I have had to surmount a mental change of willingness to do whatever it takes.   My mind and all the thoughts swirling around were like sitting in a committee room with twenty people arguing all day and night about something none of them had any control over.  I finally decided that it simply does not matter what the job is, as long as I am willing to take that first step and get in the game!  Armed with my pen, I began going door to door on any business that was open and asking if I could fill out an application.  I told the committee members I did not want to hear from any of them until I was finished and home again, then they could go at it if they wished:-)

This job I begin tomorrow is a job I would of said no way there is simply just no way I would ever work there or deal with that kind of work for such little pay, yet here I am, and grateful that it is here.  I have had to endure my own “pride” and “ego” screaming NO!  Like a mother telling her children that they have to do something, they do not want to do, I have had to get tough with my own pride and ego.  Still tonight, my ego is out of line, because as I was speaking with a friend, I got all nervous and embarrassed to tell here where I was hired, and thought, perhaps of not saying a word about it.  I finally took my ego into the other room and had one of those tough talks with it.  Who do I think I am to be anything but grateful!

Today I know that nothing is forever…this is my process of moving from here to there, and I do not know where there is yet.  I do not need to know, all I need to remember is that for me life can be lived fully anywhere and at every moment, no matter what I am doing!  Ahhhh…..  After all, I can still practice being a compassionate and loving human being, even while preparing and serving up fast food!  I have the opportunity each and every single day of inspiring the people around me, by finding the things to be inspired about!

~Cheryl

1. Spent time with Xevy, sliding in the snow and making snow angels.
2. Sang karaoke in a bar for the first time ever.
3. Co-hosted an Oprah book club and met several fabulous women who are have become great friends.
4. Spent precious time with an old friend, combing his hair.
5. Cuddled with Felisha after she gave birth to her first and only baby boy.
6. Rode scout in the field.
7. Enjoyed taking care of Xevy, Jimmy and my mom.
8. Thought I would go crazy taking care of Xevy, Jimmy and my mom.
9. Went on a 12 and 12 call and the women actually accepted treatment.
10. Said goodbye to Rosie.
11. Our basement flooded feet of water.
12. Our septic collapsed
13. My office had its roof replaced
14. My office flooded
15. I closed my office for good
16. I cried
17. I laughed hysterically
18. I joined Toastmasters
19. I gave my first toastmasters speech
20. I begged an old friend for a job for the first time ever…He never responded.
21. I applied for a job and was hired
22. I contemplated letting go of my horses.
23. I contemplated being homeless.
24. I saw myself as aging
25. I saw my husband as an aging man
26. I realized how precious moments are
27. I wrote my compassion speech
28. My sister spent the night and we cuddled
29. My hubby and I made a pond outside
30. I felt courageous
31. I felt as though I stepped into my real self and was able to operate from a place of knowing and being me
32. I realized what it is I need to talk about and share with the world…
33. I missed Aura
34. I missed Nicole
35. The heat in the car began working.
36. I wrote emails to HP CEO requesting that they stand behind the two laptop computers I purchased which do not work….thus far no comprehenda….no service, no satisfaction!

Anger, and blame.  Even this coach went there.  I wanted to blame the government, my husband, myself, my kids, the horses, the farm, my relatives, the newspapers, the weather, the floods, the rain, the leaking roof, the basements that couldn’t hold the water back, my clients.  If I thought of them or it, I was ready to make it responsible for my situation.  More of the poor poor me syndrome.

I mean really how can this happen in America?  How can it be that no one is responsible for anything any more?  It seems like what I imagine a third world country to be like.  Here I am in America, the greatest nation in the world, and I can not afford dental work or to see a doctor.  I can not afford to have shelter or even food!!!

I am able to keep some potatoes on hand…somewhere I was told a story about a time in Germany where they kept a pot of soup on the stove it was started with a potato and some water, and whenever any family member secured perhaps a carrot or an onion, they would add it to the soup, and the grandmother would add water daily, and everyone would eat soup.  It kept them alive, and they survived because of the soup that was not much more than warm water on most days.

The thought of survival by the soup becomes less hopeful when one envisions homelessness.  If I were in a field, or in the woods somewhere that I could keep a fire burning, there is hope, yet I have a difficult time figuring it out if I were homeless in a large city.

I think of being in a city so that I might still be able to secure a job, yet eventually the hope of that would fall, since I would not be able to bath regularly.  So country living where the possibility for hunting some food would exist, seems much more livable to me.  It also seems much more hopeless as a means of ever returning to a home and a job.

Maybe I will toss a coin and see what comes up. …

For me at least I had to first become aware of myself, my thoughts, my judgments, my own attachments to the material things that i had surrounded myself with, to realize that beneath it all I was whole and complete, and creative and totally resourceful,.  I was a human being who still loved, and had a joy for exploring and self realization.  I could see beauty in the small stuff, and found out that I still had a voice of compassion and love.  Money had nothing to do with who I really am.  Although, I may of thought so in the beginning, I certainly found out that money has nothing at all to do with who I am in this world.  I found out that i can be the same person with or without money.

