Somebody's Hero

This woman? She is my new hero. Her name is Linda Tirado. Up until a couple of days ago, she was a hard working mother of two small children who worked two jobs and averaged 4 hours of sleep a night. Then she wrote an essay that was published on the Huffington Post and her life changed...almost immediately. She is a complete stranger to me, yet I am thrilled for her new found celebrity. 

Ms. Tirado's essay focused on poverty and how it affects women. Her objective was to shine a light on the bad decisions made by the lower class and, in a sense, explain to those in the middle and upper classes the thought process behind those decisions. 

This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense exposes what women in the lower class must deal with every day just to put food on the table for their families and pay the necessary bills to get them by one more month. Ms. Tirado writes:

"We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. " 

"There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing."

 Her words struck me to my core. It was if she reached deep into my psyche and discovered my thoughts, fears and feelings of the last 8 years. Someone finally understood what I was going through with paying bills and buying groceries and gas for the car. She KNEW I wear disguises when I use the CoinStar machine just so I can get a little after-dinner surprise for everyone instead of just the bland pasta dish and bread. 
Ms. Tirado's essay was fraught with references from her life that were mirror images of my own: the struggle to get bills paid, going into a tailspin when an unexpected expense arose, worrying about what her family was going to eat. 

I haven't always been poor. My parents were solidly middle class - my father was a life-long railroad employee and my mother worked for a sporting goods manufacturer. I grew up without a clue of how my parents provided for me; they just did. I got what I wanted for Christmas and birthdays and we did pretty well, I guess. I went to college on their dime - no students loans, scholarships or grants for me. I did a fair job of managing life after college, up until my mom died. I admittedly fell apart on every level and became very financially irresponsible in the following couple of years. I established a solid financial footing during the 9 years I worked at a private school. I shared a house with my best friend at the time, so I only had minimal basic bills. I could afford almost all of what I wanted and was able to acquire larger ticket items with my recently rebuilt credit. Life was good; I had money in the bank, I had good medical insurance and I felt quite stable. Then the proverbial boom was lowered. 

I lost my job, along with 15 others, in a layoff due to an operations budget shortfall at the school. I was offered a generous severance package, but the blow to my emotional and mental state was damn near impossible to overcome. I was severely depressed and ended up making some REALLY bad decisions, acting more on alcohol induced impulse than on logic. Within about 6 months, I was broke and about to be evicted. I moved in with a guy that I thought would be the answer to all my problems. Suffice it to say that he most definitely was not. During a particularly dark period, I wandered around in a fog, participating in more rash behavior. Remarkably, I ended up pregnant and unmarried. 

In that moment - and every moment since then - I was poverty stricken. It's been so difficult to accept my station in life. But once I learned how to shed my pride, I found no shame in becoming a couponer and bargain shopper! It's especially challenging to have physicians, educators, and other high earners as good friends, but because I love them, I've learned to live with their salaries and I am extremely grateful when they share their good fortune with me in the form of dinner, shows, toys for the Pie. 

The world looks down on the poor. Society judges the lower class without knowing the circumstances under which they became so. Yes, it's embarrassing. It's humiliating, is what it is. But it's the life we have and we try to make the best of it. Linda Tirado summed it up this way: 

"I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it helps make sense of it."

To read the entire essay by Ms. Tirado, click here