10.
“I found out from my mother that my family was a lot richer than I thought, and that time we lost money and downgraded was a bigger deal than I thought. I was 8 at the time, so I didn’t fully comprehend it. Turned out we were legit millionaires during the ’80s, and the market crash wiped us out. I had always thought we went from being well-off to being modest, but really we went from RICH to lower-middle class, and after a decade, we made it to upper-middle class.”
“After the crash, my dad liquidated his business to pay out his workers and give them all a chance to survive. Selling our house (that my father literally built, he owned and was the lead architect of his construction company), my mom starting a career in her 40s, cutting back on everything; it was all to survive and make sure my father’s workers got their fair share.
My mother also revealed to me that she was suicidal for several years during that. It really threw me for a loop because I had huge mental health issues during middle and high school, leading to a full mental breakdown in my senior year of high school. For years, she refused to get me mental health treatment, and it was mainly because she was struggling and refusing her own treatment, too. It took us a bit to reconcile after that big revelation, but we have a much better relationship now than ever.
And I already had a great relationship with my father, but finding out what he did for his employees and contractors gave me an extra level of respect.”
