While the military culture is a subculture of America, the military spouse community is a subculture of the military. Similar to our military kids, these subcultures experience a unique perspective separate from what service members and government employees experience. While they are not employees and (mostly) aren’t regulated by the institution, their relationship with the Department of Defense has a history of confusion, expectations, entanglement, and deeply personal experiences. It is unfortunately too easy to make their voice secondary, secondary to the mission, and secondary to our priorities and interests. And yet, we are told we are the backbone of force readiness. To skip over the spouse chapters in the book as well as this episode only enforces that narrative. So I’m inviting you to lean in. The best way to discuss the spouse chapters of the book was to bring in a multi-generational spouses roundtable with various experiences.

Ending Credits song is "Cool" by active duty Army service member Tyler Smith.

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. 

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift https://militaryfamilybooks.com/products/military-culture-shift-by-corie-weathers

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast https://corieweathers.podbean.com/

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie https://www.corieweathers.com

Can an institution as large as our Department of Defense change? What is it about our relationship with the DOD that makes it difficult to ask for healthy accountability and transparency? I sat down with Ryan Sweazy, Director of Walk the Talk Foundation, a non-profit that protects military whistleblowers, to help us understand the power dynamics many feel every day. 

Walk the Talk Foundation: https://walkthetalkfoundation.org/

Mission: To give military members a voice when and where they don’t have one, guiding them through the treacherous journey of the Whistleblower.

Ending Credits Song "Bitterness" Performed, Written, and Produced by son of active duty service member Bailey Hamrick.

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. 

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here:

As a Gen X, I wish I could say that it was my generation that was the Hero generation. However, Millennials swung away from independence and invited our multi-generational nation into a giant family meeting. With their signature question “why”, they have challenged us to talk about the many elephants in the room, making all of us a little (or a lot) uncomfortable. As conversations became public around diversity, mold in housing, and food insecurity many millennials found ways to advocate for government response.  Shannon Razsadin, a millennial military spouse helped found Military Family Advisory Network, a non-profit that provides research on these topics. MFAN helped expose the model crisis in 2019 and are currently tackling food insecurity.  I wanted to bring Shannon on the podcast to share more about her motivations before and during those years as well as her own first impressions of the military community when she came in. 

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. This podcast offers leaders an opportunity to understand the growing shifts happening within the military culture as an immersive supplement to the book. Based on 15 years of research, counseling, and teaching the military culture across all branches. Gain insights on changing perspectives within the culture, generational shifts in authority, the impact of Department of Defense budget decisions, emerging social trends within the military community, and the cumulative effect of two decades of the War on Terror on military family wellness.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Final Credit song is "Still" written, produced, and performed by active duty service member Tyler Smith (Spotify: Tyler Smith "Still")

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here

Sponsored by New Rez Home Mortgages: Newrez believes the lending business shouldn't just be about home loans - it should be about homeowners. 

Starting in 2008, cell phones and social media quickly escalated into our daily lives. Millennials filled the lower ranks of the force while op-tempos reached exhausting levels and sequestration tainted the beginning of a second decade of war as it forced us to dangerously downsize. The “halo effect” left many Gen X and older Millennials, confused- trying to reconcile their positive expectations of the military with reality. Technology provided a megaphone to an eager and fearless generation that had a lot to say, and access to influential leaders who, they felt, needed to hear it. 

In Chapter 6, I shared the story of Amy, a millennial, a journalist for Military.com, and a military spouse who gave voice to the betrayal she and other families felt as service members were handed pink slips instead of promotions. Amy was just one of many examples of how Millennials aimed to bring about change. Amy later became an editor for Military.com and is known as one of the most competent voices on a lot of military issues, including understanding the Tricare system. I asked Amy to come on the podcast to share what she remembers from that decade, but also the shifts she saw in the culture as she covered it over the years. 

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. This podcast offers leaders an opportunity to understand the growing shifts happening within the military culture as an immersive supplement to the book. Based on 15 years of research, counseling, and teaching the military culture across all branches. Gain insights on changing perspectives within the culture, generational shifts in authority, the impact of Department of Defense budget decisions, emerging social trends within the military community, and the cumulative effect of two decades of the War on Terror on military family wellness.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

The final credits song is "Bang" by Moda Spira.

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here.

Sponsored by New Rez Home Mortgages: Newrez believes the lending business shouldn't just be about home loans - it should be about homeowners. 

In the Army, there is an old saying that the commander is responsible for everything the unit does or fails to do. When morale begins to fail in the institution, the culture looks to the top. When the Afghanistan exit began to unravel, veterans and even some active duty looked to top military leadership, mainly the Joint Chiefs of the branches as well as the Chairman for responsibility and accountability. Some were even angry that stars were not put on the table in the name of protecting and serving the people in the fight.

The more I dug into the frustration felt by those boots on the ground and leveraged curiosity for those carrying the weight of hard decisions at the top, the more messy accountability became. I found that most people, regardless of role, rank, or responsibility were genuinely doing the best they could in the circumstances they found themselves in. It turns out, the messy part is choosing to believe it. I knew it would be helpful to hear from one of those Joint Chiefs from that season, to not only get his lessons on leadership but more importantly, to share what it is really like to make tough decisions at the top that will impact an entire branch.  So I invited retired General Norton Shwartz, or Norty as he likes to be called, and his wife Suzie to share some of their story. He became the 19th Joint Chief of Staff of the Air Force in 2008 after his predecessor was fired for misplacing nuclear weapons. They served in that role until 2012 as sequestration and exhaustion rippled throughout the military culture. Both Boomers, they have continued to invest in their community since then. 

