Blessings came with hardships

During the holiday season, many of us gather around the dinner table and share a variety of wonderful food, sometimes not realizing that others don't have a table of food to congregate around of.

 

With the horrible economic times the world is facing, hunger is spreading across the country in a rapid fashion.

 

According to worldhunger.org, "In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of households (approximately one in seven), were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United States" 

 

That was the case for my family from July 2009 to April 2010. 

 

In April 2009, my mother was informed that her company office was being relocated and that if she didn't want to drive the extra 150 miles daily, she could take a severance package. Even though she'd worked for the same cable company for 16 years, she chose the severance and left the company.

 

Financial hardships have been consistent

 

There have been times where my family has gone without electricity, gas and even food because they were considered luxuries in the grand scheme of the situations we were in.  

 

Not searching for any sympathy by any means, these events have formed me into the person I've become.

 

Being dealt with the card that my two-week paycheck for $38.17 was supposed to pay for groceries for six people was a tall order.  

 

During the grueling nine months whe my mother was unemployed she spiraled into a deep depression, my hours were cut at work, my younger brother, --newlywed and was living with his wife in our one-bedroom apartment--had been laid off and my mother's unemployment check only covered the rent and electricity in the home.

 

That's when food became a luxury in my house.  

 

I was faced with the  the task of deciding what days we should eat the left over food in the fridge, or save it for my sister.  

 

The obvious choice was to let my sister have the food and my mother, myself and aunt would literally eat green beans and rice for three meals a day.

 

The hardest part of the whole ordeal was going through the emotional toll of not knowing when your next meal would be.  We wanted someone to check on us and see how we were doing, because when others we knew were in that position, we made the effort to give emotional support.

 

In Feb. 2010, my mother reapplied to the company she'd lost her position from and thankfully was given a call back for an interview, where she earned a new job with higher pay.

 

In April, my mom started back at work and bringing home a paycheck.  

 

Soon after my mom returning to work, we were able to afford groceries again.

 

That job is a blessing and is never taken for granted by anyone in our household. 

 

A year later we have since moved out of our apartment and into a home,in Rialto.

 

Although the drive is 45 minutes away from my job in West Covina and Citrus College, the house is double the size, and the property is huge with enough room for all of us to have our personal space.  

 

The move at times was exhausting and horrible, but once everything was finished my family had a new home and a fridge full of food.

 

That's all I could ask for this holiday season.  

 

With all of the sacrifices that my family has made, I'm making sure that I pay it forward to anyone and everyone else I know that was in the same position I was in.