When I was a little girl my family moved to Louisville, KY. My father was leaving his career to work for my Uncle who at the time, owned a VERY successful construction company there.   About a year after relocating my Uncle’s company ran into some “financial” problems and shut down completely leaving my father without a job.

To get by until he could find employment in his field, my father took a job at a Ford dealership and my Mom started working at a Winn Dixie near our apartment.  I would have no idea until later in my life, how hard my parents were working to keep a roof over our head and food on our table.

You see I never knew it at the time, but over the course of the year and a half that followed, my family would struggle financially. Car sales would be bad and a cashier gig back in the mid 80′s didn’t really pay much.

I share this story because during this time frame my parents never let on to my brother and I that anything had changed. We’d never led extravagant lives before, but they worked hard to make sure we were unaware of the financial pinch we were in, that we felt safe and secure. They wanted our worlds to feel as if nothing had changed.  And that is how it felt. I never noticed that my Mom was bringing home dented, discounted canned goods from the grocery or that we were eating a lot of rice and hamburger based meals. I never noticed that when my Mom let me get that Twirly Curls Barbie doll ,  that she secretly slipped the new pair of pants she needed for work out of the cart and back onto the shelf. I was 10, my brother was 4 and they were protecting us.

Years later my Mom shared with me the truth about our time in Louisville. How hard it was. How they’d struggled but made it work. I can remember looking at my Mom in disbelief. I’d had no idea of the struggles we’d had. All I remembered of Louisville were the great times we’d had – playing at the apartment complex pool, getting to see the Derby Day Parade, and so on.  I didn’t remember a struggle. I didn’t remember not being like everyone else.  As a matter of fact, I remembered us being the people who helped others.

You see we weren’t the only family in our apartment complex that was struggling. There were several people who’d seen better times – an elderly woman who lived on SSI and would babysit to help make ends meet, a family of four up the street who were going through a rough patch.  I know about these families because these are the families we helped. These are the families that my Mom would bring food home for. These are the families that we would make “meal boxes” for and then leave them anonymously on their doorsteps. My Mom was helping people get by, when we ourselves were barely doing so.

This is why I Live United. This is why today I teach my children the value of giving back to the community. Because even when things were bad for our family, My Mom still found a way to help those around us. She still found away to help others. She Lived United.

This post is inspired by the United Way’s “We Can Live United” campaign in Cincinnati. Each of us has the power to make a difference! Donating to United Way of Greater Cincinnati is one way we can all LIVE UNITED.

Find out how others in our community LIVE UNITED and help spread the word. Visit http://www.wecanliveunited.org or follow them on Twitter: UnitedWayGC