The MAMF February 2026 Facebook Banner

This February MAMF (Museum of the American Military Family) is celebrating love, devotion, and life-long relationships developed as BRATs, service members, or spouses of service members.

One of the most frequently lamented regrets of military BRATs before the advent of the Internet was that we moved too often to make lasting friendships. Stationed far away from our extended families (grandparents and cousins), and moving every two to three years (if we were lucky–some moved every year), as soon as we bonded with new school friends we were off to the next duty station. As adults we still found it difficult to trust that new frienships would last because we were conditioned to start letting go after two to three years.

Even as an early adopter of technology, the Internet, and email, I shied away from social media when it was introduced in the early 2000s because I couldn’t see the point of spending all that time online when I could be outdoors, or making art, or reading books. Then Facebook entered the scene and I was contacted by a college friend I hadn’t heard from in nearly twenty years. Then other college friends found me, or I found them; and then I started finding my childhood friends. I learned about a Facebook group for the elementary school I attended in Germany. Then I learned about BRATs: Our Journey Home (both a documentary film and a Facebook group for military brats), and a whole new world of old and new friendships with fellow BRATs opened up for me. I felt like I had gotten my childhood back.

In the MAMF anthology, Home: It’s Complicated, a collection of stories written by military BRATs about what home means to them, many stories recount the difficulties of friendships cut short by move after move to new duty stations. In groups like BRATs: Our Journey Home, not only did we reconnect with our long lost childhood friends, but we make new friends as we bond over our unique shared experience that those who are not TCKs (Third Culture Kids) can’t understand. We learn that not only is the love and devotion we had for our lost childhood friends with whom we reconnect easily rekindled, but we are easily able to develop new friendships with folks who we feel we have known our entire lives because of that shared experience. There is a camaraderie among BRATs that defies explanation.

But we aren’t the only ones who experience this. Spouses of military service members share a similar bond as they band together when their loved ones are deployed. And of course there’s the bond between military service members, themselves.

This month’s MAMF Facebook banner features my third grade class photo from Munich American Elementary School in 1973 underneath a display of Lebkuchenherzen,¹ and a family embracing their loved one as he leaves or returns from deployment.² Lebkuchenherzen (which is German for “gingerbread hearts”) have been a German tradition for seven hundred years, started by monks in the Franconia region in the 1300s. They are most often seen at Christmas markets and Oktoberfest. Oddly, they are not considered a Valentine treat, but I am featuring them here because of the obvious heart connection. As a child in Munich, I loved this traditional treat. Not only did it smell wonderful, and taste even better, but they are so beautiful, and the displays are spectacularly pleasing and cheerful. It was easy to bring Lebkuchenherzen together with this month’s theme of love and devotion.

¹ “Lebkuchen, Herzen, Dekoration, Herz, Feier, Traditionelle, Liebe, Romantik, Hochzeit, Zucker.” Pixnio. Accessed January 30, 2026. https://doi.org/https://pixnio.com/de/media/lebkuchen-herzen-dekoration-herz-feier. 

² “Tag: Military Culture.” Tucker Disability Law. Tucker Disability Law, Accessed January 30, 2026. https://doi.org/https://tuckerdisability.com/blog/tag/military-culture/.

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