Lisa Wuthrich Curless’ husband did everything for her. He took care of the bills. He made the house and car payments. He took care of insurance. All this allowed Lisa to raise their four children and care for their home in Bountiful, Utah.

Then, on his 45th birthday, Lisa’s husband committed suicide. He didn’t show signs of depression. Nor did he indicate that anything was less than perfect in their 15-year marriage, she says.

If possible, Lisa’s situation grew worse. After her husband’s death, she learned that their home had two and three mortgages on it. Their cars had loans that exceeded their value. Their bank account was in the negative and they had no savings. They owed thousands of dollars to the IRS.

“I came to the realization that I was a widow at 35 who did not know anything,” Lisa says. “I didn’t know what the utility bills were, what the house payment was, where the car loans went, what checking accounts and credit cards we had. I knew nothing about my life.”

With her home in foreclosure and her car being repossessed, Lisa had to start her life over. She had four children, ages 5 to 14, to support and had not been in the workforce for 13 years. She had no formal education beyond high school.

Lisa ultimately realized she had two choices. She could give up and make the same decision her husband had made. Or, she could fight. Calling herself a “fighter” and “survivor,” she knew she had to buck up and learn what she needed to know to give her children the lives they deserved.

Lisa with kids“I knew I had a responsibility to my children and to myself,” Lisa says. “I looked into their four little, beautiful faces and realized that I was the only hope they had, that as their mother I had to find a way to survive this.”

As a woman in today’s world, Lisa knew she needed an education to be able to move forward. She enrolled at Salt Lake Community College, where she is studying dental hygiene, with plans to graduate in 2011. “Getting my education is absolutely necessary for me to be able to care for my children,” she says.

Living in a neighbor’s home and surviving on Social Security payments with some help from her church, Lisa was in dire financial need. She applied for the Women’s Opportunity Award and learned she was a $10,000 finalist on the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death.

“I was laying in my bed and praying out loud and saying to the Lord to please give me what I call a ‘high note,’ which is basically something that happens that allows me to breathe for a minute, allows me to have faith in my future and faith in myself to care for my family,” she recalls. “In the midst of that blackness that was that day, I was praying for a ‘high note’ and not 15 minutes after I had dried my tear-stained face but my phone rang and I received the news that I had won.”

As a SI/Bountiful club-level recipient nominated by SI/Rocky Mountain Region, she has been using the awards to help with food, housing, clothes, school tuition, books and transportation.

For now, she is delaying her dream of earning a nursing degree until her children are older. The hours required for nursing would mean being away from them at night, not allowing her to be the mother that they need, she says.

Even though the last year has been the most painful and devastating she has ever experienced, Lisa admits to feeling more hope in witnessing the good in the human spirit that she ever has in her life.

“I have learned that as human beings we are on the earth together,” she says, “that the journey is meant to be shared and we were meant to help shoulder one another’s burdens. One of my favorite quotes was given to me by my best friend and it reads, ‘Each of us are angels with only one wing. We can only fly embracing each other,’” she says.

“At a time when my life seemed the darkest and when I could barely find the will to breathe, I have witnessed more love and more selflessness and more beauty than I ever saw in the world before. I have hope in people, and most of all, hope in myself.”