Understanding the impacts of poverty and overcoming them

By Neil Allen

It has always bothered me when people say, “Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” “Get a better job,” or, my favorite, “Go to college so you can get a better job.” If it was that easy, I can assure you, it is something I would have tried to do long before now.

Recently, I attended a program called Bridges Out of Poverty. It was a two-day training that had the participants thinking about what poverty, middle class, and wealthy look like and how to change our thinking about working with those in poverty.  The presenter, Pru, spent much of the time sharing stories from her past and present. In the past, she grew up in and lived in poverty for many years of her adult life. She now lives in the middle class.

So many of the things she said were things that if we were in a different setting, I would be snapping my fingers to say, “me too.” Instead I spent a lot of time nodding my head.

I grew up in a middle class household. While things were not perfect in our family and there were some times of struggle, we always had food, shelter, and new clothes. We went on vacations and did pretty much whatever we wanted, even if it meant saving up for it. I continued to live in the middle class world through my marriage and for 10 years after my husband’s death.

The moment my daughter turned 16, we became a family living in poverty. Half of the income I’d been relying on was gone, and we’ve been riding the line between having assistance and having too much income to qualify (but not enough to pay for the things assistance helped with).

I had started to try to find full-time work before the income disappeared, applying for jobs everywhere I could find, but struggled to find work. As it turned out, despite the many years I held full-time jobs before I became a stay-at-home mom who worked part-time, a decade of not working full-time suddenly made me a risk. Was full-time work really something I could handle? I was actually asked this in interviews or told that was the reason they were not going to be hiring me.

I found myself slowly taking on many of the qualities that a person in poverty possesses. We no longer bought fresh vegetables, I could only afford frozen, and only had fresh meat one or two meals a week. We only bought name brands when they were on sale. Store card coupons and discounts were essential. We started going to the food pantry to get some basics. I found myself asking my daughter at meals if she liked it but now included a new question: “Did you have enough to eat?”

I went from hoping to achieve goals in my life, like a middle class person, to hoping that we would be able to make it through the week without the world coming unraveled because of an unexpected bill or a change in my hours that resulted in less pay that week.

I lost the ability to do middle class planning for future things like paying for a gym membership or saving for vacations or retirement. No matter how much it looked like it would work on paper, it was one small crisis away from no longer being possible.

I never knew why that happened or how to deal with it. I constantly thought I was a failure. Through the Bridges Out of Poverty training, Pru explained it and while it is still frustrating, I understand it so much better. I now know that I am not a failure, I am the product of living in poverty.

And, like Pru, I am never going to not think like a person in poverty but I’m now okay with that now. I’ve discovered living in poverty taught me to be resourceful and resilient when a crisis comes along. I know how to shop within my budget, no longer run to the doctor’s for every little thing, to buy what I need and not always what I want, and learned how to fix things around the house. Most important, I’ve come to accept that I wasn’t a failure — I did the best I could within the circumstances I found myself in and no one can make me feel guilty about it.

It took me six years to understand this and to accept that there have been positive things that have come from living in poverty, and that I can make it work. So many never discover this and go through every day feeling bad about themselves and unable to do anything to change their life.

The parents who work with parent educators at TLC get to hear that they are not failures. They are helped to find resources and ways to be resilient when that crisis comes along that wants to undermine the work they’ve done to create a more stable home for their family. Barbara Brill’s recent post about the family she has been working with illustrates the struggles of the work, the successes, and acknowledgement that there is still more work to be done — but there is hope.

You can find out more about how our programs and staff can assist you in strengthening your family by calling René at 603-542-1848 ext. 302 or emailing rene@tlcfamilyrc.org.

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