Starving in The Land of Plenty? A Guide to Surviving Life's Curveballs
Copyright 2011 by Dianne Eason
Smashwords Edition
License
Statement
This
ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be
resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please
purchase another copy so as to protect the author's copyright.
Starving in the Land of Plenty?
A Guide to Surviving Life's Curveballs
By DIANNE EASON
Over the past few years, I've found myself teetering on the very unstable edge of what was the relatively secure life I thought I was building for myself. Unexpected widowhood, a back injury, breast cancer, then another back injury that resulted in the loss of my job, put me in a place I never, ever thought I'd be. Hell, I've been married more than once, raised children, had two decent careers, worked toward being stable in my old age …
I should be doing OK, right?
But, like many of you, I'm not.
Your circumstances may not be quite the same as mine. Maybe you've lost your job because of company cutbacks and can't find another because there just aren't any, or you (like most of the rest of us) have naively and stupidly over-extended yourself financially all in the name of having more, bigger, and better, and for what? (Seriously. For what?) Or maybe you still have your job but are living day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck, hoping and praying nothing goes wrong.
Thing is, it doesn't really matter how we got here, the point is that we are here, and we need to let go of our regret and self-flagellation and smarten up.
At this point in America's seemingly unstoppable skid off the road into economic collision, there are so many of us about to go over the cliff that we don't know what to do next to survive. It's often a choice between eating or keeping the lights on or putting gas in the car (if, indeed, you can still afford your car)! I've been to that point of not being able to pay the rent and having my lights, gas, and cable turned off, and I've been petrified. I mean, who wouldn't be, and particularly when there is often no help for those who actually do try to help themselves?
One stunning example of that came for me one day not too long ago when I met a woman named Barbara while we were sitting in a waiting room. She was beautiful, middle-aged, clean, nicely dressed, well-spoken ...
During the course of our conversation (my husband always said I could find out someone's life story in 10 minutes or less!) Barbara told me she had been living in the local homeless shelter since October. She had always worked hard, she said, but then she fell and shattered her wrist and hand, went through a long healing process, which caused her to lose her job, then her home, then her pride and sense of self.