Solo Mother

Do you know what true poverty looks like?

by christina on October 15th, 2008

Today is Blog Action Day ‘08. Poverty.

I have to admit, I’ve never been poor. Oh, I’ve had no money sometimes, and like one of the interns here at my office, I’d done my share of living on Ramen noodles.  When my marriage ended, we landed in the United States with $400, four suitcases, and nothing else.

I know that single parent households are more at risk for societal ills–poverty, poor education, health, hope.  I want to keep our fragile little families out of that black pit. I want your ideas of how.  I know that I faced some great fears when we came back to the United States with so little… but we did it.  It wasn’t easy… but we were never truly poor…

I had to scrimp and save and borrow money from my parents to finally ship some small portion of my belongings back Stateside. I worked temp assignments and worried every day that my son didn’t have health insurance, without ever worrying about the fact that I didn’t, either. The fact that we lived in a foreign country without health insurance for two years left both of us with serious health problems I took care of as soon as I got a job with health insurance. My son got the tonsil- and adenoidectomy he had desperately needed for a year, and I dodged a bullet with a condition so close to cervical cancer that the doc scheduled drastic surgery post-haste. But I’ve never been poor. I’ve never lived on the streets or eaten out of garbage cans. I might only own one pair of winter boots, but I own a pair of winter boots. The other day, I saw a woman wearing flip-flops, broken and barely hanging on her feet, with shreds of plastic bags hanging down from her ankles. These were her shoes. But when I asked her what size shoe she wore, she turned away from me.

The way our country works, the rich are going to get richer while the rest of us struggle more to make ends meet. I don’t have the drive to become fabulously wealthy, but I have sacrificed my dreams to make sure my son is fed (198 days without a child support payment, and counting), clothed, and housed in the most comfortable fashion possible. We’re not extravagant. We don’t spend beyond our means. I don’t even have a credit card. If I don’t have the money, I don’t have it. We buy second-hand clothes and check the free lists for everything else we need. We walk or take public transportation. I don’t own a car.  I don’t own a television. But we’re not poor. And sometimes, we have the resources to help someone else.

I like my way of living. It gives back to the earth, or takes a little less away from it. I use fewer new resources by recycling, reusing, adapting old things for new purposes.

The World Bank has a newsletter, Poverty Lines, that is well worth a read. Over the course of the month, I’m going to write about how different organizations are trying to alleviate poverty… tell me, what do you know? How do you help? What can you do?

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POSTED IN: activism