On March 13, 2006, I became a WIFEpreneur. Only, I didn’t know it at the time.
It was a day like any other. My husband, who worked full-time at night, had come home, cleaned up, and left for his part time day job. My older son was at work-he was saving to buy his first home and to start a new business. My younger one was studying for his college mid-term exams. And, I was taking advantage of spring break to catch up on my own post-graduate coursework and to grade my own undergraduate students’ mid-term exams.
I hardly noticed when my younger son left the house. And I had no idea he had been gone before he returned and announced that we had to “get to the hospital, now!” Frankly, I laughed and shook him off, because nothing about his demeanor suggested anything was wrong. He was somber, but calm, as he made his announcement. So I simply laughed it off and told him that I was too busy for joking right now. Then he said, in a more insistent tone of voice: “moms, they’re taking pops to the hospital. He had a stroke…and we have to meet them there.”
I don’t remember feeling anything after his words finally sunk in. I only remember my son taking my car keys and telling me that he would drive. That’s when I noticed that my hands were shaking…and I started to cry.
During the drive to the hospital, I used the silence to mentally prepare myself for the worst.
Questions ran through my mind, from the profound to the trivial, like: Where am I going to bury him? How do I tell his mom? Oh God, where did he put her phone number-I can’t remember it-What is it again? What do I do about graduate school-how am I going to afford it without his income-do I dropout? What do I do about the boys? How do I help them get on with their lives? How do I stay strong for them-or should I let them see my weakness? Do I cry…or is it better for them if I hold it all in? Where am I going to get money to pay for a funeral-can I get a funeral loan? What would he want me to say on his gravestone-what would he want his final words to be? And, on and on…
Next, my thoughts moved to the why me, why now, and the if only, questions: Why now? I thought. I only had one more year of grad school then I could start working as a fulltime professor and take the financial pressure off him. We were finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. After struggling so long to make ends meet, we were finally going to be debt-free by the end of the year; my husband was finally going to be able to stop working two jobs; and my boys were about to start their own lives-one as a new homeowner and entrepreneur, and the other-as a new college graduate. Why now-just when things were going so well?
Then I started to review the day’s events. I recalled how we just talked about him getting a check-up that morning before he left for the second job. He hated going to the doctor, so I had to tell him that it was non-negotiable. I told him that I was making the appointment so his only choice was whether he wanted a morning or afternoon appointment. We ended that discussion with an agreement between us that he would get a check-up if I would get one too. So, I thought: maybe it’s my fault. If only I had made him get that check-up yesterday or the day before instead of waiting…. maybe things would be different now.
Then I started to get angry: My husband was such a good and kind person. What did we ever do to deserve this? It’s not fair, I thought. He worked so hard all his life-to just die like that with nothing to show for it, just when he was finally his turn to get a break out of life. It just didn’t seem fair.
Then I started to bargain with God. I begged him to please let him live. I asked him to kill me instead. Then I remember saying, “I can deal with anything…just as long as he’s alive. At that point, it didn’t matter to me what condition he was in; I just wanted him to live.
Well, my prayers were answered. My husband lived. But, I lied to God. It DID matter what condition he was in…
New questions have since come up that I have had to find answers to, and it’s this search for the answers that made me a WIFEpreneur who can now help others in a situation similar to this to survive the experience.
The lessons I learned as a WIFEpreneur helped me discover-and create-answers to some of the PRACTICAL mundane questions that were important to me, if I was ever going to be able to get on with the business of life. Some of these questions were:
1. How do I pay for the bills associated with his care: hospital, rehab, wheelchair, transportation, special food, medication, special equipment and medical supplies, speech therapy, occupational therapy, heart and neurosurgeon follow-up, blood tests and other diagnostic tests, and so on…
2. How do I deal with the Medicaid merry-go-round?
3. How do get help to fix his food; bathe him and help him use the toilet; retrain him to remember things; stop him from doing things he used to do-still thinks he can do-but now cannot without hurting himself?
4. How do I get help with changing the oil and fixing the car, cutting the grass, registering the car, clearing the garage, fixing the DVD; backing up my data and re-storing the computer after yet another crash?
5. How do I get over feeling abandoned and isolated and overwhelmed? How do I deal with getting sick and depressed myself? How do I get over feeling like I’m letting my husband down when I don’t give him the attention he needs because I have to work? How do I pay attention to my work when I have to care for my husband? How do I find a job that will allow me to make a good living and still leave me with time and flexibility I need to care for my husband? How do I ask for help at work without seeming like I’m using my husband’s illness as an excuse?
