My parents filed bankruptcy when I was in the fifth grade.
My father did it again with his second wife years later.
An early childhood memory, I can still hear the sound of my
father slamming the front door of our mobile home and seconds later my
mom screamed. I jumped out of my small bunk bed, ran out of my bedroom and
saw my dad’s hands wrapped around my mom’s neck, choking her.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I grew up in poverty. As
I’ve grown older, I see that I wasn’t alone. More than money or
other material things I wanted, the resources my family lacked the most were
love and spiritual well being. The feelings of
isolation I felt while steeped in poverty made life almost unbearable.
As statistics show on an annual basis, Mississippi routinely
ranks last in the nation in key areas related to poverty, including physical
and mental health, education, income and quality of life. As an adult, I know people growing up in
poverty live in a silent epidemic not monitored by the national Centers for
Disease Control. Unlike other killers, this problem goes ignored by many people in the middle class, a steadily shrinking group itself.
A year or so ago, I traveled to an Episcopal church in
Tupelo to hear a friend give a sermon that changed my life. I sat in the pew
next to her husband and heard her talk about poverty. But she didn’t just talk
about it during this church service. She took action.
Here in Starkville, financial adviser
Lynn Phillips Gaines organized a
workshop for middle class people to see what life is like for people in
poverty. She helped about two hundred of us see life without middle class
filters. I feel so thankful Lynn allowed me to help facilitate the
first class in Starkville related to this, called Getting Ahead in a Just Getting By World.
Through this class, I’ve had the privilege of partnering
with about a dozen women who want to make better lives for their children and
themselves. They know that to improve their station in life, they can’t wait
for someone else to do things for them. They want to change and have what it
takes inside of them to do it.
As I’ve gotten to know them, I see my life in their
struggles.
Even though she died just more than a year ago, I still see my mother struggling through these women. Many of these determined women don’t have husbands. They struggle to
make ends meet. Life’s struggles make them feel depressed and sometimes makes
them question why they should keep trying.
But they keep working for something better.
As we approach Thanksgiving in the United States, it’s a
time for us to appreciate what we have in our lives. Many people continue to
struggle with unemployment, finances, relationships, and other areas of life.
However, in our poverty, we always have hope as long as we know we can change
and make a difference in others’ lives and our own. As long as we live in
communities where neighbors haven’t given up on each other, we’ll have hope and
opportunity.
Looking back to that six-year-old version of me running into
the living room and seeing my mother choked by my father, I think of my life
now and those beautiful women I’ve come to know through this remarkable class.
As scary as it makes us feel, to save our country and
ourselves, we must attack poverty and pry its grip from those we love. As
someone who believes in redemption, I know it’s never too late to help those we love escape poverty. As a 33-year-old marathon runner with a graduate degree, I still struggle to escape the lingering poverty mindset resulting from childhood scars.
Only my closest friends have known about my experiences growing up, the stories of my dad's emotional manipulation, infidelity and painful experiences that have left deep scars on my two sisters and me. Few people know that I spent Father's Day in 2006 at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. On a day when children gathered with their father to show gratitude for nurturing and love, I spent the day acknowledging the severed relationship. I chose to spend time with drunks like my dad, trying to understand how a man could do such awful things to people he "loved."
About a year ago, my father's older brother told me a story from their childhood that I'll never forget. Their mother--my grandmother--sat in the pickup truck at the stoplight with her husband. Feeling panicked and alone, she saw this as her moment for escape, jumping out of the truck and running into the nearby sheriff's department. "He's killing me," she yelled to the deputies.
During that time, the good old boy system thrived in Mississippi even more than now. Those awful men drove my grandmother home, only telling their buddy, "Ed, you've got to do better." In tears, my nearly 70-year-old uncle also told me about the Christmas morning his father beat his mother, threatening worse if she told anyone who visited during the day.
Years after I left the financial struggles of child in a single-parent household, I've fought emotional and spiritual poverty. Few people have known why the concept of redemption resonated with me enough to
create a festival based on it. More than anything in this life, I believe in redemption, especially our own.
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| After all these years, still smiling. |
After many years of self-exploration through writing, therapy and great friends, I keep trying to escape the mental poverty from my childhood. I know a better life exists and try to find it each morning I wake up. While I may not have a functional, biological family, many of my friends have become my family, even if they don't know it.
These days, I live one of the most colorful, interesting worlds that I could ever imagine. I consider myself a storyteller. I hope sharing stories with others helps us better understand the many worlds around us. I love my life story and look forward to each day, experiencing it unfold with unknown opportunities, waiting for the magic in next chapter of my life.
Without experiencing poverty, I wouldn’t appreciate everything in
my world that makes me feel so thankful. Through memories of little boy I see in photographs, I feel even more thankful for the man reflecting back in the mirror and all of the people who made it possible.
That's why I will never stop trying to make life better.
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