I lost my job.
For the next few months, we got by on small consulting contracts and what was left of our savings. It will get better, I told myself, as I picked up boxes of food from a local church.
It didn't.
Day turned to night, and soon we lost our home. My children and I moved into a small, rodent infested apartment. I put the kids to bed, scrubbed the walls, fixed the toilet, taped the windows and patched the holes in the baseboards with steel wool and duct tape. It had to be enough.
In a post 9/11 economy, there were few opportunities for an out of work communications executive. It didn't matter that I had cut my teeth as a vice president with one of the world's largest public relations agencies. A bevy of stock options earned in Silicon Valley weren't worth the paper they were printed on.
Four months later, I sat in the middle of the living room floor clutching an eviction notice. The electricity had been shut off. I started to pray. The tears became sobs. Then, there was wailing. I shouted at a God I swore either didn't exist or didn't care that we had no food, no place to go. "If you are who you say you are, you wouldn't do this to them!"
We left almost everything. Our dog, Claire, was taken to a local shelter.
