Military Spouse Survival Kit

Your spouse raises a right hand, and suddenly, your whole life has a new rulebook. Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, sits down with Kayla LaFond, military spouse liaison for the Virginia Department of Veterans Services (DVS), for an honest talk about what the transition into military spouse life really looks like, from the first duty station shock to the long stretches where you feel like you are rebuilding from scratch.

Kayla shares her own path as part of a Navy family, including how a PCS move can crush momentum when professional licenses do not transfer cleanly across state lines. We dig into licensure reciprocity, why military spouse employment is so hard to sustain, and how underemployment can quietly become the norm. Kayla also explains how finding the right support at a Fleet and Family Support Center helped her turn a tough moment into a career breakthrough, and why good resume guidance and real connections beat random job boards when you are new to a community.

We also get practical about what military families in Virginia are facing right now: child care waitlists that can reach hundreds of families, what happens when fee assistance changes during transitions, and why remote work opportunities can be a game-changer for spouse career continuity. Larry points listeners to official resources, including the Virginia DVS military spouse page and the Virginia Values Veterans (V3) program that spouses can use, plus the on-installation spouse clubs that help you find your footing faster.

If you know a military spouse who is job hunting, navigating child care, or staring down a PCS, share this conversation with them, then subscribe and leave a review so more families can find these resources.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Larry Zilliox 0:15

Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliaks, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run. And this week our guest is Kayla LaFonde. And she is the military spouse liaison for the Virginia Department of Veterans Services. And I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a webinar she did on resources for the spouses of active duty military stationed here in the Commonwealth. And uh it was very interesting. It was a lot more resources than I thought. So I asked her to join me so we could talk a little bit about the different programs that uh the Department of Veterans Services has. Um, but first I want to start, uh Kayla. You are the spouse of an active duty service member. Is that that right?

Kayla LaFond 1:08

Yes, we are a Navy family down here in the Hampton Roads region.

Larry Zilliox 1:12

Wow. And were you married prior to your husband joining the Navy?

Becoming A Military Spouse

Kayla LaFond 1:19

We were engaged.

Larry Zilliox 1:21

Okay. And how long ago was that?

Kayla LaFond 1:24

He has been in 12 years. Wow. Okay, we've been married for at least 11 of those.

Larry Zilliox 1:32

Talk a little bit about what it was like to become a military spouse. And I I don't think people realize how much of a change that is for the spouse of an active duty service member. You go from essentially being a civilian into this whole other world that has all its own crazy rules, and everything is the words are different for everything. And so what was that? What what was that like for you?

