If you grew up poor...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has shared their stories. They are heartbreaking. I'm curious how you all were able yo break the cycle? How were you able to make better choices?

Being in poverty isn't just about making better choices. Often the poor must choose between rotten choice A and horrible choice B because they have no access to halfway decent Choice C let alone Great Choice D and Best Choice E. My mom's dad died when she was in ES. Schools were she grew up were segregated by law (not just defacto) and she worked from the time she was 12. When she became very sick and her marriage fell apart, she did not have family money to fall back on to tide her over through cancer treatments and a long marital separation. She lost our house and with it all her savings. What choices was her life supposed to teach me to make better?

+100000000000000000000

Oh, if life were all about personal accountability and choice.

Exactly. What I'd like to hear, rather than what "better choices" folks made, was who gave them a hand up? Who was there for them? For me it was a HS teacher who took the time to help me navigate the college admissions process, since no one in my family had gone past high school. The time he put into helping me figure out the process, come up with a system for organizing my applications (this was before the Common App or online applications) and apply for a admissions fee waiver was such an investment in my future.

I'm not the person you quoted, but I agree wholeheartedly. I became a teacher because I feel like I owe "karma." The elementary school secretary begged my mom to not send me to the neighborhood junior high. She pulled strings at the last minute to get me into a magnet middle school across town. My middle school counselor refused to send off my applications to the vocational school that was essentially a last resort for juvenile offenders. Behind the scenes, she got all of my teachers to give recommendations for me to go to a really good magnet high school. In high school I nearly dropped out to work full time. Various teachers donated money, food, clothes, and put up with my sh*t. By that time I had a huge chip on my shoulder from all of the stress in my home life, but they helped me nonetheless. I'm so far from where most of my friends and family ended up. I've found a few of my teachers on Facebook and sent them detailed thank you notes.

+1

This is me. I figured everything out myself (before the internet, I'm old) and sent myself to school. And yes, I amaze myself sometimes, when I think about what chaos I came from. Glad to hear I wasn't alone. People whose families help them with the application process, never mind paying for school, and probably send them abroad on top of it, have no idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:* all of 4th and 5th grade we didnt have power.
* qualified for free lunch and like you OP would never get te lunch because then people would know.
*all thru HS we lived,literally, in a shack with roaches, rats and no AC or heat
* I never went to a single event in HS, including prom because there wasnt money to, and I was ashamed of my clothes
* I spent so many nights going to bed hungry that I push food on my DC. I'm so paranoid he might be hungry that now he's about 10lbs overweight
* as an adult I'm a terrible hoarder of things I never had as a kid- toothpaste, deodorant, soap/shampoo and feminine products being my biggest hoards

I know this post in 2 years old but holy shit, you didn't have money to buy pads or tampons when you were growing up? Let me tell you something...if I was so poor that I had to choose between soap, deodorant, shampoo, and tampons, I would say, "fuck everything, I'll be dirty as a hermit but I'm going to buy tampons." How is that even a choice?

[Anonymous]

First world problem. I grew up without tampons and pads. Women used cotton and gauze and cloth pads that were washed (like cloth diapers, sort of). We had soaps, but they were shitty, and my parents had to work to get them. You couldn't just go to a store and buy some, compliments of a socialist economic system. Ironically, I don't hoard tampons. Some of it is on you, so get a grip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:* all of 4th and 5th grade we didnt have power.
* qualified for free lunch and like you OP would never get te lunch because then people would know.
*all thru HS we lived,literally, in a shack with roaches, rats and no AC or heat
* I never went to a single event in HS, including prom because there wasnt money to, and I was ashamed of my clothes
* I spent so many nights going to bed hungry that I push food on my DC. I'm so paranoid he might be hungry that now he's about 10lbs overweight
* as an adult I'm a terrible hoarder of things I never had as a kid- toothpaste, deodorant, soap/shampoo and feminine products being my biggest hoards

I know this post in 2 years old but holy shit, you didn't have money to buy pads or tampons when you were growing up? Let me tell you something...if I was so poor that I had to choose between soap, deodorant, shampoo, and tampons, I would say, "fuck everything, I'll be dirty as a hermit but I'm going to buy tampons." How is that even a choice?

Not the person who wrote that post, but FWIW: Speaking from personal experience, you can Jerry rig feminine hygiene products but not soap or deodorant. My mom tried baking soda for my brother's armpits because we could get it at the food pantry for free. It didn't work.

Like many kids who grew up poor, I have a phobia of smelling bad and slight hoarding tendencies when it comes to personal care products. We got a cheap soap called Lux 3 bars for $2 from what my community called "the Korean store". The owners only sold this one inexpensive bar soap and only at 3 for $2. If you had $1, you could not buy a single bar. If you caught the bus to the real grocery store, you could buy a 2 bar pack of other brands of soap (Dial, Ivory, etc,) but the bus fare and brand name soap price was more than my family could afford so we used Lux. I not only bathed with Lux, I washed my hair and clothing with it. I hated the smell of Lux. It made my skin and scalp itch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First world problem. I grew up without tampons and pads. Women used cotton and gauze and cloth pads that were washed (like cloth diapers, sort of). We had soaps, but they were shitty, and my parents had to work to get them. You couldn't just go to a store and buy some, compliments of a socialist economic system. Ironically, I don't hoard tampons. Some of it is on you, so get a grip.

You do realize that you still have to be able to afford the cotton, gauze, and cloth pads, not to mention the soap to launder the cloth diaper-like reusable pads. I'm the poster who had to wash out my school clothing by hand every night and wear it damp to school the next morning. Doing that with a cloth menstrual pad five to seven days a month would not have fallen under the classification of a first world problem.

When I grew up and graduated from college, I worked in public health for a number of years and my initial field postings were in developing countries where disposable feminine hygiene products were expensive and difficult to obtain. Women and girls didn't shrug off a lack of access of the proper materials as something spoiled American women worried about. They knew that it could keep daughters out of school precious days each month. Educate yourself about the challenge this still poses in India and Africa.

Be grateful your parents provided you with alternatives and stop judging the rest of people in poverty by your experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First world problem. I grew up without tampons and pads. Women used cotton and gauze and cloth pads that were washed (like cloth diapers, sort of). We had soaps, but they were shitty, and my parents had to work to get them. You couldn't just go to a store and buy some, compliments of a socialist economic system. Ironically, I don't hoard tampons. Some of it is on you, so get a grip.

You do realize that you still have to be able to afford the cotton, gauze, and cloth pads, not to mention the soap to launder the cloth diaper-like reusable pads. I'm the poster who had to wash out my school clothing by hand every night and wear it damp to school the next morning. Doing that with a cloth menstrual pad five to seven days a month would not have fallen under the classification of a first world problem.

When I grew up and graduated from college, I worked in public health for a number of years and my initial field postings were in developing countries where disposable feminine hygiene products were expensive and difficult to obtain. Women and girls didn't shrug off a lack of access of the proper materials as something spoiled American women worried about. They knew that it could keep daughters out of school precious days each month. Educate yourself about the challenge this still poses in India and Africa.

Be grateful your parents provided you with alternatives and stop judging the rest of people in poverty by your experience.

Yes. This. Girls in my post would skip school for days when they were menstruating. So we hear about women who are "mommy tracked." It happens so early in life, in some parts of the world.