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. This podcast offers leaders an opportunity to understand the growing shifts happening within the military culture as an immersive supplement to the book. Based on 15 years of research, counseling, and teaching the military culture across all branches. Gain insights on changing perspectives within the culture, generational shifts in authority, the impact of Department of Defense budget decisions, emerging social trends within the military community, and the cumulative effect of two decades of the War on Terror on military family wellness.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Final Credit song is "I Just Don't Get It", written, produced, and performed by veteran James Corbin (Spotify: James Corbin, "I Just Don't Get It")

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here

Sponsored by New Rez Home Mortgages: Newrez believes the lending business shouldn't just be about home loans - it should be about homeowners. 

The Defense Budget is not likely part of your dinner table conversations. Yet, the budget impacts the lives of everyday military families in the groceries they have access to, the condition of their housing, and of course their paycheck. I wanted to make the very confusing topic of Congress and Defense Budgets as simple as possible, so who better to invite than Heba Abdelaal, a Millennial military spouse, former congressional staffer, and incredible human to the podcast. 

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. This podcast offers leaders an opportunity to understand the growing shifts happening within the military culture as an immersive supplement to the book. Based on 15 years of research, counseling, and teaching the military culture across all branches. Gain insights on changing perspectives within the culture, generational shifts in authority, the impact of Department of Defense budget decisions, emerging social trends within the military community, and the cumulative effect of two decades of the War on Terror on military family wellness.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here.

Sponsored by New Rez Home Mortgages: Newrez believes the lending business shouldn't just be about home loans - it should be about homeowners. 

Corie sits down with military historian Dr. Edward A. Gutiérrez who studied the Doughboys from WW1. Dr. Gutiérrez specifically researched how a sense of honor and duty were engrained in the everyday culture of Americans prior to WW1 propelling many of them to enlist in the war. In this talk, Dr Gutiérrez suggests that as a culture moves away from embracing suffering, and even war and death, we lose cohesiveness, our humanity, and resilience as a society. He also shares how key motivations of honor and duty represented something different than it does today.  

Dr. Edward A. Gutiérrez | Director, Center for Military History and Grand Strategy

Read: Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience (Modern War Studies), by Dr. Edward A. Gutiérrez

This podcast is based on the book Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. This podcast offers leaders an opportunity to understand the growing shifts happening within the military culture as an immersive supplement to the book. Based on 15 years of research, counseling, and teaching the military culture across all branches. Gain insights on changing perspectives within the culture, generational shifts in authority, the impact of Department of Defense budget decisions, emerging social trends within the military community, and the cumulative effect of two decades of the War on Terror on military family wellness.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here.

Sponsored by New Rez Home Mortgages: Newrez believes the lending business shouldn't just be about home loans - it should be about homeowners. 

Closing song is Regrets by Moda Spira 

Corie sits down with her husband Matthew to talk about the process of writing Military Culture Shift, behind the scenes of being an author, and Matt's thoughts on what it means to be a "ground-level" leader. Matthew, an active duty service member and Corie, a mental health clinician, coach, and consultant, share some of the shifts they have seen over the years.

This podcast is based on the book, Military Culture Shift by clinical consultant and SME on military family culture, Corie Weathers. This podcast offers leaders an opportunity to understand the growing shifts happening within the military culture as an immersive supplement to the book. Based on 15 years of research, counseling, and teaching the military culture across all branches. Gain insights on changing perspectives within the culture, generational shifts in authority, the impact of Department of Defense budget decisions, emerging social trends within the military community, and the cumulative effect of two decades of the War on Terror on military family wellness.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here.

Sponsored by New Rez Home Mortgages: Newrez believes the lending business shouldn't just be about home loans - it should be about homeowners. 

Ending Credits Song is "Love Like There's No Tomorrow" written and performed by Army veteran Micheal Trotter Jr and his Wife Tanya as War & Treaty.

The Military Culture Shift Limited Series Leadership Podcast launches Feb 15, 2024! Interviews with experts and leaders, (many of them mentioned in the book) will bring the book to life in a multi-sensory way, and breathe life into your home and leadership, and especially validate your story. Episodes will start on Feb 15th and roll out weekly so make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss them and have picked up the book if you haven’t.

(Order the book from Amazon here)

Also, I’m encouraging you ahead of time to listen all the way to the end of each episode for powerful songs written and performed by veterans, military spouses, and even Gen Z military teens. I’ve so enjoyed lifting up our community and I hope you will feel lifted as well.

Order your copy of Military Culture Shift here. 

Listen to Corie's Lifegiver Podcast here

Find out more about how you can work with and contact Corie here.

As a special teaser to Military Culture Shift launching on November 14th, 2023, Corie reads the introduction- inspiring readers to listen to the story of our military community in a way you've never heard before. 

Order Military Culture Shift from Military Family Books

Order Military Culture Shift on Amazon

More about the Book

More about author Corie Weathers, LPC