Emily M. Posted recently · 3 min read

I got laid off three weeks ago, and my mom still doesn't know

The one thing she lets me do is buy the groceries. Here's how I kept doing it.

I got laid off about three weeks ago, and I still haven't told my mom. I know how that sounds. But if you knew her, you'd get it.

She works two jobs and she will not take a dime from me for rent. The only thing she lets me contribute is the groceries, and I've covered that run every week for two years. It's small, but it's mine. It's the one way she lets me take care of her instead of the other way around.

So when I lost my job, my first thought honestly wasn't about me. It was: how do I keep doing my one job without her finding out? Because the day I can't buy the groceries is the day she finds out something's wrong, and then she worries, and then she picks up more hours she doesn't have.

So I was online constantly, applying for everything, and trying to scrape together a little money any way I could. That's when I kept seeing these gift-card giveaways. Each one took about ten minutes. I'll be honest, I thought they were fake. I did like five of them anyway, mostly out of desperation, fully expecting nothing.

One actually came through. I sat there kind of stunned. It honestly felt like a small miracle in the middle of a really bad month, because it meant this week's groceries were covered and my mom would never know anything was different.

I want to be straight about what this is, because I hate when people oversell stuff: it's a sweepstakes-style giveaway. It's free to enter, no purchase, and it is not guaranteed. It took a few tries before one hit. But that one came through right when I was panicking, and I've kept entering since.