Career Disruptions After Moving States

Kayla LaFond 2:06

Yeah, so my husband and I met in college. So we're college sweethearts, and we both played lacrosse at our tiny little private school in Indiana. And I think where I kind of thought we were going would be you potentially like coaching lacrosse in different areas. Um, I was a Haitian major and my husband ended up getting his undergrad in criminal justice and then his master's in public administration from our college. And I think we definitely had that path of we are going to coach lacrosse. Like, that's what we are gonna do. We're already engaged, and he decided that he wanted to go in the Navy. And at that point, I was like, where has that been the past five years? Like, what is my life going to look like? By the time we got married, I was coaching, I was an assistant lacrosse coach at a uh D3 school in Ohio, and then eventually moved to our first duty station, which was Norfolk. Tried to get that job um in teaching, but my teaching license from Indiana did not correlate to Virginia, and so that would have been um before all this licensure reciprocity kind of stuff was really in full force than what it is today. In Indiana, I would have been able to teach middle school to high school science. High school would be specifically only. And so when I moved here, they were like, you can only teach chemistry, you can't even teach middle school. Um, so my jobs are pretty limited. Um, I went the substitute teacher route um to try to get in with the schools. I was coaching lacrosse for some high school girls. By the time we were up for orders again after going through our first um deployment, I literally said, let's just go wherever. I don't have any specific ties to here. I don't have a full-time job. Like now's the time to go. And so we actually left Virginia for San Diego. And by that point, I just let my teaching license expire. Um, kind of I was unemployed, definitely underemployed, took temporary jobs, um, either coaching. Um, I worked at Michael's craft store for a little bit just so I could pay my student loans every month. This was obviously way before kids. So kind of felt a little lost in San Diego. It was a tough time. Uh, my husband, within the first month of us being there, he flew and joined his ship, which was at the time deployed in Japan. I think it just we didn't have any family around. Joining a ship while they're already deployed, you don't get to meet anyone from the ship. Um, you're just kind of thrown into it. And so it was just really hard. Um, when they had that return and reunion briefing, I flat out went up to the instructor um who was from Fleet and Family Support Center. And I was just like, I have a degree, I need a job. And he's like, it's probably your resume. And so I made that appointment with their team um out of Naval Station Norfolk, and basically they told me in a really nice way that my resume was garbage. And they actually said you would be perfect here to teach with Fleet and Family Support Center. Um, but we don't have any jobs right now. But what if you volunteer? And so I volunteered, was working on those part-time jobs at the same time. And then a job opened up, and um, I was able to start working with Fleet and Family Support Center, and I was teaching the retiree tap classes on a submarine base out there. I think by the time our tour was ending in San Diego, I was like, get me back to Virginia. I can transfer my job. Like Virginia feels more like home for us. And so transferred my job and he came back to Virginia, and I worked at Fleet and Family for a little bit before this job popped up. It's definitely been a roller coaster as a spouse.

Larry Zilliox 6:16

Well, and I and I think that um your story is is pretty typical, actually. Yep. What was it like? I mean, your first duty station was Norfolk, which is really the largest Navy base in the world. What was that? What was that like for you as a brand new spouse and your first duty station? What was it like for you to go there?

Kayla LaFond 6:44

Yeah, I think as my family is always we're I'm originally from the east side of Cleveland. Um we've always um vacationed on the east coast. Um my sister, I have an older sister who has lived in various like Charleston, South Carolina, Providence. We'd always go and visit her, but it kind of felt it was fun. I mean, we were fresh out of college, we were a little bit older than the rest of the people that were the his same rank. Um, so that and we were a little bit more established because we were already um by that point, by the time I moved out here, we we were married. And so the other folks kind of are still living out their college days. We were kind of past that. I didn't know what to expect. My introduction into the spouse world, um, my initial briefing was less than helpful. Um, I don't know if it was just like a fire hose of information, and I just didn't know what to take out of it, but I had no idea what Fleet and Family did. And the only thing that I got out of that whole briefing, which was not done by Fleet and Family, was that that's where I could get a base map. I didn't know that they could help with my resume. I didn't know that they had all these other resources for me as a spouse. And so I kind of felt lost here too. But my husband's made a lot of great friends on the ship. And so I was able to like, they were also became my friends. Um, when they deployed, I got really lucky that one of them had already transitioned off the ship. And so I had some friends that were still here that weren't on that deployment. But yeah.

Larry Zilliox 8:34

So on your second trip back to Norfolk now, you land this job with the Department of Veterans Services. And it sounds as though this job is made for you. How did how did you get, how did you luck into this position?

Finding Support Through Fleet And Family

Kayla LaFond 8:48

So when I was working at Fleet and Family, we had um a couple people from the Virginia Department of Veteran Services um come to our capstone events um that were that they could help um with resources for the state, um, while the rest of us that worked at Fleet and Family were helping them sign up on all the paperwork that they needed to transition out. And so they brought it to my attention that, hey, this job um passed legislation, like we're gonna post it soon. Um, you should definitely apply. And I was like, but I don't live in Richmond. And they said, well, you might have to go to Richmond like once a month for a meeting, but like you could we're still in like this telework policy kind of situation because it was right after COVID. Um, it was in 2021. And I was like, okay, I really enjoyed my time at Fleet and Family, but I kind of and I really loved that office. Um, I was kind of at that stance where there wasn't room. It was hard for me to keep going up the ladder career-wise, because I was competing with folks that had been working for Fleet and Family for decades, or they were a veteran. So they got that veteran preference for those um government jobs within the center. So it's kind of at a disadvantage um as a contractor. So I applied on a whim. Thankfully, at the time, a lot of what's in that legislation, like licensure reciprocity, accessing child care, um, spouse employment, a lot of it was stuff that I had experienced already. Um, childcare, not as not as much. We had our first kid at the end of 2021. So I was just heading into that experience as a military spouse, but I knew everything about spouse employment from personal experiences, but then also my time with working with fleet and family and helping spouses find employment. So it's kind of just right up my alley. And I was very thankful to get the job and this amazing opportunity that has grown from it.

