When I first got divorced, I didn’t know where to begin. For 22 years, I had been a stay-at-home mom. That was my identity, my job, my world. I had picked up a few odd jobs over the years—just enough to help, but never enough to stand on my own.

And suddenly, I had to.

When COVID hit, everything changed. For a lot of people, it brought loss. For me, strangely enough, it opened a door. The medical field was hiring—desperate, really—and I slipped in through that crack. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t easy. But it was something.

With that little something, I got my kids and myself a tiny trailer. It wasn’t much. It had a hole in the ceiling big enough to let the weather in. The washer and dryer sat outside, exposed to the sun and rain. And pack rats would scurry up through the floorboards like they lived there too. We didn’t have much, but we had each other—and a roof, more or less.

I worked. I saved. I believed, even when I was exhausted.

Fourteen months ago, I scraped together enough to get us into a two-bedroom apartment. No washer. No dryer. Just four walls, a roof that didn’t leak, and a space that was truly ours. I remember crying the day we moved in. It felt like we had won the lottery. I told my kids, “The next time we move, it’ll be into one of those three-bedroom apartments. You know, the ones with a washer and dryer inside.”

That dream became our compass.

For three years, I’ve slept on a couch in the living room so my kids could have the bedrooms. I washed clothes outside—in the sweltering heat of summer and the biting cold of winter. I dragged heavy laundry baskets to and from laundromats, sometimes after a long shift, sometimes in the middle of the night because it was the only time I could fit it in.

But I did it. We did it.

And today?

Today we got the keys to that three-bedroom apartment.
The one with the washer and dryer inside.
The one I promised them. The one I kept working toward, inch by inch.

Today, I walked through the door, and for the first time in years, I opened a bedroom that was just mine.
Not the couch. Not the corner of the living room.
A room.
With a door I can close. With a bed I can lie down in and exhale, knowing I finally made it here.

And today—my daughter looked at me and said:
“I’m proud of you, Mom.”

That broke me in the best way. Because I’m proud too. Not just of myself, but of my kids—who never once complained that where we lived wasn’t good enough. Who made the best of what we had. Who loved me through the hard and stood beside me even when I had nothing to offer but peanut butter sandwiches and secondhand hope.

I did this with no family to lean on. No safety net. No one swooping in to save the day. It was just me and my kids, step by step.

But I wasn’t entirely alone. I’ve had amazing friends along the way. People who cheered me on, held space for me, reminded me that what I was doing mattered.

So tonight, as I sit in my own room for the first time in years, I’m not thinking about what we didn’t have.

I’m thinking about everything we built.

Brick by brick. Prayer by prayer. Load by load.
And I’m proud. Deeply proud.

Because this…
This is what starting over looks like.
This is what rising looks like.
This is what resilience looks like.

And I promise you—if I can do it, so can you.