I was raised by a single-mother on welfare.
I had no idea at the time but we were, what you would call poor. For a number of years we didn’t even have the benefit of government subsidized housing and so we moved around renting place to place based on cost and availability. I went to almost every school in Guelph before the age of 12 and there were a lot…by my count I went to nine schools.
Despite circumstances I can’t say I was ever really unhappy. Oh there were plenty of traumatic moments when things happened that need not be described here, but what I am talking about is the all pervasive kind of unhappy that stems from hopelessness – that just was not there.
Mum did a fantastic job sheltering us from what we needed to be sheltered from and instilling in us the importance of escaping the gravity of our poor planet. If it weren’t for her none of us, my sisters and I, would ever have reached escape velocity – she was the fuel.
Nevertheless there were moments when I realized we were not as well off as others and those moments always revolved around money. My mother’s stress was primarily associated to money and bills…the lack of one and the abundance of the other.
A memory that really sticks in my head is the judgmental attitudes of the people around us. I was a kid but I remember the words and attitudes quite clearly. How often my mum was told to go out and get a job. How derisively people would look down at her as if she didn’t care about her children enough.
They never stopped long enough to actually get to know her or become friends with her. To see her brokenness and the barriers she had already overcome to get to where she was. If they had she would have been their hero just as she is mine. My mum who never got out of middle school; my mum who was shuttled out of her own parents home as a young teenager to make room for others. My mum who survived intensely brutal relationships. The kind of jobs she was offered paid less than welfare and in the end she did what she felt was best for her children.
Still most people never saw this or the hours she would spend crying at home for her own lack of hope. Crying because of the things she couldn’t get her kids like music lessons, and team sports involvement etc. Oh and she would feel guilt. Crazy levels of guilt.
I remember vividly the times when a great aunt or uncle would occasionally help out with a little money now and then. Sometimes what it meant was a new bedroom set for one of the kids or a decent television or a nice couch for the living room. As soon as that happened people would come out of the woodwork with claws of criticism drawn spilling comments like machine gun bullets in the direction of mum:
“Gee it must be nice to be able to afford a new couch on welfare while some of us have to work.”
“Oh, I saw a television box on the curb, don’t you think you should have bought more food instead or paid a bill.”
“Oh look at her, she gets a hamper at Christmas but can still afford to get her kids bicycles.”
The interesting thing was that the comments always came from people who were reasonably well off compared to us. As if a poor welfare family having a decent television was an affront to them and all they stood for.
My mum would get so angry at such attitudes, and rightfully so. She would rage at how we were “not allowed to have nice things” because we were on welfare. We were expected to live in shit like the shit we were. These were the unspoken attitudes.
You know you could walk into our house and be amazed. Mum was good at the art of illusion. You could say she knew how to spin straw into gold. She would buy all sorts of things from the Salvation Army store and spend hours recovering them. She would buy picture frames and repaint them. Our house was always beautiful because mum resisted the expectation to “look poor”.
I think these experiences helped shape me into who I am today. I have always had a larger heart for the ones who seem to be struggling. I understand how tough it can be for a teenager who can’t keep up with the best clothes and tech. I know how it is to be judged simply for the amount of money you have. I know why a person will take a surprise gift of money and buy themselves a new dress instead of paying a three-month past due water bill.
The poor have enough garbage to deal with without having to shoulder our ignorant judgments that are based on a sense of privilege that is a myth.
Luke 6:20 says – “Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
This is a promise.
I can tell you one thing…the poor will not squander the kingdom of God, they will take hold of it and draw all the good it has to offer from it as a man dying of thirst draws water from a moist patch of earth…and this is as it should be.
The kingdom of God is for people like my mum, people who have to suffer the daily indignity of other people’s misplaced righteousness and patronizing attitudes.
We may have been poor by financial standards but we had a passionately loving mum who instilled in us a great pride in who we were and a strength that taught us that it didn’t matter what others said or thought we were her children and so we were brilliant and deserved the world.
I count myself the wealthiest man alive because of her.
Harnessing Chaos 