(I.)
You wrote it into policy:
Service before self.
Member mobility mandatory.
Family absorbs the rest.
You codified disruption
As operational need.
Filed it in directives.
Stamped it “duty.”
The Family Care Plan assigns
Care downward, never up.
Authority stays in uniform.
Responsibility lands with us.
This is not culture.
Not custom.
Not accident.
This is structure.
This is design.

(Chorus)
You do not need to conscript me.
You legislate my role.
Deployability requires
The quiet forfeiture of soul.
Operational readiness
Is not just ships and air —
It is unpaid reproductive work
Performed without repair.
You built a force on feminized elasticity
And named it “support.”
You wage war on my autonomy
To keep yours export-ready.

(II.)
Recruit a member. Retain a family.
You say it like a fact.
Retention metrics rise and fall
On labour you don’t track.
Mobility clauses erase careers.
Provincial licensing stalls.
Spousal unemployment normalized
Inside your covenant walls.
Resilience programming instructs:
Reframe strain as growth.
If the system destabilizes you
The failure is your own.
Self-regulate. Self-manage.
Self-soothe the cost.
Structural stress rebranded
As individual loss.

(Chorus - Stronger — percussion builds)
You issue toolkits, not reform.
You fund workshops, not pay.
You privatize the damage
And operationalize the stay.
No pension accrues for readiness
Performed in private rooms.
No force design includes the spouse
Whose labour it consumes.
This is not collateral.
It is procurement strategy.
You extract identity
To stabilize capacity.

III.
Mental health framed as prevention.
“Support at home” reduces harm.
Mitigation downloaded
Into my unarmed arms.
If he fractures, I am buffer.
If he withdraws, I brace.
Stability becomes my mandate
Without authority or place.
Intimacy becomes tactical.
Marriage becomes terrain.
My body becomes infrastructure
For reintegration of pain.
You call this partnership.
You call this shared command.
Yet standing is derivative —
Contingent on his hand.

(IV. Tension Peak — music thins before swell)
I enter rooms with policy briefs.
I cite your own reports.
Gender lenses. Equity frameworks.
Quality of life supports.
You nod at intersectionality.
You publish progress slides.
But spousal labour underwrites
Every readiness surge you cite.
There is no legal standing
For the spouse in force design.
No bargaining power. No representation.
Just compliance over time.
Dissent is tolerated
Until it names extraction.
Until it questions why my erasure
Is required for your traction.
(Pause. Stomp enters.)

(Choral Repeat — Call to Action
Layered voices enter, stomp builds)
You called us strength behind —
Stop erasing wives.
Legislate the labour.
Represent our lives.
Recognize our standing.
Recognize our role.
There is no force projection
Without our unpaid toll.
Codify the labour.
Compensate the care.
If we are mission-critical —
Then write us there.

(Final Chant — Percussive, Unified
Full voices, strong downbeat on 1)
Write us into doctrine.
Write us into law.
No more silent subsidy.
No more hidden cost.
Recognize the labour.
Recognize the claim.
Operational readiness
Has a woman’s name.
(Repeat — louder)
Operational readiness
Has a woman’s name.
(One more — stripped to stomp and voices)
Operational readiness
Has. A. Woman’s. Name.