6. Who do I talk to about whether or not I should quit graduate school? Who do I talk to about how to help my sons overcome the toll it taking on them?
But, what exactly is a WIFEpreneur? What is it about searching for the answers to such obvious questions that makes you one-and how do you know you’ve become one?
But, most of all, you’re probably thinking: what possible help can becoming one be to me when I’m the sole caretaker or single-parent of a sick or impaired person; or to me, a working mother or father trying to earn extra part-time income to make ends meet; or, to me, a person with a hidden impairment that will always prevent me from getting what I deserve; and what about me-someone who simply has a missionary zeal for a cause and is torn between the need to pursue this calling-and the demands of the everyday business of life-what good will becoming a WIFEpreneur be to me?
If you’re in one of these situations or know someone who is, I do understand why you might be thinking along these lines.
So, for you, the bottomline probably is this: What lessons have I learned as a WIFEpreneur that can help YOU discover-and create-answers to some of the PRACTICAL mundane questions that are important or relevant to you, so that you can get on with the business of your life?
Well, let me answer it this way. You’re probably quite familiar with Robert Kennedy’s famous quote that: some men see things as they are and say why; I dream things that never were and say, why not? Then a WIFEpreneur can be thought of as one who sees HOW things that are, can become what never was, and asks-who?
To put it more simply, I define a WIFEpreneur as a solutions oriented collector of words and communicator of ideas for the business of life. Someone who is able to move persons from where they are to where they want to go-but have never been-by connecting them with the best words & ideas of others who have gone before them, and helping them make best personal use of these ideas.
Essentially, this is an entrepreneur who can speak the language of ideas, which is the ability to listen to words and see their ideas; and conversely, see ideas and hear their words.
When we look at language as simply the stitching together of ideas in a symbolic form that makes them tangible and useful, we can better appreciate the value of someone who is skilled at translating the ideas captured by a set of words and putting them into other word forms that make these ideas consumable by those most in need of them.
A person with these unique skills is in the best position to help persons interpret the ideas symbolized by the words they consume (whether from family and friends, self-help products, or the opinions of experts) and to use these ideas to imagine solutions to the problems that de-stabilize their lives and bring them turmoil, uncertainty, and chaos.
Yeah, nice, you may be thinking-but what does THAT mean? How does it get me where I want to go? How does it actually HELP me DO anything to make my situation better? For example, how does it help me pay the bills or fix the car, or get me out of my depression?
The answers are simple-but not easy.
By going through the PROCESS of reframing my why me questions into why not me questions, and moving from these why’s into the how then questions: how can I become what I could be and learn to do what I couldn’t do? And, then finally arriving to the finding the who’s to help me become what I could be, and do what I couldn’t do, types of questions, I actually helped myself find practical solutions-that had eluded me before-to some of the problems contained in my 6 questions above.
I was able to find these solutions by paying attention to the ideas behind the words of advice that people offered-whether their intentions were good or bad. I learned to decode these ideas and to put the best ones to the most practical use for me. And, I have an unwavering certainty that I will be able to find solutions to the problems that remain, by repeating the same process.
And, you can do this with the same certainty too.
Now then, here is an overview of the creative process that can take you from where you are now to where you want to be:
1. Reframing the Why s into Why nots
2. Moving from Whys to HOWs
3. Finding Your WHOs
Of course, the trick is doing what you know. So, now that you know the process, the trick is HOW do you do it? I’ll be talking more about how to go through each of the steps in this process over the weeks to come.
Thus, if you are also facing a similar life-changing event like mine, and it has left you chronically sick or impaired; or, if you are the sole caretaker of someone with such a chronic or disabling illness; or, if you’re the friend or loved one of someone who is facing this type of situation and would like to know how to help and support them; or, if you are the single-parent, the working mom or dad, the person with the hidden impairment, or the one with a cause, that I mentioned earlier-or you care about someone in one of these situations-then visit the Biziwife blog often for practical words & ideas that you can use to transform your life or the life of someone you care about.
Delores A. Edelen calls herself a WIFEpreneur. She is in the business of searching for words & ideas to help those who face major health and financial challenges, answer their most important questions about the practical business of everyday life, and publishing these ideas on her blog at http://www.biziwife.com She also designs regular live tele-trainings to help them use these ideas in the best ways for them.