So hard to do things alone!

[Isela F]

Hello,
I have been married with my sailor for 2 1/2 years; which seems like only 1 year with all the time he has been gone :(
We have a beautiful 15 month son and have been living in VA for almost 2 years. We moved from CA on April 2009, which was very hard for me because I knew that my family would not be able to be with me on my son's birth and all the holidays we are used to celebrating together.
I am an alcohol and drug counselor and have been working since I was 18 years old. Moving to VA put a huge frustration in my life due to not being able to find employment. I have been a housekeeper since we moved to VA because I did not succeed to get a decent employment. I did everything I could but unfortunately VA is a state that is not military friendly and employers don't want to hire us.
I have a disability since I was 24 years old due to bone cancer but I have never let that stop me from succeeding in reaching my goals. It is hard to walk with a total femur/hip replacement, especially now that I have a very active son I have to run after all day :)
I just had my 5th hip replacement surgery and with the holidays coming and my husband going underway, makes it hard for me to be happy about the holidays.
I feel that I have exhausted all of my options in order to feel that I am a solid support for my sailor. I wish I could help financially but even the government has denied me disability because I have worked in the past.
I feel alone in this Navy journey and the only thing I want is to give my son a happy home and give my husband the support he needs!
If anyone knows about something I can do in order to make and income working from home and/or about anything I can do for a disability income, I would really appreciate the help!
We are not alone....We should not feel alone!

[Lynne]

Every state has an agency that is primarily funded by the federal government to help people who have disabilities maximize their ability to obtain employment. If you are a chemical dependency counselor the first thing you need to do is check into licensing laws and see if your license transfers from CA to VA. You can also contact the Virginia Disabilities Resource Department. This is their website: http://www.vadsa.org/careers.htm This is the specific part of the site that is dedicated to helping people obatin and maintain employment. You will be able to find the closest field office to you. You should be able to go there, have a case manager assigned to you, and have someone assigned to you to help you become successful in your job hunt. Good Luck. I'll keep you in my prayers. Stay the course!!

[Lynne]

One more thing...don't give up on the disability route...it is tough to get...and I am sure you would rather work than not...but sometimes you have to apply multiple times than approve...most of the time your best bet is to contact a disability attorney who will charge you a contingency fee, this means that they ONLY get paid if they get you your disability...and it is a percentage of the disability. So let's say you filed for disability on December 1st...and you are approved on February 1st...you would receive payments beginnng December 1st and many of these attorneys will charge 40% of those first 3 months. Now I know that is high, however 60% of something is better than 60% of nothing and no I am not an attorney. I just know it is very hard to get disability, unfortunately they put lots of road blocks in place. But, good luck with it!!