10 years.
A decade.
A whole decade.

Truth be told, I was thinking about doing something along the lines of “10 Lessons I’ve Learned in 10 Years of Marriage,” but quite honestly…what 10 years of marriage has taught me is that life is a constant evolution. You are constantly learning–about yourself, about your spouse, about your parenting style, about your dreams, about the world around you.

To boil it down to 10 lessons wouldn’t honor the incredible learning experience marriage has been. So instead of doing 10 “lessons,” I am just going to tell you all our story.

Caleb and I were married in June of 2014. He was 23; I was 22. Some people told us not to get married, but his mom urged him not to buy a motorcycle, but instead to buy me a ring. And he listened. When we were discussing how quickly we decided to get married, I remember his mom telling me (and I’m paraphrasing, but this is the gist): You can either start your own lives on separate paths and try to merge them later on down the road. Or you can start your lives together, on the same path, and have each other the whole time.

So we decided to get married. To this day, I will swear by the fact that we had one of the most fun, energizing, true-to-us weddings ever. We were both just out of college, so we had no money. Thankfully, my parents paid for the wedding, but we just wanted simple. We wanted it to be about the people, our friends and family who made us who we are, rather than just about us. And I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that everyone in attendance was happy to be there.

Once we got married, we had the most awful honeymoon we could ever imagine in Gatlinburg, TN. Then we moved to Stafford, where Caleb was at TBS for nine months. There he found out he would become an Infantry Officer in the Marine Corps. From there, he broke his long, elongated his timeline at Quantico, I would move back in with my parents because our lease was up, continue working on my Masters degree, and work for my dad that summer.

After what felt like forever being apart while Caleb was at IOC (it was only like three months!), we finally got orders to Camp Lejeune, NC. Everyone else’s last pick, but our first pick. I closed on our house with a Power of Attorney while Caleb was at his final training exercise in the desert of 29 Palms, CA. Oh, we were so excited. That house was (and still is) perfect. A red front door, fenced in yard for our dog, Koda, to play, a beautiful bonus room that would one day become my studio and office, a brick fireplace with hardwood floors. Honestly, it could not have been a better starter home and I miss it every single day.

Once he finally got to North Carolina and saw the house for the first time in person…yep, we bought it without him seeing it at all…he check in at his unit and we found out that he would deploy in about nine months. The deployment was supposed to be “easy” and only for six months. At the time, I had finished my graduate degree and student teaching and shortly after he was going to deploy I would start my first year of teaching.

That deployment that was supposed to be easy ended up being pretty rough. His location changed a lot, he was cut off from mail, I dove into teaching and coaching, leaving little time for us to talk. Once he returned, we got pregnant after going through infertility testing prior to his departure. We were so ecstatic, but ended up losing the baby fairly early on, right around his birthday. That was devastating…

The summer came and I had a break from teaching, but realized that I really wasn’t happy in the classroom. I made a major life decision of quitting the job I had gone to school for six years on what seemed like a whim, although I had seen it coming for a while.

That summer of 2017 was when I started Ali Rae Haney Photography after sending in my resignation letter to the school where I was teaching. We got through yet another 6-month deployment, finding out that we were pregnant again the day he left for that deployment. It was pretty bittersweet…finding out we were expecting, but also that he would be missing the vast majority of the pregnancy. Thankfully, this was a rare deployment where I could go visit him, so I did, and we were able to find out together that we were expecting a sweet baby girl. We announced from the top of some castle ruins in Okinawa, Japan.

While I was there on that trip, we found out we received orders back to Quantico and that we would be moving at 36 weeks pregnant. After moving and finding a new doctor in the final days of our pregnancy, we welcomed our daughter into the world the fall of 2018. It was an induction due to her being growth restricted; however, hindsight, I wish I had advocated for myself and my daughter a bit more and refused the induction. Her birth story ended in an urgent C-section.

Our time in Quantico felt long and short at the same time. Short because Caleb ended up getting out of the Marine Corps, but long because it was COVID times, and I was shooting weddings. This meant that my business looked quite different than it had just a year before when I hit a stride in marketing and booking amazing clients. During COVID, my business pivoted into small business branding photography and The Photography Framework, a course for beginning and aspiring photography business owners.

During that time, we also welcomed our second child, a son, just shy of two years after our daughter was born. He was born in the fall of 2020 by scheduled C-section. Again, an odd birth story because we were so isolated due to COVID. I will say that time in the hospital with him should have felt peaceful, but I had complications with internal swelling and muscles after that delivery.

After seven years active duty, Caleb decided he was officially going to get out of the Marine Corps. So we had big decisions to make, like where we were going to move and what we would do for income after he became a civilian.

Ultimately, we were blessed to be able to pursue a dream of mine by purchasing land and a home to become a wedding venue and a dream of his of moving to Kentucky. That was in the summer of 2021. We sold our beloved NC home that had served us so well, so we could put all of our thought and effort into our newest venture in Kentucky.

Unfortunately, by the following spring I had fully come to the realization that the venue wasn’t going to happen at that location. We experienced a lot of issues with neighbors, to the point where they threatened our lives. So although we ended up getting the permit we needed from the county, we were faced with 18 [ridiculous] restrictions and a hostile environment in which we were supposed to be running a luxury business. It just wasn’t realistic. If you want the full story, you can listen to the podcast episode about The Commonwealth on The Ali Rae Haney Show. Thankfully, we were able to pivot the use of the property into a short-term rental/Airbnb. Somehow that was much more amenable to the neighbors, and it has been running as a short-term rental for almost two years now.

Once we gave up on the wedding venue, I decided to build my own business back from close to nothing. I re-invented the business into a brand development/photography and digital marketing business. I will say though…running an online business with satellite internet in the middle of BFE Kentucky is not for the weak. Literally had to account for non-work days when it was cloudy because the satellite signal couldn’t penetrate the clouds.

Our time in Kentucky was…traumatic. When we decided to use “the big house” as an Airbnb, we moved into the guest house on the property. So that was four…soon-to-be-five because we were expecting our third child during this time…people living in less than 1,000 square feet. It was challenging.

The birth of our third son was one of the most traumatic experiences I have been through in my life, and I am sure that if you asked Caleb, he would probably say the same. Despite trying to deliver via VBAC, our son was born through an emergency C-section. I am honestly just thankful we are both alive and healthy.

When I absolutely couldn’t take being in the state anymore, I told Caleb he should quit his job and we will figure out the rest later. Which is exactly what we did. First, I had a major surgery where my scar tissue from three C-sections was removed and my diastasis recti repaired after three babies. Then we packed up the trailers, leased the guest house, and moved back to Virginia, our home state.

Now here we are. Figuring it out. Together. Building my business. Finding him a job. Raising three kids. Running an Airbnb from a couple states away. Doing it. Doing life.

It sure ain’t easy, but we have lived more life in 10 years than most people do their entire lives.

So today…I am raising my glass to Caleb. To us. To the life we have and continue to create, even on the hard days.

Cheers to 10 years.