I have known that this day could come for a very long time but I wanted so much to believe in myself. I wanted to believe I was talented enough, wise enough, had enough experience from 4 decades of teaching and helping other women, even though most of it was not work I got paid for, I wanted to believe that I had much to offer and could make a business of it to support myself. I wanted to believe, I needed to believe, but I am within weeks of running out of money, and I have no choice, and I am trying not to dive off the high dive into the deep end of the pool but I am a 60 year old woman with a basket full of mental health issues and I have not been able to find a way to support myself. At 9:05 a.m. Monday morning I have my appointment with the Social Security Administration to see about getting disability.

The difficult thing about this is that because I have no work history, and I am not yet 62 so I can’t draw on my ex-husband’s social security, if I get the SSI which is the only thing I might be eligible for from what I hear it won’t be enough to live on and the limitations are so strict I wouldn’t be able to do much else to make up the difference or I would lose my disability. If I had a base income I could work hard to at least make up the difference, I am sure of it, but not on SSI. It is a conundrum. Right now I am praying for a miracle.

I slept all day long. After a frightening bout of deep depression and a visit to my doctor on Wednesday she raised one prescription and added one making 5 meds a day. It is kicking my patootski. It was a dark rainy day today and other than taking care of the animals I never even so much as made coffee. I just kept going back to sleep, sleeping for hours. The meds + fear + a deep sadness over not having been able to generate the income that I needed from what I feel are my gifts cultivated over a lifetime, work that is centered in helping other women, doing things that I am good at, which the women in my project and circle have loved, such incredible, loving, supportive women who are truly seeing me through the hardest, scariest time of my life, still it is not enough to support me. What else can I do? I.Am.Praying.For.A.Miracle, an honest to God miracle. Will you pray with me?

It is that time when I have done everything I can do, I have worked as hard as I possibly can, I took every class I could and paid for a pricey mentor to create a miracle business and I have hoped and dreamed and wished and prayed and believed in myself in what perhaps was a fairy tale, make believe, magical thinking sort of way but we have to try to believe in ourselves, don’t we? I had to believe that having lived 6 decades on this earth I had something to offer. I really have done a lot of work. Good work. Work that people told me they loved, that changed their lives, that even saved their lives, I had to believe I could pull all of this together in a way that would continue to help others and support me in the process. Even bi polar and all the rest I really believed that I could do it, but in this moment I feel like the bug that finally hit the windshield though he tried his best to take a different path. There is nowhere else to go, there is nothing else to do, but take that call on Monday and lay it all out. If I get refused I can get an attorney to help but if I get approved, and even that could take 2 months and I honestly don’t know what I would do to get by in the meantime, and it’s not enough which apparently it’s not likely to be, what do I do? What else can I do?

And so it’s Saturday night at 11:30 and my darling pugs are snuggled in with me and I am writing to try to stay steady but it is hard and I am scared but I just can’t let myself go there. I have to take a deep breath, stay strong, pray, and do what I have been doing, let Go and let God. And it really has been working, there have been some very sweet little moments and things that have occurred but I still don’t know what to do. I must overcome the fear. I must hold on. I must find a way to survive no matter what, and no matter how foolish it might make me seem I am still holding out for a miracle. I am doing my due diligence but I will not stop believing that a miracle could happen, something that I couldn’t imagine in a million years. I am 60 and I know people reading this will think I should know better but no matter what happens Monday morning I will not stop believing in miracles. I believe in God and my angels and that all of those praying for me now, well, I believe it’s not all for naught.

So this night, this deep dark scary night, I will hold on, hold out for a miracle, and somehow, some way, I will go on…