Larry Zilliox 10:49

This position was created in 2021, um, legislatively. I don't know how many of our listeners really understand how veteran-friendly the Commonwealth of Virginia is. It is really uh a goal of DVS, the governor, to get as many veterans to stay here or come to Virginia to live when they retire or they separate, uh, because we have a lot of benefits for them. One of which was to create disposition to help military spouses with, if I'm not wrong, the the number one issue that they have, probably two issues actually, is child care and the other is uh license or reciprocity. So you have a lot of families where they're sent to a new uh state and their nursing license, their law degree, their accountant, um, their education, their certifications don't transfer, or it takes a long time. And now you're looking at six months that that family doesn't have revenue from that position, that job. So what is the what is the number one thing that you see here in Virginia military spouses need help with the most?

Kayla LaFond 12:12

Um, I think getting a little harder um trying to reach our spouses to really understand what they need. I mean, it's always gonna come down to child care, but that's for any military family, um, whether they're a single service member um or they have a spouse that's able to work um or wants to work. So childcare is gonna affect the entire fleet. Well, I guess the entire service. There's there's my navy coming out. I think so. Childcare, obviously. We have all of our installations um here in Virginia have extremely long wait lists. It can be from 300 families to 700. Um, whether you're in Hampton Roads or in your northern Virginia, we are making progress um with the military fee assistance. Um, but again, once that transition happens, those benefits can go away if you're not working for that military branch that has those. And so that's where we're kind of trying to figure out how what we can do during that transition period, um, is what we're kind of analyzing now with our partners at the Virginia Department of Education. Um, spouse employment's gonna be the other one.

Larry Zilliox 13:31

Right.

Virginia DVS Help For Spouses

Kayla LaFond 13:32

I think we get a lot of spouses, whether they're coming from overseas orders or new to Virginia or they're just starting out. I mean, we have literally every rank here in Virginia, including when we're starting to talk about our generals and admirals, um, our one, two, three stars are all here in Virginia. Also, people fresh out of boot camp. And so spouse employment's big. I think it's if we can somehow figure out and crack that nut with remote work opportunities um here in Virginia. We have Virginia has a lot of things going for them. Um, whether it's our different industries that we offer here information, they're not really showing up to a lot of like the Zoom events um because they already got their answer. That's kind of like the instant gratification kind of thing. So it's been it's been really difficult. It's difficult for everyone. Um, we're trying to make sure that we have resource tables at different events. Like we have Mill Spouse Fest um coming to Norfolk. And so we at the Virginia Department of Veterans Services have a table there. And I think just trying to work with those family support centers on the installations is another great route, too.

Larry Zilliox 14:45

Right.

Kayla LaFond 14:45

Um, just because as spouses, as active duty spouses, we're told that's where you go. When you transfer from one installation to the next, like you're told, here's your resource there. So if there's a way that we, as the Virginia Department of Veterans Services, can educate them on what services we offer, then hopefully we can kind of get more words since that is literally listed on those service members' orders.

