If I could pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that the years of complicated special-needs parenting finally struck their toughest, most irreparable blow?when everything changed and the walls came crashing down?it was the sad scene in which I sat, sandwiched between two file boxes in the backseat of a taxi, unexpectedly on my way home at 10 a.m. on a Monday.
I?d been let go from my job. Me. I?d never been let go from any job before.
Despite 10 years of loyalty and hard work?I hadn?t even taken proper mat leaves?I?d been dismissed from my job as a clerk at a large law firm. In tears and stung by shock, I removed the thumb tacks from the corners of about 100 pictures of my two kids affixed to a bulletin board, in what had been my office. An HR rep watched me pack up the books, the cards from clients, a wall calendar, and the framed photos and certificates that would become artifacts of my time there. A decade of my life was crammed into two boxes and two reusable bags. They asked me whether or not I?d driven to work that day. ?No,? I said, ?I ran to work like I usually do.? They escorted me to a cab so I could get everything home. The office had been the place I could always go?the place I would literally run to?when things were tough and felt out of my control. I was 34, and I had two little boys, including a profoundly disabled five year old with a rare disease. I was also in the trenches of a divorce. It was a very unique and intense set of stressors on an already bu...