riverside_annie_the_mission driven

Hey Mamas, welcome back to Mission to Move Mamas. It's Annie and Kylie, and today we have a very special episode for you. We're joined by the amazing Rae Duran, a military spouse and mama who has built an incredible community here at MWTC, which, for those of you who don't know, is Mountain Warfare Training Center. She's here to talk about how she built her community and why it's so important to have the support system, and how you can lean on others when life gets tough. Rae, we are so excited to have you here today. You've done such an amazing job building a community, and we're thrilled to have you share your experience with our listeners. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you guys for having me. Okay, Rae. So, we would love to start by hearing about your journey. You, as a military spouse, as a mama, face challenges with life and the constantly changing schedule. So, what made you decide to start building this community here at MWTC? Yeah, okay. So, I'll start with introducing myself. So, my name's Rae. Yeah, I've been a military spouse for four years now. I have three kids. I have a seven, three, and then a ten-month-old. This all started back when my husband was on his 6th deployment in 29 Palms. I was pregnant with my middle child, and I had absolutely nobody. So, it was really scary. I didn't have a support system. And then, all of a sudden, I was on the wife's page there, and I saw this flyer for coffee connections through the USO. Oh, yeah. And, wow, so scary to even think about going to something like that. But I knew, because I didn't have anybody, that I needed to push myself to go. Yeah. I remember walking in with my little newborn baby into this room. I was shaking. I didn't know what to do. I was going to have a panic attack eventually. And there were six other women in there, another one with a brand new baby, and we were all in the same boat. And I met these incredible women, and I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I'm still friends with them to this day. All six of those women that I met that very first day, we're all still friends. We keep in contact through social media, which is so incredible to me. And then, from there, it just kind of spiraled. We made connections in different ways. I met the head of the USO there, and she was like, oh, you're moving to Bridgeport? I know somebody who's moving to Bridgeport. Let's connect. And it just kept going from there. Initially, the response to me moving to Bridgeport was not positive at all. I remember talking to people, and they were like, oh, you're going to Bridgeport. You're going to have the worst three years of your life, essentially. And that was so scary to me, especially because I had just found my place in 29 with all of these different things. I had gotten involved with the USO. I had gotten involved with MSA, which is the Military Spouses Association, Stroller Warriors, all this stuff. So I'm like, okay, I'm being uprooted and going to the middle of nowhere. What is going to happen? So I went into this pre-depression state all over again, which was so scary because regardless, if you're moving to a big base or wherever you're going, you feel that sense of being uprooted and everything diminishing that you've worked so hard to call home. So I moved here in June of 2022. I had a six-month-old and a five-year-old. There was absolutely nothing here. There wasn't? No, nobody. You saw nobody. I remember walking around, and I was like, there's nobody here. Nobody talks to each other. We're such a small community. There's what? There's less than 100 houses. Yeah. Do you think that everyone knew each other? You see the Hallmark Channel, where everyone's in a small town and it's a stroller thing. And that's not what it was. And I saw it as just so much potential and an opportunity to create a space like that. And so another spouse was moving here at the same time. We were a part of all of the different organizations in 29 together. We were like, this is our chance to be those people to start something. And it does. It takes one person to put their foot forward and take that initiative to create a space that this place has so much potential for. So that's when I started the children's playgroup here. I started all of the spouse socials. We got that all rolling. Our first spouse social that we had here, I opened my house up, and I ended up having three spouses come into my tiny little house. And I have coffee and t-shirts and stuff. That's so cool. And I have kids running everywhere. But oh my goodness. But it obviously validated what you were setting up to accomplish. Yeah. Right? And people responded excellently. Yeah. Just like somebody taking that first step and it was such a positive outcome. I was like, all right, now we just have to continue it. Yes. Yeah. So yeah. And then I got on with Stroller Warriors. I got on with Family Readiness. And kind of making all of those connections here and pushing my face and my voice out. Because that's my personality. Right? Yes. Not everybody is like that. And I understand that 100%. But if I was coming here, and I knew that I'm coming here, and that's my personality, and nobody else is doing that, I took that as a chance to be that person. It just doesn't make me happy anymore. Yes. So yeah. That's kind of how we went from there. Earlier, I was thinking about recording this podcast. And how the first time I moved here, I don't think I had looked at the Facebook before I moved here. But this time moving here, I was on Facebook a few months before. Yeah. Like the groups. And always saw you posting. And I was like, this girl must be like, she is doing so much. Like this is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. This is amazing. Like this is really cool. 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