I didn’t have a clue. How could I?

I had just fled the most compatible partner, promising family life, and comfortable standard of living I’d ever experienced. I did it to protect myself and my children from their dad’s mental and emotional challenges, stemming from his service in Vietnam. The beginning of our relationship was idyllic. On his good days he was the ideal domestic partner.

But gradually his episodic withdrawals and unpredictable violent rages emerged, became more frequent, and then turned our lives into a nightmare. When one afternoon, he mumbled something about “the enemy,” then struck me in my face, I knew I had to leave. At any cost.

Having left behind my otherwise good life, I was shattered in every way imaginable. I found myself heartbroken and in an unfamiliar city, where I lived in deplorable, substandard housing as I eked out a living on welfare—all with no idea of how I would ever regain some level of financial stability and independence.

I spent my first year with minimal assistance, focused only on my and my boys’ day-to-day survival. By year two, when I was finally able to move into affordable, more suitable, housing by way of Section 8, I decided to strike out and go back to school.

The most pivotal moment in my two years as a community college student was when my broadcast journalism professor told me to be sure to come see him after class. I was so unnerved by his request, that I didn’t really hear, let alone retain, much of what he taught us that morning.

There had recently been a lot of struggle and emotional upheaval going on at home: I was constantly scouring for necessities like diapers, detergent, and cleaning products, making frequent visits to my oldest son’s school due to incidents of bad behavior, and I was still grappling with the heartbreak and disappointment of what had happened to my once dreamy love relationship.

I figured that the turmoil must have resulted in that last paper I turned in being pretty darn bad. As soon as the classroom was empty of everyone, except me and my instructor, I dragged myself into his office.

He did want to talk to me about my assignment. He approached me with the pages clasped in his hand.

“Pam, it’s about your article,” he said. “It needs a little work here and there. There are a few issues with punctuation and maybe a word or two.”

I’d readied my explanation as to why my work was shoddy, but before I could come out with it he caught me by surprise.

“Overall, though, what you have here is actually pretty good,” he continued, holding the paper up in front of me. “From what I’m seeing here, with your skills and a little bit of work, you can turn words into dollars.”

Did he just tell me I can make money writing? I thought. That sounded way too good to be true.

I had never considered that my ability to think something and then express it in words on paper was a valued skill. I’d figured, hey, everyone writes and speaks. But at that instant, hearing those words from my mentor, a communications media expert, I came to realize: yes, every person does have these skills —but not quite in the way I do it.

A year later, I was writing a letter to the welfare agency, advising them to remove me and my children from its rolls. Through dozens of freelance assignments, and eventually securing a position as a staff member at a newspaper, I’d written myself out of poverty.