The Day We Lost Everything: Rebuilding Through Community

What happens when your life savings vanish overnight? For Karen, this devastating reality struck when a £150,000 investment in her daughter's business venture collapsed due to contractual issues with their building. This financial catastrophe arrived alongside serious health challenges after Karen developed long COVID, forcing her to leave her job as an exams officer when breathing difficulties made her work impossible.

Karen's story reveals the cascading nature of hardship. While processing the financial blow, she and her husband also took on caring for their neurodiverse 17-year-old grandson who needs significant support and faces open heart surgery. Add to this the pain of losing both her mother and grandmother within days of each other in March 2020, and you begin to understand the extraordinary resilience required to navigate such turbulent waters.