Larry Zilliox 15:09

Well, listeners, uh, I'm gonna have a link to the uh Department of Veterans Services military spouses information page on their page about the different resources um on in the show notes. So I would advise everybody to go and and definitely check that out. Also, to Virginia has a uh a really excellent web page for veterans, and it's the Virginia Values Veterans Program, and it is open to spouses as well. So you can log into that as a spouse. You don't need to be active duty, you don't need to be a veteran, you can be a military spouse and um take advantage of the resources that you'll find there, and it's especially valuable, I think, too, because it it gives you resources from all over if you're gonna PCS somewhere and you want to try to get ahead of that and find reciprocity and housing and all sorts of things in other parts of the country. But I'm gonna have the link to their web page up on uh in the show notes. So I want you to take a look at that. I really would caution some of our listeners. I sometimes you'll get a great answer when you pose a question on the internet, uh, other times you won't. Um, it presupposes that the person that answers your question knows what they're talking about, and you can't always guarantee that. And I think you might sometimes get sent down some sort of rabbit hole or just waste your time. So please uh try to uh find some some official resources like the the webpage here and then Kayla, you you want to give everybody your email address in case they have a question?

Kayla LaFond 17:05

Yeah, absolutely. Um my email address for the program is millspuse at dvs.virginia.gov. And that's Virginia spelled all the way out.

Trusted Resources And How To Reach

Larry Zilliox 17:15

Yep. And it's millspouse, M-I-L spouse at dvs.virginia.gov. Um, so please check out the webpage. If you don't find what you need there or you're not sure, shoot uh Kayla an email and she'll get back to you. Um there are plenty of resources out there on the installations, and I'm uh we we have a pretty close association um with the Army Spouses Club. It used to be the Army Wives Club, but they've changed the name. Um and uh the here uh locally uh we do their tabling events. It's a great resource, and you're gonna find these uh clubs on pretty much every installation out there, and really try to uh if you're new, try to find this organization, this group on the installation, and you want to become involved with them because they'll mentor you, they'll tell you, you need this, you need this fixed in your house, you need to call here. And here's Jimmy, tell Jimmy, you know, uh General Smith's wife told to call. You know, it's that kind of thing. Um so please try to connect with those, with those groups. What do you what do you find or where do you see the DVS going when it comes to um supporting military spouses in the future? What what would you like to see uh happen in the next, I don't know, three to five years?

Kayla LaFond 18:49

Yeah, I think we're gonna be able to expand a lot and really get the word out. I think there's a lot of great resources that we offer, regardless of sponsor status. So active duty, National Guard, Reserve, veteran, and our surviving spouses, we have resources for all of them. Um, we do have specific teams that are tailored to that, like transitioning in that veteran and surviving spouse demographic. Um, but I think we have a lot of great things that are currently kind of happening behind the scenes right now that I hope really comes to fruition in the next couple of years and really relying on some solid partnerships, whether it's state entities or nonprofits, to really share what we have to offer because we have a lot of services that and programs that go really unnoticed. Um, and I think we're all headed in the right direction. It's just getting the word out.

What Comes Next And Closing

Larry Zilliox 19:47

Well, we're uh we're glad we're able to help do that uh in a small way here with our our podcast. And you know, one of the things we say to our veterans all the time is you're not alone. And and I think that that holds true for military spouses as well, especially when you're a new military spouse, and it can be daunting try and figure out this new life that you're thrown into. Um and just just remember that uh you're not alone. The the uh Kayla is out there, Department of Veterans Services is out there, the wives or the spouses clubs are are there, you'll find a way. It it may seem pretty crazy at first, but uh uh you're you're not alone. And I I just can't even imagine what it must have been like for you to be your first duty station Norfolk. Oh my gosh. Wow.

Kayla LaFond 20:48

Well it wasn't bad. It it the deployment was interesting, but um, it's nowhere near this current deployment, so yeah.

Larry Zilliox 20:56

Wow. Well, listen, um uh I can't thank you enough for for joining us uh uh today and and really getting the word out on uh these great resources that DVS has available for everybody. So thank you so much.

Kayla LaFond 21:10

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Larry Zilliox 21:13

Well, listeners, I'll have that webpage uh link in the show notes. I want to make sure everybody goes to that. Uh we will uh have a new episode next Monday morning at 0500. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms. We're on YouTube and Reese Across America Radio. So until then, thanks for listening.