JoB
NewResident..
You asked a very personal question.. and after thought.. i have decided to answer it.
My mom was one of 16 kids who whose family had money prior to the depression and really didn’t after. Mom was itinerant farm labor when she was 12 years old. She didn’t finish high school.. though she did get her GED in her early 30s.
She married young.. to an abusive man. She escaped in the middle of the night with her sister, her two children and her sister’s three. They drove west and didn’t stop until they literally ran out of money in Pendleton, Or.
Mom remarried.. to another man.. who was abusive to me… and we had a few years outside of poverty.
then she discovered the abuse and moved us to Portland with little more than determination and the same sister to move in with.
To say we didn’t exactly have money while i was in High School is an understatement. How mom managed to buy a house is still a mystery to me.. but we were definately house poor.. let’s just say i know what hunger is.
We didn’t qualify for any government programs and mom wouldn’t have accepted them if we had.
I did study.. and i qualified for incredible full ride scholarships.. which my mother would not allow me to accept because she felt the schools were too liberal. Being too young to sign for myself before the deadlines (a matter of days).. i stayed at home.
I was an unwed mother and gave my child up for adoption by the time i was 19.
And i was the lucky one. Most of my female cousins in my age group didn’t finish high school… though they were following somewhat less pedestrian dreams involving some loser of a man and children.
I did… i even went to college.. choosing community college to start where i was bored stiff because without scholarships mom made too much money for student aid.. by less than $100 a year.
I stayed in school… i married and had children… i kept going to school until i was in my mid twenties.. taking a class or two at a time. I built my degree in pieces. I didn’t quite finish my masters.
Of my first cousins.. my sister, my two brothers and i are the most successful of our generation… and the only family to have more than one college graduate…
i was lucky.
I have also had fibromyalgia most of my life and severe reoccurring bouts of chronic fatigue syndrome bad enough to leave me bedridden for months at a time since i was 15.
You speak of reinventing your life after an injury. I have reinvented myself more times than i can count when the last profession i was in before i collapsed became impossible for me to work in when i recovered. 17 years ago, i collapsed and have never recovered. I am disabled.
Disabled is not being able to hold any job at all.
I am unreliable. Sometimes my body works, sometimes it doesn’t. And it is always in pain.. the kind of pain that stops most people. Sometimes my brain works, sometimes it doesn’t. when it works, i am conversant, able to follow immense detail and well reasoned. When it doesn’t, i can’t find words even for simple things like water or glasses or….
My IQ was literally off the charts for children when i was 12. It regularly measured 180+ in my teens. I measured 120 verbally and 88 spatially less than 10 years ago. The spatial score is just above retarded. Parts of my brain just plain don’t work any more.
I am still lucky. I have found ways to manage my illness well enough to stay out of bed most of the time.. many of my friends with this illness are bedridden.
I have lived a full life.. i have a good husband and a good life. Many of my friends with this illness live alone in subsidized housing on less than my grocery budget.
I am lucky. I barely escaped the fate of my cousins… who are now grandmothers and greatgrandmothers… and live in intellectual, emotional or financial poverty… many still barely supporting children and grandchildren.
And I came from a family that believes in the work ethic.
I came from a good Republican family.. in fact, my brothers and sister are all Republicans.
I came from a good Christian family… three of my Uncles and Aunts were Pentacostal ministers until their retirement.
There are far too many myths about poverty.. myths that ignore stories like mine… and we were the lucky ones.
When i worked with social agencies in my 20s… i met and befriended women who would have given anything to have had my advantages… and that is putting it mildly.
I am sorry your dreams went wrong. I know about injury and illness and would not wish either on anyone.
But your dreams went wrong in an environment that supported you and in a way that allowed you to recover.
Too many never even get to have dreams…. and even less get the chance to live them.