What is it like to expect to re enter your professional career and be second choice, over and over and over again? What is it like to share a house with a friend for a decade without contributing to the mortgage, taxes, house repairs? What is it like to watch your retirement savings be eaten by groceries? What is it like to lose your sense of purpose and sense of self? Middle Income Poverty is living among middle income family, friends, colleagues, strangers, with a below poverty income. It is struggling to succeed raising a daughter on ten thousand dollars a year (from the court ordered child support), with occasional bits of additional income. It is wrassling the courage to ask for help. It is slugging through two major depressions and several hospitalizations while fighting stress related diseases. It is being denied a return to the once successful career. Back in 2004, I left behind my City Planner position. After fifteen years in the land use use planning profession in Ma