As I watch the strong woman in front of me break down, for 30+ years she has worked hard and now when she needs help she feels the world has turned their back on her.

My mother has had several careers, all in completely different fields. She started out getting her degree in Forensics, she was a mortician in Chicago. She worked in the Crime Lab. She moved to Arkansas after having two kids and a sort of messy divorce. From Arkansas, she began working for previous Congressman Beryl Anthony and worked for him on Capitol Hill. She moved us to DC where my brother, her and I grew as a family, with some people (stepfathers and brothers) moving in and out of our lives, but she was always consistent.

When I went through my surgery at 12, my first sexual assault at 14, and depression thereafter, my mother realized that the mental health system was flawed, and the people who were supposed to help me in some ways made me worse. Many were there for a paycheck and not to help us children who had already been through so much. My mother got on the board, she went back to school and got a bachelors in Psychology and followed up with a Master, my mother got programs in Maryland shut down and reworked and people who didn't have the kids best interest at heart fired and banned.

We moved to Arkansas, where my mother made a name for herself. She became a Clinical Director of a residential program for adolescences. She helped a company widen its spectrum and get children to help them from all over the country. And then it happened, as my mother called it, she blew her cap. My mother was at odds with her boss, whom she wanted to tell him to never speak to her like that again, and she ended up with two aneurysms behind her eyes, that started bleeding. Before she was completely out of surgery, before she could remember what day it was she was replaced and forced to take disability.

Now she is sitting here almost 3 years later and she feels let down. Disability doesn't pay her enough, Medicaid doesn't take care of everything and now Medicare has stepped in, causing Medicaid to fall off. Apparently, she makes too much money, but not enough money to stay in Assistant Living. Not enough to make her feel secure while she heals. My mother cries something I have never seen before these days.

She was always the mother of strength, even when I was a mess and had no real direction. To see her fall apart makes me realize that there is a bigger problem than people think. We are failing our elders, our disabled. We expect for everyone their age to be loaded, or to continue working until they die. So many of them are still taking care of children who have a hard time themselves. This economy is not getting better, especially when our leaders don't even know the correct enemies.

We owe our parents, our grandparents, our sisters and brothers, we owe those who set the path for us. How dare we disrespect them and let them wither away or freeze to death on the streets. How dare we set the playing field for when we get older or something happens to us and we need help. While we have the influence, while we have the ability, we need to stand up for our elders, so I can see the strength in my Mom again.