If you think staying with family is a good back up plan to falling on hard times, I'm hear to tell you to forget about it. Let this book serve as a warning and I beg you please don't do it. For some strange reason, friends and family members see your misfortune as an opportunity to belittle, demean and humiliate you. It is their perfect chance to rub "I told you so" all in your face". Nothing seems to give them pleasure like seeing you down and out, asking for their help.
Growing up, I was a backbone of family strength and support for my mother and sister. I was always the one offering a shoulder to cry on and giving words of encouragement or words of wisdom. It was me who ran to everyone's defense when they were in trouble. It was I who bailed everyone out and lifted everyone up including my mother. When I was preparing to graduate from college, my mother asked me not to go away but I had to. I needed to experience the independence plus I'd been accepting to a great school out of town. I thought she would just get over it so I left and completed my education at Syracuse University. My mother pressured me with the expectation of supporting her as soon as I finished college. She forced me to make promises like, "I'll take care of you". I mean she really expected me to care for her like a dependent when she hadn't even turned 40 yet - sick!
So I graduate and return home to look for a job. Now my mother had some sort of attitude of anger all the time toward me but she still expected me to do for her, listen to her, do as she said, pay the bills, give her a better place to live, buy food, obey and basically be her soldier puppet. She felt entitled and she acted like it. After all, I was in "her house" and she was "The Mother". Mother would barge into my room whenever she felt like it - day or night - and it did not matter whether I was sleeping, dressing or whatever. The power tripping and lack of respect were out of control. One evening, she busted into my room fussing and complaining about something. She was screaming all in my face with a threatening demeanor, then she attacked me. Mother had gone too far. I blocked her swing and shoved her off of me. She came forward again, grabbing and scratching. I didn't want to fight her so all I could possibly think to do was escape. I ran past her and out the door into the street with no shoes on. I didn't know where I was going but I did know if I stayed in that environment any longer things could turn out very badly. The rest of the evening is a blur now. I can't recall whether I left that night with no shoes on my feet or whether I let a little time pass before going back upstairs. Either way, I left mom's house days later.
, the one I had never asked them for anything, not one single thing ever.
Then my life came to a screeching halt when my husband lost his job only months after we started a brand new business. The independent comfortable life I had known began to crumble around me, one brick at a time until I was buried under a heap of financial ruins.
The first of so many humiliations was calling my uppity sister to ask for a loan.
