The day after my husband’s firing, a file box (and my husband’s final paycheck) arrived via courier. It was difficult to imagine how fourteen years of work life could fit into a moving carton and an envelope. By the time it arrived, everyone in our house was deeply involved in the process of moving on to the next resume, job, class, activity, workout, or competition. The whole experience reduced my husband in a way that I had never seen since I had known him. It was agonizing to process that that it was his new reality, but at the same time I wish he understood that the children and I experienced it too and that we all were doing the best we could given the situation.
I was determined to keep my family as healthy as possible and to guide my children through this process as much as I could, all while trying to navigate life and everything that came with it. For the first couple of weeks, while my husband dusted off his resume, calls started to trickle in one or two per day. Some of his friends had begun to return calls, much to my relief, but as my fast came to an end, I had to prepare myself and my children for the possibility that our almost eighteen years of living in Vancouver, Washington could be coming to an end soon.