I had a perfect life.  I was living the American dream.  A family, a house, a car, plenty of food and a job I loved that enabled me to do just about anything I wanted.  We paid our bills on time, had a someone clean the house once a week, a part time nanny and the ability to dabble in some hobbies and travel.  Then one day it all changed, one phone call and my job was gone. My nice stable, organized and relatively easy life – poof gone!

Now the major holes in my life appeared.  No savings, a husband who worked constantly and a life filled with ‘stuff.’ My life was in shambles.  My confidence shot. Everything I valued a waste.  And I had two children under three years old depending on me for everything.  So I had to pull on my big girl panties and stand up again . . . and it was hard, really hard.

To continue my life, to provide for my family, I had to make some hard choices.  I wanted to a good job, making good money, but more importantly to me, I wanted to be a stay at home mom and raise and educate my children.  I chose to strike out on my own. It wasn’t pretty and it certainly wasn’t easy.  Hell, it took me a year and a half from that phone call to make enough money to pay even part of my bills and here I am three and a half years later and I work significantly more hours than anyone I know.  But you know what, it has been well worth it and I am SO GRATEFUL for this unexpected blessing.

So if you are facing similar challenges for whatever reason, I thought I would gather my thoughts on how I got back on my feet and lessons learned over the last few years.  Hoping they will help you to tackle your challenge with confidence and assurance that you can make it.

Here are some guidelines that I hope you will find useful that applied to my life:

1. Do your due diligence, explore your options, see this setback as a blessing in disguise to really find your calling, your dream. I spent those late nights when I would have been tossing and turning with stress and worry searching the internet for possible work at home jobs.  It was really productive.  I eventually through happenstance found out about virtual assistants (VA,) a brand new term for me, and eventually established my own VA firm. 



2. Create a goal. something concrete to work toward, it makes it much more achievable. I made a budget.  I needed to know exactly how much money I needed to make in order to live.  I had to reevaluate my priorities, see what luxuries could be done away with and learn about frugal living.  Now I still struggle with this step, but have found ALOT of knowledge and support via online resources such as Get Rich Slowly.



3. Find your motivation, find a reason to get out of bed and hold on really tight! I focused on what is important and learned just how important it is all over again.  When life gets hard, if you are like me, you isolate yourself, you become a couch potato, you do the bare minimum in life, constantly declaring yourself a failure.  My kids forced me out of that and I am so glad!  I needed a site like this.  I needed a group of women to hold me up, support me, advise me and tell me they had been there before.  But for me, my kids did the tugging.  No matter how I was feeling, they had to be fed, clothed, bathed and I wanted the best for them so I had to take them out of the house sometimes.


My Inspiration

4. Use your imagination, get and stay inspired, over and over again til it sticks. Read – self help manuals, novels, news (I avoid the news because it’s always so depressing, but you can.)  Don’t let your brain turn to mush.

You will find over the coming weeks, months that striking out on your own is hard.  It’s challenging.  And there are plenty of nights that I have felt all alone, like such a failure, but really, truly every single moment has been worth it.  I now work at home, homeschool my kids and LOVE MY LIFE EVERY SINGLE DAY.  You can too!

I want to help, I don’t think we should have to do it alone and that is why I am here.