Andrea McCarren, TV Veteran, Bounces Back After Layoff (PHOTOS)

"Mom, just because you're not working for 7 doesn't mean you're not a reporter anymore," 13-year-old Blake McCarren gently reminded his then-unemployed mother, 47-year-old broadcast journalist Andrea McCarren.

Despite working for 20 years as a prominent TV news anchor for WJLA ABC7 in Washington DC, the Nieman fellow and winner of seven Emmy awards became a casualty of a high-profile network downsizing in the spring of 2009. McCarren recalls feeling blindsided and humiliated by the public pink slip . She even considered switching careers altogether until her son's wise words inspired a new story idea, which she calls 'Project Bounceback' : Andrea would learn how other Americans affected by the downturn are reinventing themselves.

"So basically going on the advice of a 13-year-old, we sold our house, completely downsized, and hit the road in an RV," she recalls.

"We didn't have a real itinerary. We knew we'd start with depressed auto towns, but the rest was driven by social media. People followed us through Facebook , LinkedIn, Twitter, making suggestions of where we should go. This led us all over Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota. It was amazing."

As she met victims of predatory lending, long-term unemployment, weather-ravaged communities and terminal illness, Andrea recalls being dumbfounded by the kindness of strangers with even less material wealth:

"Everywhere we went, people offered their homes, they fed us, they smiled at us. They were so proud to give us books on local history. It was a tremendous experience for our kids."

This past February, a few months after the trip, McCarren was hired by another DC network, CBS affiliate WUSA-9 . Her day-to-day is very different ("I'm schlepping a camera, driving my own car, editing my own work, carrying my own tripod") but Andrea says the road trip changed her approach to her career. "I suck it up, put a smile on my face and carry on," she says. "This is nothing compared to what others face."

"I'm troubled when I hear things like, 'the recession is over.' I know it's not for a lot of the people we met."

Check out some of Andrea's favorite stories and destinations below, and click here to learn more about Project Bounceback.