For the first 16 years that I lived in Michigan, my dad was laid off countless times. Approximately, seven of those years he was unemployed. During the seven years, people from our church, and family members, helped us survive. For example, Roland Alex Blackwood, MD, PhD, from our church and also known for his work at U of M Pediatrics Infectious Disease, hired my dad to fix up his house. Once my dad found a job, we were relocated to New Jersey. We barely scraped by for a year and a half before my dad was laid off again. A few days after, his dad died; thus, my family moved to Texas. A family from my church in Michigan took me in to finish out high school. I moved back and forth from Michigan to Texas attending colleges and was homeless
