Be Vulnerageous
On August 20, 2009…
She didn’t know that when he told her no one would ever love her if she left, he was wrong.
She didn’t know that when her job disappeared, he would disappear too—leaving her with two kids, a dog, and all the bills.
She didn’t know that when the bills stacked up and the house disappeared, she didn’t need it (or him) to have a home.
She didn’t know that the darkness she thought was rock bottom was really the escape tunnel to the rest of her life.
On August 20, 2009, almost no one noticed when I posted that I wanted a vacation from my life. What I really meant was that I was giving up. For seven years I had tried so hard to hold everything together, but it was like emptying the ocean with a spoon—every effort undone as fast as I made it. I was exhausted, defeated, and completely out of hope.
At 26, with an immature mind and unhealed heart, I believed a lifetime of hyper-independence should have gotten me better results. Instead, it left me stranded—alone on an island in the middle of nowhere, with two kids and a dog whose lives had also just been blown apart, and all of the responsibility resting on me to put it back together.
What I didn’t know was that someone did notice. The most unlikely someone.
I’ve worked since I was 14, starting out as the morning drive-thru girl at McDonald’s. Being homeschooled, I worked the breakfast shift and did my studies afterward. Every day at 9:30 a.m., the same man came through. I’d hand him his Steak, Egg, and Cheese Bagel and a Diet Coke. He was always kind, always friendly, and he seemed quietly skeptical that I was there instead of in a classroom with kids my age.
For four years, that was our daily ritual—a quick chat over breakfast handoffs. And then one day, it ended. I was 18, graduated, ready for “bigger and better” things. On my last day, I handed him his order, we said goodbye, and that was that.
Until August 21, 2009—eight years later—when that same man, through some algorithmic miracle, saw my desperate Facebook post. He was the only one who understood what it really meant. He reached out. That weekend he invited me to a gathering, introduced me to his family and friends. And from that circle, I rebuilt my entire life.
To this day, “Steak Bagel Guy” is like my personal version of Kevin Bacon. Every good thing in my life since that fateful day, every connection, somehow traces back to him and that one concerned message that pulled me out of the dark and gave me something solid to stand on.
Now, 16 years later, I’m walking through another season of loss—things burning away to make room for what’s next. But this time is different. This time I have love. I have belonging. I have connections, an education, and a foundation strong enough to float me until the next chapter takes shape.
So there you have it, the story behind the piece. I hope it inspires you to:
1) if you’re in a dark place, be vulneragous (vulnerable and courageous) and speak up when you need to be seen, heard, and cared for.
2) if you’re in a good place, notice what’s going on around you, you might just be someone’s Steak Bagel Guy.
With All My Heart,
Rae