What is it like to be a military nurse? Check out Tif Marcelo's story of serving in the Army as a military nurse. The military paid her tuition to become a nurse through an ROTC scholarship. Today she is a fiction author and in her newest book, she highlights the stories of military spouses.
Tif enlisted into the Army while in high school and attended boot camp the summer between her junior and senior year. Her recruiter told her about the Reserve Officer Training Corps Program (ROTC) in the fall of her senior year and encouraged her to apply. She was able to continue serving in the Army through the Reserves and her ROTC time counted the Reserve requirement. After graduation, she became an Army nurse.
She met her husband in college via ROTC. For their first assignment, they were able to get stationed together in Germany. She spent four years in the Army and worked as a nurse in the hospital. Although, she planned to serve twenty years in the military everything changed as she became a mom. And then when September 11th happened it brought more future challenges. She covers the challenges of leaving a five and half week old baby in daycare. And the challenge she found going back to work so quickly was only intensified when the possibility of deployment became more likely with the events of September 11th. She decided that the best choice for herself and her family was to leave the military.
Leaving the military, even though the right choice, was not easy. She talks about being blue for the first six months and how she leaned into the struggle she was feeling. Luckily with a nursing degree she could continue working and be able to be there for her family. Her husband continues to serve in the military and has deployed or traveled throughout his career. When she was pregnant with her fourth child she started to pursue a career in writing. She had always loved to write but never followed that passion.
It took a lot of hard work to find where she wanted to go with her writing. Today, she is a fiction author. She has written six books and is currently signed to write four more books. In her newest book, In a Book Club Far Away, she covers the military community through the eyes of a fictional military spouse club centered around a book club. The three main characters bounce back and forth between their stories and the past and present day.
As a military spouse and veteran, it was amazing to see the main characters as military spouses and one of the three main characters was serving on active duty while married to a service member. The depiction of characters resonated with me. You can read my full review here.
Military stories from female authors
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