In 1998 I was sitting on the deck of my beautiful home in the hills of California, surrounded by trees. The lights of the city twinkle below me, the starlit skies twinkle above me. I thought of my life, my friends and how lucky I was. I was happy. I felt on top of the world, things were good. I could not have imagined that circumstances would turn my life upside down.
Shortly after that night my husband was laid off. We were forced to sell our home and move to another state. But we considered ourselves lucky. We sold the house in June 2008. The housing bubble burst in September. We had dodged a bullet, we bought a new house and started over. We had our savings, my husband started a business, I worked, we were doing well.
Then in 2011 THE RECESSION. My husband lost his business. I lost my job, and no one was hiring. We learned our son was battling addiction. Our savings were depleted, and our home went into foreclosure. We needed to find a place to live fast. We went from living in a big house to a tiny apartment.
After a year of scraping by on very little income, my husband found a job…in Florida. My husband accepted the job in the middle of December, but he was required to be at work the first week in January. We cleaned out the apartment, sold what we could, gave away what we could and drove from Las Vegas to Florida in a week. We had moved twice in two years, it was crazy.
Life was not as grand as it had been, but we survived, we had each other. I worked funky jobs to keep us afloat. I worked as a telemarketer; I folded laundry in a hotel. I cleaned houses, I worked in a children’s shelter and I was bill collector.
None of these jobs required a Doctorate in Education which I have. I was on a first name basis with the local pawn shop and went there so often they gave me frequent user card. But it was okay we weren’t homeless. We had landed on our feet. We used the last of our savings to support our son in becoming clean and sober and we helped raise our beautiful grandson.
Then after working a year and a half at the nonprofit, my husband was laid off; 9 months later he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I was laid off six months after that. But as I started to panic, a calm came over me. I said to myself. Stop. You have been here before. I made a conscious decision to see circumstances in a different way. Suddenly, I wasn’t afraid. I had been here before. I had been to hell and back and this was just one more bump on the journey. In all the crazy things that have happened to me in 10 years, I had survived. I had learned to be become resilient and I had learned to appreciate the small joys I had in life. I had developed a joyful mindset.
I love the quote by George Santayana.
“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.”