Anyone watching Maid on Netflix?
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Anonymous
Oh ok I get it now! I must have switched my attention for a bit and not realized it was in her head. I kind of get it why she did what she did at The House. I did a couple similarly stupid things when I was 23-25 and was lucky the fallout wasn’t too bad. As for why she became a cleaner - the author herself said that she (the author) needed a 9-5 while daughter was at daycare but couldn’t find a better 9-5 without college education |
Anonymous
The landladies were clearly annoyed at the situation. And it was clear she felt powerless at that point. |
Anonymous
| She is very young; she is what, 25? I was so immature at her age. Smart enough to not get pregnant or date an abuser but loved to party and get wasted and it didn’t look great in more than one situation |
Anonymous
| Also I Googled Stephanie Land and turns out that as she was finishing college and slowly climbing out of poverty she had ANOTHER daughter without a partner... what’s up with poor people and babies?! |
Anonymous
I haven’t read the book, which would have given a much deeper understanding of what drove her to make the decisions she made, but one thing I do understand about people who grew up in chaotic and traumatic environments and actually go on to lead semi productive to productive lives is that your thinking, developed out of a need to survive becomes very rigid and black and white. In young adulthood we all suffer from black/white, good/bad thinking but survivors of childhood trauma become overly so, there is a need for hyper vigilance because it helps you to survive. Also the problem is that while he dealt with his demons and took the time to get well he knew but ignored the hell she was living in. His thinking was also very black and white, he couldn’t understand that the boyfriend was him in the the stage that he was very destructive and not a good presence in his daughter’s or wife’s lives. That she needed to get herself and her child away from him I order to break the cycle. Abuse is generational. Her father also likewise the victim of abuse. A person with a less severe upbringing can have more balance before you model the behaviors of your parents. You are programmed from birth to make better decisions. It isn’t really something that you think that deeply about. You do what you know. AA, born again what ever you call it the idea is that you relearn and submit to a higher power, you are given the guide book that you didn’t get in having a stable family of origin. If you follow these rules it will all work out ok. You may not rise to super star status but you will stay clean and blunt some of the damage you could otherwise cause. For a person of average intelligence it is a win win. The life you create is good enough. As king as you don’t do x then your base problems are solved, it doesn’t mean you thrive but the routine and healthy hs it’s so keep the wolves at bay. For someone like Alex that life wouldn’t have been enough she had a survivors mentality, she made bad choices because she was programmed to do so, but once she made them she was capable of realizing she had to do better. It didn’t keep her from making bad decisions. Nate would have been a bad decision for her and ultimately him. She was a long way from accepting that kind of caring in her life. She saw what happened when you relied on other people and for the people she grew up around self reliance was all she had. But Nate and the other people in her life did serve a purpose they taught her that good people could help you on your way to getting better to charting a more stable path. She wasn’t supposed to stay in any of those situations but each person inspired her on her path. She wanted a Nate’s stable life for her daughter but first she needed to be able to provide that for herself and her daughter. Nate would have been exchanging her struggle for healthy independence. Sure he seemed like a good guy but She has to move on and find her own way. Because ultimately we only have ourselves. And Nate clearly had his own journey to go on. Alex couldn’t be his shelter in the storm. She was barely surviving she needed much more than a roof over her head and a dependable guy. The dependable guy in the end wanted something from her that she couldn’t give. He wanted to feed the broken bird and have her be ok with what was good enough for him. She wanted more even if it meant going back to what was familiar, Nates path was linear because his role models were linear. Much like the AA 12 steps or even born agains. Alex’s path wasn’t linear, she took steps and leaps backs (her alcoholic abusive ex) and steps sideways (the benign Nate) but ultimately the way forward was in finding not the substitute dads (Nate (good dad) her ex (bad dad) (black/white) but in finding a tribe of mothers and sisters who either like her mom were survivors (the domestic violence shelter director/stable version of mom), group therapy women, different versions of her All with different capacities to turn their lives around, the Reginas, social workers, lawyers, women whose houses she cleaned whose lives weren’t perfect but who still managed to do better in their own ways. They’d fallen, or were on the brink (hoarder with trauma, too many kids, not enough money and a special needs kid and maybe a good husband, but who knows) for now she had a Messy roof Over her head. You get the feeling though that she to was on a downward spiral, but hadn’t reached bottom presumably because she had safety nets, sister who gave money, husband who worked, or social services. Unlike Alex who had no one in her life who could scrape together more than 5 credit card dollars for cash. But she was also able to teach and offer Alex help. Cleaning referrals to other similarly broken women, who had roofs over their heads and enough back and then steps and Regina was also a strong role model. Her life wasn’t perfect. But when her husband left her world didn’t crumble because she was her own foundation. The man didn’t give her security. The opposite really he made her doubt herself it was only when she let him go that her skin became easier to live in. And she in kind was able to reach back safely and see the Alex’s pain and her own pain. Without fear that seeing Alex’s problems meant eventually she would have to start seeing and not just powering through her own. Haven’t read the book but the movie also had a lot to chew on. |
Anonymous
| Just finished the show last night. It was excellent though I agree very stressful. I am so glad her mom didn’t go with her to Missoula. I also loved how complicated her (our) feelings for Sean can be. It’s not as simple as “he’s the bad guy”. |
Anonymous
Nate wasn't a good guy. He was offering to help her so long as she met his expectations (Date him). He exemplifies how so many women, who leave abusive relationships fall into other abusive or controlling relationships. He appears as the knight in shining armor but he isn't. So no, I am glad she didn't date Nate. |
Anonymous
You really do not understand the cycle of poverty. Her body, her choice means you butt out of the choice part, even if it’s not the choice you would make for yourself or the choice you would make if you were her. https://time.com/6102655/maid-stephanie-land-poverty/ |
Anonymous
Lol, okay. You make no sense … |
Anonymous
| I could not get into the series. I found her fantasy conversations, etc. to be distracting. And I couldn’t get past the first episode. |
Anonymous
A high school classmate made a similar choice which is why both her children ended up in foster care. She was raised UMC so no excuse except poor judgment. |
Anonymous
No. Several women in my family were domestics so I try to avoid poverty porn. I find it interesting though that it sparked a huge fight among coworkers on FB to the extent that several people took down posts and one woman issued a retraction for recommending it. |
Anonymous
CPS doesn’t take your kids because you are poor. COS takes your kids because you are neglectful or abusive. It means that when food stamps run out the third week of the month, you feed your kids from the soup kitchen rather than taking them panhandling with you. |
Anonymous
Agree. Plus money isn’t everything. A healthy, strong relationship with your father helps you to choose healthy, strong relationships in the future. Stephanie (in real life) didn’t have any good parenting relationship examples. That effects people more than we admit, wealthy or not. However, it’s easier to be a single parent when their is money around. It doesn’t make the choice to have kids with multiple men any different. We make stupid choices when we mistake lust for love. |
Anonymous
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Re: all the people saying “she should have this or that” (personally I loved Nate and thought he was cute and sweet!)
You should read the book. This is a point the author, Stephanie Land, makes over and over: no one is perfect. You’re never going to find the “perfect poor person” who does everything right or the “perfect DV victim” who never hit back or started fights, etc. Stephanie made a lot of mistakes. Including having a second child without a partner (!) once she finally gets to Montana and lands them all back into poverty again. She admits she made mistakes too including not going to college in the first place or not using her twenties to develop a marketable skill (in real life, she had her daughter at 29). |