayed ahead of the curve - did all the household planning, managed social interactions, anticipated my husband's needs and stayed busy at work - life would continue on as normal and the OSI would fade into the background.

I was wrong. It didn't matter how good I wanted to be: The changes to our family were drastic and permanent, and because my energies were so scattered, it often felt like I was doing no good at all.

I was relieved to find support in my local OSISS group, but we could only cover so much ground at our bi-weekly meetings over coffee.

Over time, the coffee dates turned into lunch dates, and we had more opportunities to talk about the things our families were experiencing.

It was refreshing to hear other people share the coping techniques and tools that worked for them - particularly since all of them seemed to have left behind the "being good" phase of their lives.

Here were women who understood the importance of self-care and autonomy while staying married to someone with complex needs.

They could share grim stories of the effects of OSIs without anyone pulling away or falling apart.

They could laugh at the more ridiculous moments (that might also baffle civilians), and always offered their support to whoever was struggling, especially if that person was new to their OSI journey.

I feel so fortunate to have met these women, and so many more, who walk their path every day with determination, resilience and optimism - although they might not call it that.

I hope that There She Grows will be a space where women who meet OSI trauma head-on every day can give themselves permission to love what they love - whether that's writing short stories, making crafts or digging in the dirt. I hope they know they don't have to be good.