The future is fickle at best...
...ruthless and devastating at worst.
I am a 59-year-old professional woman married to a man who is also a professional. We were both on the fast track. Then, without warning and within one short month, all of that changed. Both disabled during the "prime" years of our careers, we lost everything--our health, our homes, our savings, our retirement and, potentially, our future.
We have one child, who is still at home. We desperately need money to purchase a home and to assist our only child to go to college. I am a member of a small, nonrecognized Native American tribe. Down, but not out, I am attempting to start a home-based business that will allow me to reconnect with my grandmother's world and my heritage, as well as support my family. We have always been very independent and self reliant so it never occurred to us that one day we would require assistance from strangers in order to give our son a future. We both have graduate degrees and worked from the time we were in high school. Being unable to work is foreign, unpleasant, and frightening.
I am hopeful that I will be able to find a grant to help me and my family find and purchase a small home; something we have been unable to do for the last 10 years. Instead, we have been living in a series of small rental homes and apartments. Due to the rapidly escalating housing costs in our city, we have been repeatedly forced out of acceptable housing. At the same time, I'm hoping to find financial backing for my business and for several other ideas that I believe are opportunities for a forward thinking individual to receive substantial returns on their investment.
