Escaping Poverty is Not Easy or Quick
Escaping Poverty Is Not Easy or Quick
I watched a movie yesterday on Prime called “They Want Me Gone”. It’s about a mother wanting to get her and her daughter out of poverty. It’s also about all the challenges that come with that, including others holding her back and wanting to keep her down and stuck for their own screwed up agendas.
Not in all cases, of course, but in real life, many of the things that were in the movie happen in real life, in a woman’s life especially when it comes to wanting to escape poverty. The mother had in her own past violent traumas that she struggled with. She had an on-off boyfriend who was the daughter’s father, and who was the only one that was sort of there for her, but with the caveat that he wasn’t a good guy either.
He would get pissed when she would talk of wanting to move somewhere else to have a chance at a better job and life. He would use her for sex, but then get angry when she would mention wanting to get out of that town and out of the broken-down house her and her daughter were in. He would get angry at her about wanting something more and he would tell her angrily “to get over it” about her traumas from the past.
Not only is that very insulting for someone to dismiss your emotions, pain, and experiences like that by saying “just get over it”, but it’s also not realistic either. If we humans could “just get over it” then depression wouldn’t exist, suicide wouldn’t exist, and emotional breakdowns wouldn’t exist. It’s not that easy.
He was cheating on her with her so-called female friend she worked at a grocery store with and didn’t know this until they both schemed to try and take away the daughter from the good mother. She worked many different jobs. She had to borrow her so-called friend’s car. She was barely scraping by. She loved her daughter very much and cared for her.
Her so-called friend too would get angry at her about wanting to leave town and start fresh somewhere else and get out of poverty and out of the grocery job that she didn’t like with scrapings for an income.
The only two people in her life- that guy and that woman- were the ones who were brow beating her, manipulating her, and said she was a “problem” when she’d talk of wanting to leave…and then…would at the same time knock her for not having enough money to keep the electricity on or enough food in the house…and threaten to take away the daughter from her own mother.
She had no emotional support. She had no one to validate her wishes for a new life and of wanting more than a shitty, falling down place to live, scrapings for wages, and of barely being able to keep food on the table and the lights and heat on, let alone do anything else that could be fun or improve a life due to lack of money. The few people she had in her life treated her like shit and kept her beaten down (for their own agenda of course). This is how it is in real life for many women.
I won’t do a spoiler alert about the ending, in case you want to watch the movie.
Isn’t that how it is though in real life? I’d say yes.
I’m not too far out of sheer poverty my own self.
When my divorce happened, I had not even one single penny to my name. I had done what women before me had done in my ancestry and relied completely on a man to take care of me and my children. I was a stay-at-home mom, and I didn’t work outside the home. I worked my ass off inside the home, emotionally supporting a spouse who didn’t reciprocate, and taking care of my beautiful children. That doesn’t come with an income though. So, when he left (and I’m now glad he did because I disliked him just as much as he disliked me, I think I was just afraid to admit that to myself at the time, plus I had no idea that I had a choice, that I could indeed leave, let alone how to). That's how many women get stuck in abusive relationships; they don't know they have a choice and/or they don't know how to leave.
Anyhow, there I was, a single mom with four beautiful little sets of eyes looking up at me and I was terrified. I wasn’t sure I knew how to take care of myself or us and I had no idea how I would financially survive for us. Therein started a whole entire journey of frustration, heartbreak, rejection, learning to fill out applications for jobs online, applying and never hearing back (applications lost in cyber space? Eye roll.) and going on constant interviews with zero self-esteem and emotional problems from having an emotional and mental breakdown due to the divorce and all the different levels of betrayals and threats that come with that.
Some interviewers laughed at me. Can you believe that? Laughed at me. Some were so damn rude. Many would not give me a chance. The few that hired me offered part time jobs, minimum wage, and no benefits. Someone cannot live properly and pay all of their bills with that scenario. The financial stress was overwhelming, daunting, and produced high, high anxiety and fear in me. Plus, there’s feelings of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and feeling worthless.
To not be able to pay a $5 copay for your daughter to get therapy like she wants, or the inability to pay a few hundred dollars for your teenager to go through driving school to get their license or the inability to help your child buy a birthday gift for their friend when they’ve been invited to a birthday party, is an awful, awful feeling.
Plus, there was trauma I was dealing with from the combative, verbally and emotionally abusive marriage I had been in and all the mental anguish that comes with that. I snapped and lost my mind=emotional breakdown. I wanted to kill myself, but didn’t want to leave my children alone. Even though I had everything against me…being out of the workforce for so many years, having no skills, having low to no self-esteem, having no support (even when married I had no support), being raised basically in poverty, I had all the mindsets of poverty, and even though I struggled to get even the smallest of jobs, I had something inside of me all along that had been dormant…grit, fire, and persistence.
