Learning to F.L.Y. 

One of the key concepts that I try to impress upon my pilots’ wives is that it is essential for you to learn to F.L.Y.–to first love yourself–if you are going to be married to a traveling man. If you haven’t read this piece (or you just need a reminder), I encourage you wholeheartedly to hop over HERE and check it out. It is one of the core concepts upon which I am building #thepilotwifelife community, and for good reason!

Embracing the F.L.Y. principle and applying it to your life can and will change your heart and your marriage. I’ve already heard innumerable stories from my followers bespeaking this very truth! I am actually quite humbled by the impact it is making on our aviation community and marriages.

However, I also realize that knowing you should do something and actually figuring out ways or finding time to do it can be two different machines entirely. For instance, go ahead and ask me if I’ve had my shower yet today. No, actually on second thought…don’t.

Look, we all know that eating healthy meals, exercising, taking time for activities that we enjoy are all important ways to F.L.Y., but figuring out how to actually make them happen with a screaming toddler (who eats only mac and cheese) attached to your hip while trying to make it out the door to get the tween (who eats only chips and soda) to her game on time while you battle a severe case of the pilot wife plague…all on first-year salary…is real life.

That’s hard.

I have never and will never tell you that balancing the chaos of this lifestyle is easy. That would be fruitless because the point of this site is to be real—to dig in deep, know that we are not alone in our struggles, encourage one another, seek joy and figure out how to live it better together. I assure you that it can be done and done well! And of course, the end game, the whole kit and kaboodle, is to strengthen our aviation marriages.

I’m still very much on track with this mission, and I am super excited about some pretty cool stuff rolling out in the near future and beyond. I actually hope to reveal the first ‘big’ project pretty soon and launch it officially on October 21st, the one year anniversary of this page!

As part of my furthering effort to help you F.L.Y., I have also decided to branch out from my typical blogs and do a trial of something a little bit different to see how you like and respond to it. So yeah, your feedback would be greatly appreciated. I am calling the concept ‘Learning to F.L.Y.’, and it is just that! (Don’t worry, you’ll still be getting plenty of the my typical snarky self too)!

These will be practical applications including but not limited to quick and easy recipes, useful services or apps, tips for raising aviation kids, and anything else that might make life a little less chaotic for you. This will just be supplementary to my continued regular aviation blogs.

While I know that not every idea will be applicable to every situation to every person (that would be impossible with this many beautiful, diverse people aboard!), I hope that you enjoy this new resource and that you will be able to pick, choose, and apply those ideas that will hasten you upon your own personal F.L.Y. journey. Basically, if I can think outside of the box for you, it is my hope that I can help you spread those wings!

And those are my continued goals of this page:

• Build positive, supportive community.
• Teach and encourage you to F.L.Y.
• Strengthen aviation marriages.

I would also love to hear any practical applications that are working to make your aviation life more enjoyable. If you have anything that you believe could be helpful to others, please do not hesitate to drop me a message so that I can check them out and consider sharing them publicly with everyone.

This is our community. Let’s learn to F.L.Y. together!

I love you, aviation family.

Tailwinds and blue skies.

Angelia (a fellow pilot wife)

CHECK OUT THE JUST WINGING IT SERIES BY ANGELIA GRIFFIN HERE!