I remember the balloon of panic that swelled in my chest, a new husband, a new father, and newly unemployed. Life in the rolling green space of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County was in many ways ideal. But if your last name was not Dutch and you had not grown up farming with mules, finding a job was like entering planting season without seed to scatter.  

Being without a job meant more to me than losing a source of income. In America, where new relationships typically begin with the question, “what do you do?” losing a job also meant losing my identity. Americans have a uniquely self-reliant view of work. We love the image of the “up from poverty” hero, a person of self-reliance who will be the next Donald Trump . . . uh, well, maybe not him, since he is back in bankruptcy court. Again. But somebody handsome and dashing, with a Disneyesque story.