In the middle of the shit show of my life falling completely apart as well as all the beliefs I formerly had and the poverty me and my children faced, I was hell bent in my mind to one day stand on my own two feet…financially and emotionally. I never again wanted to put myself in the position to have to rely on anyone (especially men) for my financial survival. I had done it with an ex-spouse and with boyfriends afterwards. We know what they say, when men have the financial control over a woman, they are usually not very nice to their women. I’d say that’s more the case than not, but that doesn’t mean every man is like that, of course.
I worked in fast food, tire centers with misogynistic men, car rental services and many other types of jobs. None of which made me happy. But they gave me a few dollars at the time. I applied for every service I could so that my children and I could have food benefits, health insurance, gas, and electricity. I went on government assistance, I went to the Salvation Army and the local employment center to apply for special one-time cash grants, and some other places to apply for cash grants. I went to classes at the employment agency that taught various things like self-esteem, how to put together a resume, how to interview, and they also had job fairs I went to. If you’ve ever been in this situation, you know what I’m talking about.
I would always apply for better jobs and then came across yet another barrier. So, not having experience and not being able to get a job to gain said experience in one barrier, but another barrier I came across was that now many companies check one’s credit score. Well, as you can imagine, my credit score was bad. The old ex-spouse and I had recently gone through bankruptcy. I was late on every bill all the time due to lack of money. I was stuck in a nasty cycle that I had no idea how to get out of.
I wanted to, for my own self-esteem, go to college for the first time. Plus, I thought it was my ticket to a six-figure job (which it did not). I still have mixed feelings about going in debt for said college of five years (yes, five instead of four, because I kept failing math classes and had to keep retaking them until I passed them, which set me back).
I think today I would advise against going to college and going in debt for it unless you are going for something very, very specific like doctor, nursing, lawyer, police person, dental, etc. Otherwise, I think it’s a waste of money, regardless of what society says.
With that said, going to college at that point in time, did do many other valuable things for me such as got me back out into the world after having been so isolated at home for over a decade. It turned me on to so many new ideas, concepts, and perceptions that I didn’t even know I needed until I learned them and applied them to my life. It gave me goals to go for which is something else I never knew about [goals]. It helped me learn my way around a computer, a cell phone, and technology since I had to now use it for everything and in every class (something I didn’t do much of at home).
It expanded my mind from very small thinking and living to something bigger with more possibility. That’s another thing about poverty is that it keeps our world and usually our thinking pretty small. We are focused on survival. Whether it’s too painful to try and visualize something bigger and better that we ‘know’ we can’t have or whether we just don’t do it because we’ve not been exposed to the idea before, either way, we don’t think of things like goals or of having bigger and better ideas and lives. In poverty, it’s not really available to us, unless we get turned on to new ideas, concepts, perceptions, and possibilities somehow.
From where I grew up, how I grew up, and then with the ex-spouse, I can look back now and see that I was always in suppression and oppression one way or another. With suppression and oppression comes with not being taught how to stand on one’s own two feet financially, emotionally, spiritually and anything else. With that comes high codependency, verbal, emotional abuse (and for some even physical abuse) in intimate relationships, neglect, invalidation, fear-based life, a very small world, no clue about goals, self-love, or it being okay and encouraged to want to do better.
So many of us get stuck in that brutal cycle and it’s damn hard to get out of even after one starts to learn new things that can begin to break down those barriers. Yet, thankfully, it is possible. We must look at others outside of our original circle, to new mentors, to get those new ideas. Most, if not all, of them too, have had traumas and barriers in their past and have learned new skills that have helped them to overcome and then move forward into bigger and better lives. They help teach us those skills and give us hope that change is possible, doable, and will happen if we just put in the work. I personally love that we can do that.
So, what is the difference between a poverty mindset and an abundant mindset? I will list them below.
Poverty Mindset:
- Focusing on what they lack which leads to dissatisfaction and resentment
- Fear of failure; won’t take risks
- Competition and comparison; believing someone wins and someone loses
- Limiting beliefs; I’m not good enough, smart enough, lucky enough, etc. They also don’t think they have any abilities or potential in themselves
- A limited mindset; not wanting to learn new things
- Focused solely on survival
Abundant Mindset:
- Focusing on what you have
- Seek out new skills, resources, and opportunities
- Believing there is enough for everyone
- Open to new opportunities; take some risks, embrace new ideas
- Growth and learning; a growth mindset
- Belief in win-win situations
- Believe in their abilities
- Wanting more than just survival needs
The moral of the story is there are things we can learn and do that can break us out of those poverty barriers. Is it easy or quick? No. Is it doable and possible? Yes. Find your own grit deep inside yourself like I have and keep fighting the good fight.
