By Joe Byerly
Regardless of what you did in the military, how many times you deployed, how long you spent in uniform, or what rank you achieved, there is a common experience that unites all of us: the homecoming.
And when I say homecoming, I’m not talking about the images and videos that came to define the Global War on Terrorism: a service member returning from months in Iraq or Afghanistan, stepping into a gymnasium or onto a field, and being mobbed by a spouse, children, and loved ones.
The homecoming I’m referring to is the one that happens when you hang up the uniform, along with the identity that came with it, and return to something resembling a normal existence.
A lot of people have written about this. There are countless books and articles—and perhaps one too many LinkedIn posts—describing the difficulty of making that transition.
It is hardly a new phenomenon. Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who spent almost eight years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, wrote about it in the memoir he co-authored with his wife, Sybil, as they came to accept that they would have to become comfortable with what they called a “halfway interesting life.”
But the struggle goes back much further, to the earliest stories of warriors leaving the warmth of the hearth, going off to battle, and then attempting to find their place at home again.
In fact, it is illustrated in one of my favorite passages from Homer’s Odyssey—after two decades away, Odysseus and Penelope are united in a very emotional scene:
He held his love,
his faithful wife, and wept. As welcome as
The land to swimmers, when Poseidon wrecks
Their ship at sea and breaks it with great waves
And driving winds; a few escape the sea
And reach the shore, their skin all caked with brine.
Grateful to be alive, they crawl to land.
So glad she was to see her own dear husband,
And her white arms would not let go of his neck…
But then Odysseus tells her:
“Wife, we have not come yet to the end of our troubles; there
Are more to come, many hard labors which I must complete.”
The imagery is so vivid: the shipwrecked sailors crawling from the sea, their bodies caked in salt; Penelope wrapping her arms around the husband she believed she might never see again; the two finally united in a land he had spent twenty years trying to reach.
But the passage also reveals something more complicated about homecoming.
Odysseus has survived the war. He has crossed the sea. He has finally returned to the woman he loves. And yet, even in the moment he has longed for, he understands that coming home does not mean the end of his journey.
That is what I have learned in the years since completing my own two-decade odyssey. There is still a lot of work to do, and sometimes there are troubles you never saw coming.
Too often, the demands of the job—the relentless pace, the constant change, and the novelty and challenge of each new assignment—keep us from dealing with what accumulates over time. There is always another mission, another move, another problem requiring your attention. So you keep going.
But once you take your foot off the gas and the momentum of a military career finally slows, the fissures that have been forming beneath the foundation begin to work their way to the surface.
At least, that has been my experience.
Dealing with them required a humility I had not always possessed. I had to admit that I could not work through everything on my own and seek professional help. I had to learn to lean on friends instead of withdrawing from them. And I had to resist reaching for the things that could numb or distract me, because escaping the discomfort is easier than doing the work required to understand it.
None of this came naturally. For most of my adult life, I had been rewarded for pushing through, compartmentalizing, and continuing the mission—or, as one of my close friends likes to put it, “shove that shit down.”
But some problems cannot be outrun, outworked, or locked away. And no matter how hard you shove, they push back with equal force. Eventually, they have to be faced.
For those who retire from the military, there is also an unspoken expectation about what coming home will look like for the family. They have been waiting too. They have imagined what life will be like once the deployments, field exercises, late-night phone calls, and constant demands finally end.
I cannot tell you how many times my daughter has reminded me that she thought retirement meant I would be home all the time—for every school drop-off and every bus-stop pickup.
In her mind, I had finished the journey. I was home.
But, like Odysseus, I was beginning to realize that coming home and learning how to be home are not the same thing.
There were also responsibilities I had taken for granted because my wife had carried them for so long. While I worked seventy-hour weeks, she managed the laundry, planned dinners, kept track of school schedules, made appointments, and handled the countless details that allowed our family to function.
Now she had a career of her own, and I had to move from relying on her to carry nearly all of that invisible load to becoming a true partner in it. But that adjustment required something from her, too. She had to loosen her grip on routines she had managed for years and allow me to step in, even when I did things differently.
And it has not always been easy.
While I do not miss the early wake-ups, the late-night phone calls, or the constant feeling that the next crisis was waiting just around the corner, I am learning that life was, in some ways, much simpler when someone handed you a mission, gave you a set of values, and told you where to be and what mattered.
Once the uniform comes off, those questions become your responsibility.
You have to decide what your mission is now, which values will guide you, how you will measure success, and where your time and energy should go. No one hands you those answers. You have to start figuring them out for yourself.
So perhaps when Homer put those words into Odysseus’ mouth—
“Wife, we have not come yet to the end of our troubles;
There are more to come, many hard labors which I must complete.”
—he understood something that the rest of us eventually discover: homecoming is not the end of the work.
It involves healing, managing expectations, redefining success, and deciding which values will guide the life that comes next.
Homecoming is progress mixed with setbacks; a few false starts, some difficult conversations, and the humility to keep learning. It is discovering that you can be grateful to be home while still struggling to find your place there.
Homecoming is, in some ways, another odyssey.
Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