Becoming unemployed brought a whole new level of my being ness out.  It brought up new opportunities for me to find out about myself and my own sense of worthiness.  Who am I with this or that job, and who am I without it?

The fear of being without a job, without that income, without the ability to pay my mortgage, or buy food for me, or care for my animals even in the most basic ways was overwhelming to say the least, but absolutely and utterly paralyzing in many ways.

I had to run through my list of fears every day and sometimes all through the day many times, and come to terms with being all right no matter what happened.

Many of my “terms” certainly began to digress as my situation became more and more urgent, and my choices became less.  First it began wondering and working out solutions to speak to the banker, and work out this or that deal of keeping my farm, and as the weeks and months progress, my plans for living became more deflated, until I literally came up with ideas and solutions for living, weather it was on the street corner or out in a tent in the middle of a field somewhere.  I sit and figure out how I would get water to drink and some food to eat, where i would go to the bathroom.  Where would i be able to find something warm to wear or wrap up in?

When I had all my plans safely in place in my mind, then I could move out of that paralyzing mode and begin my quest of job hunting.

I would begin to seperate one thought…I must be a looser would turn around into something like…”what is the gift in being a looser?”.  Well, I certainly am off the hook of having to look like a winner all the time-relief!  No one would be expecting anything from me, ahh another relief.   alot less responsibility in being a looser, a lot less effort it would seem to take to simply lay back and own being a looser!  Ahhh much more relief of the stress and tension.

Yes, I went through each and every single negative thought as though I were an investigator into the mind of a crazy woman, and I searched to find something more, something more valad and more appealing to my sense of beingness than simply staying put in that small self pitying box my mind was trying to stuff me into.

What about that place of feeling absolute humility and shame?!  Oh yeah, I went down that road too.  The day I finally got up the courage to begin to look through the jobs posted and found out that I had some forty years of living, with no bachlers degree or a masters in any one thing.  That really brought up those “LOOSER” name calling mental situations in my head!  Wow, my ego loved that, and wanted to exploit it all!  Yeah my head wanted to take me to the place of being an uneducated idiot, white trash, country bumpkin, trailer park, back woods, type of STUPID looser.

Those darn job applications really leave much to be desired, in fact I decided that there was no way I could fully express myself in one of those, so I wrote up my own resume/curriculum vitae and started sending those around.  I included my own categories, such as my values, and my hobbies, and other interesting little known facts about me that I thought were important for someone to know about me.

Laughing again, I still see how my pride and ego were fighting and arguing for me to “look” good and appear to have my stuff together, and be appealing to those around me.  I was out to prove what an outstanding person I was, and that I was not all the things my mind was trying to convince me of.  I was defiantly not the “looser” I thought I just might be under neath it all.   I was still puffing myself up to “look” better than the average person.  I wanted to be above anything they ever encountered and absolutely perfect for any job that I was applying for!  Oh did I mention how excited I became when I reached the part of my resume where i talked about the salary I wanted to receive?  Oh yeah, I was staunchly asking for what I secretively really wanted to take home each and every week!  I kept spouting lines to myself about universe only gives us what we ask for, so ask away!

Every day I had this little ritual of checking my emails, then to the phone messages, and listen for the mail truck, and run out and look to see if I had an invitation for a job interview anywhere.

Every day, it was nope, nope and nope, grab the chips, and the remote and sit down listening to the voices in my head tell me what a big fat looser I was again… yes, I spent a great deal of time sifting through the shit every single day.  Then I would travel up to the computer and begin sending out more resumes/curriculum vitae all the while I was re-framing the negative into the positive.

It seems now like a dizzy blur of events landed me in a life situation somewhat close to hers, yet without the safety net of unemployment she had to  draw upon.  My first belief was that I was defiantly far worse than she was!  Oh yeah I had her beat!

Sometimes it just feels good to go down that painful spiral of feeling absolutely worse off than anyone else I know.   I am certainly not going to deny myself the sense of fully feeling those feelings of being a big fat looser!  I did not!  I went with it, and consciously chose to dress accordingly.  I picked out my favorite sweat pants, my most comfortable hoody, and tied it altogether with two pair of socks and slipped a pair of booty’s over those!  Ahh, this unemployed girl was going to dress for the occasion.  I grabbed a box of kleenex, and the remote control and spent a few days lounging on the couch, crying my eyes out.

After two days of that, I started to want to feel better, so I decided that from now on, every time a negative thought such as “oh my god I could be homeless” came up I would start to ask myself questions about it.  Like, what exactly is “homelessness”.  What would that look like?  What would i absolutely need to or want to have if I were a homeless person?  Where would I like to be if I were without a home?  Here in the mid west is not exactly the ideal place to be homeless, especially when winter hits!  Yikes, so I decided if I were going to be homeless, I would really like to try to make it to a warmer climate.  I even began to wonder if I could make it to one of those sweet Hawaiian islands where I hear the hippies live and camp out and are happy.

Hey, homelessness began to sound a little brighter to me, even perhaps more adventurous!