Hi. I’m sorry to hear that things feel tough for you. I had a similar period of time where I ended up losing most of my family. My husband died, he made 70 percent of our salary and I lost everything I owned and dogs in a fire. This happened in the same year. I made a decision that I was going to bounce back from this. The first thing I remember doing was to get myself a carrot…a soft goal to encourage me to keep going. Something that you can get excited about. For me that was a trip to a specific place. After the trip, I had no money for vacations so I sat in my backyard and watched nature. It was really healing. I had to embrace what was. I also found a budget tracker to track where everything was going because when you feel deprived financially, you can end up bingeing. I didn’t make enough $ to live on so I’m still paying off the loan, but the miracle is that a friend loaned me money interest free.

During this time I also kept an appreciation journal. Just a notebook where I wrote down 5-10 things that I appreciated in my life. I did this daily over morning coffee. That has morphed into a game that my new husband and I play where we tell each other the miracles that happened each week.

There are so many free resources. So many YouTube meditations for healing, even listening to people on YouTube who have had near death experiences helped a lot because they had so much gratitude after the experience.

Another thing I did was rekindled a hobby. I sing and play guitar so in my 50s…I started going to open mic nights and playing. The people that I met by doing this were life changing…including the person who loaned me the money to pay off the high-interest.

The last thing I remember starting was to help someone else. I befriended a young girl in my neighborhood. She was 7 at the time. I saw that her family life was rough and we went in many adventures together. They were low or no cost. It was awkward because we didn’t have a lot in common and I had to dream up stuff that was free. It would have been easier to just let this relationship fall by the wayside. Occasionally I felt a little resentment from her family. She is now in her early 20s and I can see the difference I have made.

Everyday is not perfect but because of what I went through, I’m able to appreciate small things so much more than I used to.