Adjusting Expectations

I’m frequently asked when I am going to start blogging. I generally respond with “when a day provides more than twenty-four hours”. The truth is, I read all these fantastic pieces here at HPN and feel as if I have nothing of value to contribute. I felt as though my voice didn’t fit in with the chorus as it were between the academics and hardcore advocates.  Then I was reminded that a chorus is made up of many voices all singing the same song in different octaves. And with that, here is my first blog for HPN.

Adjusting Expectations

 “She stood in the storm…and when the wind did not blow her way – and it surely has not – she adjusted her sails.” – Elizabeth Edwards

It’s safe to say there isn’t one among us who dreamed of living a life that is “less than” and we certainly never imagined our lives becoming a 24/7/365 fight for the roof over our heads. As a little girl I didn’t dream of the day when I would have to scoop the broken pieces of a life, my life, any life together and cobble them together to form something, anything at all, from them but at forty years old that’s exactly what I have found myself doing for the past ten plus years. I adjusted my expectations of adult life and moved forward.

In all the academics, in all the forensics, in all the heated legal debate and political rhetoric, often times, too often, we forget that foreclosure has a uniquely human face. These families, my families, your families, all of them are the living, breathing cost of the banks conducting business as usual. They are not statistics, they are not characters in a novel, they are not numbers on a page. They are mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and they are tired, so tired that most days it’s a struggle to drag themselves out of bed. I know because I am one of the faces, I am one of the tired and I am one of the wives. I am not complaining, as the so-called 53% would like you to believe. I didn’t want something for nothing. I just wanted the “bank” to have to play by the same set of rules that we were told applied to us. When it was clear to me that this idea of a level playing field was folly, I adjusted my expectations of fair play and moved forward.  

I was raised by a woman who taught me that if something broke you didn’t throw it away, you fixed it. If you didn’t know how to fix it on your own, you asked for help. On any given day I hear the pleas of the families asking for help to fix this broken system. I watch them struggle and cry and fight and sometimes I watch them go gently into that good night when their burdens become more than they can bear. I know that for many of them, the help they so desperately need will never come. My faith in my government is shattered, my faith in the legal system remains on shaky ground. I know that for some help will only come in the form of someone like me standing up and saying “STOP” for them. The days of honorable men and women in politics are gone, if they ever existed outside of the silver screen. And so it goes that I’ve adjusted my expectations of living the “American Dream” and continue to move forward.