Surviving 60 when you’re broke.

When our lives haven’t turned out as expected, what do we do now?

If, like me, you’re around 60 years old, broke, broken and feeling so scared that you can hardly breathe — first of all, don’t panic. Everything will be ok.

There’s a solution to every problem. Just take a moment, be still and take that breath . . the answers are coming . . accept and be grateful for where you are and what you still have . . you’re a survivor and you’ve come so far . . regardless of how dark and painful it may seem right now, things will get better, I promise you.

Those are the words I comforted myself with six months ago when, out of the blue, my whole world disintegrated around me. I offer them now to you.

Those months were ABSOLUTE HELL! My partner had left me and I was left alone to deal with the fact that my livelihood — the pub/restaurant I had put so much effort into building and was so proud of — was failing and coming to an abrupt end. I lost all my money and was facing a ton of debt. My family were hundreds of miles away, as were my closest and oldest friends. In any case, no one seemed to care much when I tentatively reached out for help. I had little support. To make matters even worse, my mother, who has dementia, was in a nursing home and solely reliant on me for visits and support. My useless brother was nowhere to be seen. Everything was so dark, desperate and lonely. My brain felt constantly dense with worry, scrambled and overwhelmed by the number of fires I had to put out on a daily basis. Before I knew it, I was one step from homelessness and complete destitution.

The timing could not have been worse. The country was newly in the grips of a so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ and the prices of everything shot up, including homes to rent, if you were lucky enough to find one. So, I found myself sofa-surfing with nothing but a car-full of possessions — a mini, of all cars — an elderly dog and ever-narrowing range of options of where I could go and what I could do.

It was all so hard to comprehend.

One minute, I was a prominent figure in a supportive community, proud of my business and of myself, the next, I was a shell of a man, confused, lonely, and struggling to keep my sanity.

As you would expect, I very quickly fell into the deepest of depressions. The best part of my day became those two seconds when I opened my eyes in the morning, but before I had remembered what I had lost and how desperate my situation was. I had ground to a halt, spending much of my time just staring off into the distance, searching for answers, wondering where the hell it had all gone wrong. Some people suggested anti-depressants but, by this time, I knew that logng-term medication has never been a path I wanted to go down. I have an in-built distrust of prolonged drug-taking and, in any case, my depression wasn’t irrational — it was justified, if anything. It was real. I was facing an existential threat like no other and I wasn’t prepared for it in the least. No, if I was to make it out of this one mentally intact, it was obvious I couldn’t mask the pain of the transformation I was going to have to make. I needed to understand myself and why I had allowed this all to happen. I needed to show up for myself and work this one out. If I had to choose between the pain of reality one one hand, or a false, narcotic happiness, on the other – I choose the pain. Avoiding the darkness that was coming my way would be a cop-out, a lesson unlearned, a missed opportunity to grow. No, the only way out of my depression, is through.

I think that tells you everything you need to know about me.

If you’re going through a similar time in your life, I hope my continuing story will help you in some way. I will share my experiences and revelations as they come up, but I can’t guarantee that I will have any answers or great insights into this time in our lives. The ups-and-downs of my recovery from this desperate situation will be just that, mine. Follow me to read how, by learning lessons of the past, I open myself up to possibilities for the future.