(Las Vegas, Summer, 2013)
Everything I needed was already in me—I just had to lose everything else to see it.
The day my car disappeared, I stood barefoot in the parking lot holding nothing but my key fob and realized I was officially out of lifelines.
It wasn’t just the car. It was the last piece of the life I used to live—the final symbol of normal. I stood there in hundred-degree heat, the fob now useless, three kids inside waiting for lunch, and all I could think was: This is where it ends. Or begins.
That summer, my four-year-old asked if the bathtub could be his room.
It wasn’t the worst idea, I’d found myself with a blanket, pillows and the shower curtain pulled just to have a quiet space to read.
We were living in a 395-square-foot studio apartment in an undesirable neighborhood with police sirens that played like background music. No car now. Not enough money. No private space. The only thing we had enough of was each other. I had gone from an independent, successful woman to a mother quietly panicking on the inside, trying to hold everything together while it crumbled around me.
I was 42 and riding the bus. And here is where this story begins.
Back in 2013, blogging was still big. I was trying to be a writer—not casually, not “someday.” I wanted it with everything I had. It had always been the dream. And for one brief, shining moment, it happened. I got paid to write. The work lit me up. I anticipated every assignment like a kid waiting for a letter in the mail. It felt like climbing. It felt like air.
And then my rising balloon hit a live wire.
Google changed its ranking algorithm, and overnight, my writing job vanished. That small paycheck was supposed to fix a thousand things. It was supposed to be the bridge to the other side of survival. I had just started catching up—paying extra on the car loan, letting myself breathe—and then it was gone.
The next morning, I walked outside, and the car was gone too.
It wasn’t just metal and wheels. It was autonomy. Stability. Dignity. The last tie to the woman I used to be.
Suddenly, I was on the bus. Not once. Not sometimes. Every time. To work, to school, to the store. When I needed groceries, I waited until the kids were in school, packed a rolling suitcase, and walked to the nearest store through the Vegas heat. I couldn’t safely navigate a busy intersection with three kids in tow.
I tried affiliate marketing. I sold things on eBay. I let my phone bill lapse and Skyped when I could use the internet at home. Fast food became a luxury. Groceries came by suitcase. Shoes were rotated. Everything felt temporary—except for the fear.
The kids were tender in their noticing. But the fact that they noticed at all? That cut deeper than the lack.
“Mom, we’re like the poor people now, right?”
“Can we order off the McDonald’s dollar menu?”
And I said no—we didn’t have money for that.
“Can the bathtub be my room?”
It was sweet. It was horrifying. It was everything I had tried to protect them from.
And then one day, Porter—who had taken up the title of “man of the house” with far too much gravity—asked me what I would want if I could have anything.
Gratitude had always been my compass. I answered without thinking: “Things can’t bring happiness. Whether you have things or not, you still must choose to be happy.”
He blinked.
“Oh. I thought you were gonna say a car.”
That was the moment I realized the kids were watching things disappear. They were tracking the unraveling, and I had taught them to smile through it. That crushed me. And still—I was grateful. Grateful that they were kind. Grateful that they believed me when I said we were okay. Grateful, even when it tasted like denial.
Even when I didn’t feel like I was.
I always told myself there was a silver lining in everything. I had no child support. No second income. No safety net. But I had my kids and nothing was better than that.
Just one woman who felt like failure, three small children, and a whole lot of trying.
That’s the impossible paradox of those four months riding the bus: they broke me and rebuilt me at the same time. How did I get here? I asked myself over and over. And more importantly, how the hell do I get out?
I needed a way to escape the truth, so I invented a story in my imagination. I was an undercover journalist and this bus riding I had to do—oh no, in my mind this was my beat. I even gave the imaginary series a name—The Bus Stops Here and I would include it in blog. That fantasy gave me altitude when I couldn’t even afford gas. So, in the imaginary documentary I was creating, I started observing people. Listening. Watching. Paying attention to strangers like they were chapters.
It gave me something to do. But more than that—it gave me something to feel.
As I watched others survive—some gracefully, some desperately—I noticed how much kindness hides in plain sight. How hard people are trying, even when no one sees them. How much is happening beneath the surface of someone just sitting next to you on a bench.
The stories in this book are rooted in that season. A time of detours, dead ends, and benches I never wanted to sit on and truthfully wouldn’t wish on anyone. It was a time when I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back on my feet. I turned to writing to make sense of a world that had shrunk around me. The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t give up—three little humans were watching.
Fast forward to today, I’m a successful businesswoman and my kids are thriving. But I carry that season with me like a scar that never fully faded because it is what drives—never ever wanting to go back there and fighting like the devil to make sure my kids or theirs will have to fight the fight I did. Because the truth is, when I was in it, I didn’t know if I was going to make it or how long it would take to find a way out.
I didn’t know how I’d feed them. Or fix my credit. Or believe in myself again.
But every day during that time, the bus always showed up.
And somehow—so did I.
This book is for anyone who’s ever felt like they were supposed to be further along by now. For anyone who’s ever found themselves in a place they swore they’d never be. For anyone who’s waited too long, tried too hard, or had to rebuild quietly and completely while pretending to be okay.
It’s for the people we sit next to.
And for the versions of ourselves we hope to one day outgrow.
It’s for the grace we find in motion.
And for the chapters we’ll reread someday with reverence.
The bench might feel lonely sometimes, but it remembers all of us who sat down, stayed longer than we wanted, and stood back up.
