Spotlight on Stigma... Welcomed but Not Accepted

Journalism was not a field I ever planned to go into. Both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees were in education and when I first decided to try freelancing seven years ago, I planned to use the skills I've honed over the years as a photographer to make a living.  As an avid reader, I did have a secret dream of being a writer, specifically of writing a book one day. But to regularly write articles for newspapers and magazines? That was so far out of my thinking it wasn't even a dream. Note that I have absolutely no training. I didn’t minor in journalism. I didn’t even take a journalism class. For that matter, I took the most basic English class I could as I was planning to be a math and/or physics major. It was a "God-thing" that I started writing professionally. Working as a photographer led to a chance to write a series of articles. That led to writing more. But before you decide that this post isn’t worth your time and you leave to read another post from someone who

I'm embarrassed even as I write this.  Backstory... My husband recently joined my freelancing business. It's something we had planned to do "one day" but not right now.  An unexpected job loss and a little too much work for me to handle it on my own pushed us to try to make this work. It's not like we were living in the lap of luxury. Together we made only about $60k a year. Another $5k+ went towards medical bills due to his not-so-ideal health insurance and my many physical and mental health issues and another several thousand goes to help my daughter who currently can't work due to medical issues. With the change, we technically went to just over the poverty level. I really think we can build it to the point we'll have enough to live on. But with the transition, it became time to sell some of the things that I've been thinking about selling for a while - to help pad our income until we can figure things out on making a living doing this. Some were no