SINGLE (with a kid), JOBLESS AND DROWNING: Kick Yourself Out of the Abyss Life Throws You Into!

By Kanimoli Ramaiah

This is my life journey - the hardest part; at 40 I was a single mother who had a kid to raise, huge debts, a life to live and I was jobless. There weren't any pre set formula to fall back upon. Reality hit harder than a truck would at the speed of 130 kilometers per hour.

What transpired in the subsequent 13 months have been recorded in this book. No economics class or commerce subject could have prepared one for such travails.

It was a time I discovered who were my true friends and what was my strength. It would be a lie if I say I had not contemplated suicide at the lowest point during the journey. I did but I decided to fight back with all I had - I had nothing left except the fighting spirit.

Hardest lessons learnt were about people who had basked in my suffering.  Greatest lesson learnt was that options are aplenty around us, it is up to us to grab what we can and pull ourselves out of the abyss.

I had emerged unscathed from that battle, wiser and most important of all - very shrewd.

I have recorded my 13 months' journey as a guide to those women who are in similar predicament. Believe me, there are ways to raise funds and continue your life, than to fall victim to anyone who is out to take a free ride on you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: May 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9783743816053

Book preview

Why I Wrote This Book

I started writing this book on my daughter, Abby’s, twelfth birthday after a full night of tears. Abby has always been an inspiration in my life.  My elder daughter was already nine when the ex in laws broached the topic of having another child, I was no longer interested as I had wanted to focus on chasing whatever dreams that my early marriage took away.

I got married at 26, right after graduating though I had big dreams of going to Paris to take up fashion designing. A chance meeting with my ex during a football match wrote the entire history differently. There I was on the 15th of June 2013 reminiscing on all that should have been done differently.

It was also the day that I decided to record my journey in the preceding one year, as I believed that somewhere around the world, there were many women like me who one day woke up and realized that they were single and drowning in debt while there were kids who needed to be educated and brought up. What more with the pandemic ravaging the world since 2020, more and more people, especially single mothers, find it difficult to put bread on the table.

This is my story, if it helps at least one person, the objective of writing it would have been achieved and this work is dedicated to my younger daughter, Abby, who was my inspiration throughout the twelve years I was a single mother – raising her all by myself.

This book was written in the Asian – Malaysian context to be specific and as I was a Hindu then; there were somethings that I believed strongly in life - things like rebirth and karma to name a few.

I believe each of us have our own journey in this birth and that journey has been determined even at the time of our birth. How we undertake to complete the journey, is in our hands.

As we experience each incident, we would be presented with multiple options, but ultimately it would narrow down to doing the right thing or doing things right. This concept will be seen throughout this book where doing the right thing will be the savior of the day, any day.

Mankind can be very arrogant; so was I. I was arrogant because I was flying high in my senior government role. Life was happening then suddenly one day that life evaporated. It was a conscious moral decision to leave that cushy job; to do the right thing.

If I had stayed on in the job, many would have lost their income. Being a single mother with only one kid, I figured that I was better off without a job than those who were earmarked to be sent packing who were mostly senior folks with kids in college and universities. Eventually, I discovered that I was right.

However, upon walking out of the job reality hit hard; I lost my arrogance but gained wealth of learning.

Introduction

 The reason I started writing this book was to share the stories of my struggles when I was jobless, single and had a kid to raise. I know mine was not the most extreme story; there were people with even more difficult predicaments. However, there were some things that I did right and managed to survive thirteen months without income. I had bills to pay, food to place on the table and a life to live with positive motivation to avoid rubbing off negativity to my second daughter and for a child that young to be de-motivated in life - that would have been disastrous.

My journey saw me walking down a path of discovery – about people, about my own mistakes and ego, path of realization – about the possibilities for survival which never occurred to me before, path of seeking – the answers that all the while I