Be Safe, Love Mom: A Military Mom's Stories of Courage, Comfort, and Surviving Life on the Home Front

Image of Be Safe, Love Mom: A Military Mom's Stories of Courage, Comfort, and Surviving Life on the Home Front
Release Date: 
March 30, 2015
Publisher/Imprint: 
PublicAffairs
Pages: 
272
Reviewed by: 

“Poignant sometimes to point of inducing tears, Be Safe, Love Mom is not easy reading.”

A must have book for every family whose sons or daughters go in harm’s way by joining the U.S. military, Be Safe, Love Mom focuses on the stress, sacrifice, and sometimes the grief of those who remain on the Home Front.

“But what about the bigger bricks and the bigger worries? The ones that come when your child is deployed? The ones that sneak up on you when you’re in the grocery store and someone asks about him and you dissolve in tears because there’s been no word in months and you don’t know where he is?”

An Army brat herself, and the mother of four military officers deployed in various parts of a troubled world, Elaine Lowry Brye is uniquely suited to speak for the families of military personnel. She served as the moderator of the Naval Academy Parents Listserve and is one of the founding organizers of its parent community website and Facebook page.

“When I think of Bob and all those people young and old who step  forward to support and honor our troops in any way they can, I realize once again, for the thousandth time, or maybe millionth, that no military parent needs to be alone with his or her worries and fears.”

Brye shares her own methods of coping with being the mother of four active military officers, and relates the worries of other parents who fear for children’s lives. “We all need to talk to or cry with or sometimes just sit silently with someone who understands.”

Be Safe, Love Mom is a training manual for those who do not have children in the military. It is a simply written, very honest book about how parenting a child at war feels. Through author Brye’s experiences and those of others who share their stories with her, one gains an understanding of the demands made on families, demands and sacrifices that don’t make the national news until a flag-draped coffin is involved.

Poignant sometimes to point of inducing tears, Be Safe, Love Mom is not easy reading. It may not even be possible to read at one setting, but it is one of those books that ought to required reading for every citizen.