I spend my entire career working for low pay at community newspapers, and I will miss that forever.

I took off to stay home with my kids and during that time I taught or helped thousands of moms to nurse. I volunteered in LLL and started a support group and classes for free at my local WIC office. It was much harder in those days, because most doctors gave appallingly bad information and moms didn't know better than to listen to their doctor.

I bake our bread, hang up all our laundry to dry and don't buy new things lightly. Most our stuff was second-hand or hand-made. We eat a lot of beans and basic, inexpensive food, nearly all of it cooked at home. My husband has been a vegetarian for decades; I do eat some meat sometimes.

I honestly don't know where to go from here. I am not young. I never managed to get a good-paying job in my life (I made $40K a year as editor of a daily and then made the same at the ad agency where I worked for a few years). All the things I want to do and find worthwhile are low-paid or volunteer positions. I do some freelancing, write novels and am seeing if Medium is going to pay off at all. We live as cheaply as we can but we do need some money. My daughter has small children. My son has looked around at the world and says nope, he's not bringing more into this world.

I, too, am trying to find solutions beyond keeping stacks of cans of beans in my pantry.