Joi Rogers

Share your military spouse story:
On June 3, 2017, I married a Marine. I moved to the desert, started “official” military life and absolutely hated it. Sure, I loved the sympathy and pity I got when civilian friends bemoaned our chaotic and unpredictable lifestyle. But I found myself unemployed (with a graduate degree), living in isolation and spending each day completely alone while my husband executed a busy work up schedule for the first 4 months of marriage. The depression I had experienced for almost a decade intensified and rendered me emotionally unstable. It was terrifying, and I was miserable. Then he deployed to the Middle East. That fall, everything changed. I saw what it looks like to thrive in this life and trust that God has put us exactly where we need to be at just the right time. A military women’s ministry conference introduced me to a group of women, from all branches, who embraced this lifestyle with utter joy that I had never before seen. My time there was the catalyst I needed to take my faith in Jesus Christ seriously, to genuinely trust that God called me to be a military spouse in Twentynine Palms, and to pursue Him with my whole heart . With that acceptance came a two-fold blessing: internal peace and a newfound mission of stepping off the sidelines and investing into this military community of which I so reluctantly became a member. This looked something like volunteering for our battalion, playing and coaching kickball, serving on the staff of that same military women’s ministry organization, coordinating women’s ministry for our local church, and eventually accepting a job with the Marine Corps to tangibly help families cope with the military life. Through all these endeavors I seek to share the joy I found amidst the challenging and seemingly impossible. Now, despite being on the infamous orders roller-coaster, our desert family is everything, and I love the Marine Corps and all its craziness.

Share an example of your leadership experience within the military community:
While some of my leadership experience in this community has been formal (coaching, having a job as the primary point of contact for a whole battalion of spouses and parents, compliance officer etc.), it is the way I have engaged with others and the attitude with which I live that merits the role of “leader.” In the last 3 years, I have sought to make this place “home ” for other people. I continuously strive to be an encouragement and comfort for fellow spouses, whether within my battalion or my job, in my neighborhood or on the field. I have led them towards thriving in this lifestyle by using resources on base, facilitating spiritual growth , and showing genuine love. I held weekly spouse hangouts at my house, to create camaraderie and fellowship among spouses that otherwise didn’t know each other. I also currently lead weekly and monthly Bible studies for spouses in order for them to grow spiritually.

Describe your involvement in the military community:
Once I got off those sidelines, I started by joining our battalion kickball team for a physical outlet. I coached two seasons and helped lead the team to no victories, but lots of laughs. I joined our battalion’s volunteer team and served on the all-volunteer staff of Planting Roots, Inc., a military women’s ministry for both active duty and spouses as their compliance officer, strategic thinker and one-hit writer. I volunteer as the women’s ministry coordinator for our local church, which is roughly 85% active duty military and their families, causing this ministry to be one of the most fruitful endeavors of which I am a part. My passion for helping other spouses thrive in this life pushed me to pursue a job where I could impact families tangibly in the way prescribed by Headquarters Marine Corps. As such, I serve as the Deployment Readiness Coordinator for 7th Marine Regiment, in direct support of 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.

Describe how you support your community:
Listening to someone’s story is how I first saw what it’s like to thrive; when women who had experienced this lifestyle for 10+ years opened up in a genuine way about how they cope and where they find their joy. This is the unique way I support our community - by being open about my journey from hating to thriving. My story is short compared to many. While I may have found joy after some time, I’m tragically not the only one who started off this journey in darkness. By shedding light on the darkness, we take away its power. This is true with depression, as it is with any cloud that keeps us from living with joy. By demonstrating hope while exposing darkness, we can encourage others to take a leap of faith and jump al l in to this life they have been called to live. We can say, “There is a way to be okay again,” and “There is hope”- all while having examples of what that transformation looks like. With that, a beautiful, genuine, and open-hearted community is created.

What do you advocate for? Why?
It is clear to me that depression and anxiety have invaded our community and wreaked havoc for military spouses and our service members. While I believe the resources offered on each base are helpful and critical to coping, I have confidence in the individual. I urge military spouses to shed light on their own struggles, and for those who haven’t experienced such struggles, to engage in these conversations with humility and grace. The impact we can have on our own community by sharing mutual struggles, in learning how to talk about mental health in constructive, and practical ways and spreading the hope we’ve found is so profound. I say that as someone who has experienced this firsthand and who has seen others hope for the first time because they felt loved and understood by someone else. This isn’t a huge ask, and it doesn’t take a committee or a formalized process. It takes the spouse reading this to grab the chance to impact 1, 2 or 10 spouses they meet over this next year.

How have you spread the message of your platform/advocacy?
As I have developed personal relationships across the Marine Corps network and outside of the Marine Corps, I continue to share my story where appropriate. I have written for Planting Roots’ blog where I my story has been shared via social media. I have taken opportunities within my various roles on base to discuss mental health, and to have frank discussions about my experience and how we can make an impact on an individual level. Despite the early beginnings of my military career, I can now share the hope and joy that I have found with the spouses of 1st Battalion, 7th Marines and throughout my community.

What do you hope to accomplish with the AFI Military Spouse of the Year^® title?
I would love to continue to share my story and find others to publicly share their stories across a vast audience so that spouses in our community would find hope. The whole world is engaged in a deep fight with the presence and consequences of depression and anxiety. In a military environment, this is only exacerbated with the constant need to be “Semper Gumby”. I only wish to carry forward the hope, encouragement and joy I witnessed that fall day in San Diego by women who had experienced it all and spoke about the chaos of this life with true and complete joy.