Part 1 of 3
We look around and we see people all over socials showing us what success looks like: shiny appliances, beautiful homes, fabulous views out the windows, filming tik-toks in expensive cars, with designer labels reflecting back from their sunglasses.
Is this success?
Is a luxury home on the water success?
Photo courtesy of Pexels.com
Is it followers? Is it a lavish lifestyle? Is it the fact that they’re brave enough to show us who they’re trying to be? What defines success? Who defines success?
Does it all come down to the Wu Tang’s Theory:
“Dolla Dolla bill, y’all”?
Even the dollar is losing value these days!
What does it mean to succeed in a system that is failing?
When are you really winning? How do you know?
Who is creating the rules that you’re playing by? And why?
“Because that’s how I was raised, Because that’s how we’ve always done it, Because it’s the only thing I know,” are uninspired reasons to uphold the status quo.
Why do I assert this?
Because “I was told this is what success looks like” is not going to keep you afloat if things get complicated and you need to fight for what you have achieved, or fight to maintain it, or fight to re-establish it.
When we seek resilience from deep in our soul?
We may need to draw upon something that will hold us steady when it appears (especially from the outside) like life is falling apart.
I submit that we reconsider what we attribute to be success.
Because this world is going through a massive shift, and your life may, like my life, go through a massive shift.
When that happens, will you consider yourself a failure because you failed at capitalism in a time when capitalism is TRYING to crush each individual?
Do we not see how individual failure is part of the plan for capitalism from a zero sum perspective (where we just get part of “the pie”) instead of a community perspective (where we recognize we are surrounded by abundance, especially when we cooperate and include others)?
We can change how we exist in this world, and we are approaching a time it will be necessary. AI is coming for jobs everywhere, and the social structures to support our communities through this transition are not in place. Bill Gates is talking about what we need to do to prepare - so when I talk about what I’ve lost - we were on the cutting edge - but we were never alone in our predicament.
I want you to know that failing in a corrupt system that was designed to crush you is not an accurate reflection of whether you have actually succeeded in this life.
I have defined success for myself differently.
For me?
Success is when you have the skills and the knowledge and the resilience to find your way to the other side when the bottom drops out: a skill set that will be treasured by those who hone it well and know how to implement it in a genuine crisis.
Life is taking from everyone right now.
Last year, it took our home (among many other things), transformed my life, and untethered me from my past in ways I never dreamed possible.
I have been cut loose from the old, and set free.
But y’all.
I was not seeking this abrupt a transformation!
No matter, I had a lot to learn.
This is not a flex
Job loss, running out of savings, and eviction is something folx hide and are ashamed of - getting an apartment after being evicted was one of the scariest things I have faced. It took so much effort, and wherewithal, encouragement, and eventually that was the moment we made it public - out of desperation for help from our community.
Our community of friends contains those who have multiple properties and many who own rental properties. Those who had them were silent. I sent direct messages to so many with a plea for help and found? Nothing. Crickets.
We were on our own.
I was devastated and angry and heartbroken and scared. We are capable, competent people who were simply looking for work. There is no criminal activity or strange story. This is just life in this country right now - falling without a net is terrifying - and holding that anxiety yourself with no support is something that is very intense.
If you are going through something horrifying that you want to hide, I am sorry. These things are hard enough without the added burden of shame.
Shame keeps us trapped
Unfortunately, we are at the start of this curve, not the end.
I suspect others are going to encounter this type of difficulty (job, home, food, healthcare, and/or financial scarcity). I hope this isn’t true, but if it is, I want to break the silence and offer solace, community, and the truth:
This does not define you. It is a difficult moment, and with luck and resilience and persistence, you will get to the other side, too. I am rooting for you, I know how terrifying the fall can be.
Until we find a better solution to our collective quandaries (and we are why it’s needed and imminent - we are the canaries in this coalmine), I want you to know I’ve been there.
To hell with shame
The real shame is that we do the hard stuff alone, instead of sharing our wisdom and saving each other from more pain or hard lessons.
I’ve survived (with the grace of my community, the generosity of countless people).
We are in our own place again.
Stable. Peaceful. Safe.
Yet, this was one of the hardest years of my life.
There were moments I questioned whether I would make it. Whether my marriage would make it.
Whether any of my most treasured relationships would make it.
If all of our belongings in storage would make it.
If the kindness of those housing us could make it.
If the burden of this experience would crush them all.
Whether this would crush me, with it.
At times, I thought it would.
I thought it would never end.
Hurdle after hurdle after hurdle.
Everyone in the world is under strife, we discovered.
Nobody had space for ours, too.
The lesson felt clear: carry your own emotional weight and keep going regardless of how perpetual and pointless it could feel.
This was My Path, only I can take it.
Ugh. Oof. Argh.
Turns out a growth path is like the military: “hurry up and wait” were definitely themes. The analogy is lacking a bit, because walking would have been nicer, because walking at least gives you something to do.
This was a LOT of waiting.
What do you do when you’ve done all the things and created no traction? When you wonder do you need to wait for tariffs or divine timing? Is there an answer to these questions?
When nobody has any advice you haven’t already taken?
And everyone wants to judge who hears about this struggle.
Nice to know at least you’re not doing that bad, isn’t it?
Yeah. We saw that a lot, and that was painful.
When you spend a lot of time in the Shadows because of your own life, and you actually sit with them, you recognize them when they show up with other people.
Turns out, not everyone confronts their shadows, and they were everywhere throughout the whole year.
In the darkness, I had to to hold tight to what I knew
I had to learn how to expand to hold the tension of not knowing what would be next.
The year was simply practice after practice from my self care toolbox.
Hold all of it and not go crazy or self destruct.
Try to meditate instead of self medicate.
Feel the feelings instead of numbing out.
Fight the urge to follow the example set for me and be cruel to myself and mimic the family tradition of self-flagellation.
Find grace. Find strength. Find sanity.
Oh, and do it with no privacy.
Because the only person to offer us a place to stay had a 550 sq foot apartment to share with us.
None of us expected it to take so long to get on our feet, least of all those of us making these plans, so when it continued with no end in sight? The angst was real.
This WAS the contingency plan. What was going to happen if we went another year without work? We were out of places to go.
The depletion of energy snowballed and my optimism and hope waned. The distance between interviews and callbacks went from days to weeks to months.
Time was moving through peanut butter, and we were trapped in hell.
The fear loomed over us like a cloud.
If a picture paints a thousand words, please find the cats’ version of their experience when we first moved in 2025:
Unfortunately our homelessness story is not rare, it is simply difficult.
Homelessness is a struggle plaguing many of our communities right now, and how we choose to handle it reflects on society as much or more as those who experience the trial directly.
Part 2 next week.
