The book “Finding My Way: A Journey Along the Rim of The Catholic Worker Movement”, by Toni Flynn really hit home for me. I think that anyone who grew up in a major city has had similar experiences and felt a similar sense of confusion with as to what their role is in regards to helping those less fortunate. Sometimes it’s hard to know when the right time is to step in or help someone out, but this book did a great job of really sending the message that a situation is what you make it. Helping people needs to be something that comes from a place in your heart that wants to help. The incident with the homeless man trying to get food out of the trash can was really one that stuck out to me. That moment was so significant because it was able to change a perspective. That is what I feel so much of this course has been about. You need to see that the way that things are is wrong to finally understand your own reason behind changing yourself and your own views. My mother ran the Hollywood Mental Health Clinic for most of my childhood. Even as a child she would bring me to work with her sometimes and introduce me to the people she worked with and assisted. After watching my mother work with people from all walks of life and try as best she could to help everyone, I was fortunate enough to find my personal connection to wanting change through that. This book was a great way of showing someone else’s experience of discovering their own want and journey for that change. It highlighted an experience that was in no way similar to my own, yet the desire for change and wanting to help was very similar. These are the connections that this class has been providing us with. For everyone who didn’t have the experiences that I had as a child, the volunteer work that we did really did provide many of the student in this class with a new perspective and incentive to help others in a way that I believe this book highlighted. It promoted a new and real understanding of homelessness and then sent all of us out into the community to work for change with that knowledge as the driving force. I love this book and I love this class. It is clear to me that our perspective have been shaped through legitimate facts and empathy and that each one of us has a new found respect and desire for all of those who have been or are homeless to have the lives that they deserve. Not only is this view going to help us in understanding poverty and homelessness, I think it also instills a new faith in humanity. To have to really look at structural issues and potential failures before blaming a person for their faults or life circumstances is a added perk to the lessons taught in this class. I am happy that through the readings (especially this book) and our discussions, I now have the knowledge and perspective to properly talk about homelessness and poverty and can knowledgeably do my part to change the discourse that currently exits in the United States about homelessness.

For my teaching project a classmate and I tabled at the Sustainability Festival on March 29th. We had the table from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm and were able to get to know a few of the people and businesses there and strike up some very interesting conversations with some of the people who were interested. It was tricky at first when we were trying to figure out how to engage passing people, not to mention we felt a little bit out of place originally. I was confused at first how hunger and homelessness applied to sustainability, however as the day progressed we were able to understand not only the role that we were playing in creating a sustainable future through our awareness of the legitimate reality of homelessness and hunger, but were also able to learn a lot from the people that we spoke to. What stuck out to me the most was that the whole experience was in one way or another proof that most people don’t understand the structural causes of homelessness and the ways in which government aid truly works. The only people who seemed to have any real knowledge about federal safety net programs were the ones who admitted to having received services in the past. I noticed a great deal of shame that the few people who had admitted to receiving assistance felt in association with their particular government aid. It was heartbreaking because there was one woman who admitted that the aid she was receiving wasn’t helping her, but she was still struggling with the guilt that she felt for receiving anything in the first place. It was also strange to hear to hear an old man say that he believed homelessness was perpetuated through laziness and a diminished need to work due to government aid. Although we have been discussing how many people do falsely believe that these are the causes of homelessness, it was strange to see a perfectly kind stranger voicing these beliefs in such a casual manner. What was most interesting was when Taylor or I was able to tell someone about some of the structural and political failures that have directly related to the perpetuation of homelessness, because most people were more than willing to try and understand a new way of thinking. There was one woman who I was able to have a discussion with about our theory of homelessness as not being an issue of the individual. She seemed mind blown by the thought that perhaps homelessness had to due with the structural aspects of our society, culture, and government. She was so intrigued by the idea that she stayed to discuss it with me until she felt she properly understood. While some moments seemed more productive than others, overall it was a great experience. I learned that we cannot be sustainable as a society with structural policies and discourses that are not made with all people in mind. The sustainability fair provided people from all walks of life. From different countries, cultures, religions, class,  etc. but nearly everyone we talked to was willing try to understand and create a discourse about homelessness that no longer perpetuated blame.   That for me, was enough to prove how important this class and the discourse that it can creates is. I am glad that  I was able to have such an incredible experience teaching what we have been learning and discussing in class. While at times it was hard to get people to actually talk about how they really felt about homelessness, the few that did proved that a new discourse can possibly be created that perpetuates the real causes of homelessness, poverty, and hunger in the United States.

Link to video interview with Tirado, and blog post about early life and the process of poverty:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/meet-the-woman-who-accide_b_4334428.html

Early on this semester we read an article by Linda Tirado titled, “This Is Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense”. This video provided by the Huffington Post, was an interview with Linda about her life after her blog post went viral and the comments, thoughts, and gestures that people had in response to what she had to say. I was first off extremely happy with the background that Linda provided to go with the video. She provided as story of her life to give the readers a better insight into the ways in which her life had specifically been effected and characterized by poverty. She described growing up and not necessarily identifying as “poor”, she addressed the structural issues, issues of mental illness, of stress, of family issues, and of issues of compromise that a life in poverty prescribes. She talks about her life in way that I personally felt did a fantastic job of describing how people find themselves in poverty today. You don’t have to be born poor, you don’t have to be an addict, you don’t have to mentally ill, or abused. These are all factors that being unable to properly provide for yourself or your family can provoke in ones own personal lived experience. She describes how she knowns that she made mistakes, but how the mistakes she made didn’t put her in the places that she inevitably found her self in. While her blog post about her life leading up to the article provided the insight that I felt I needed to better understand her as a writer and as someone who identifies with living under the poverty line, the interview in the video did even more.

Linda starts of her interview being concise, smart, thoughtful, honest, and empathetic and maintains a sense of self assuredness throughout the whole video. I was overwhelmed with how wonderful she was. She proved that poor people are more than just people who are poor. She explained the realities of poverty and addressed some of the issues that readers had with her piece such as her cigarette smoking, having more then one child while accepting government aid, etc. She described these things in w ay that I think really allowed the viewer to understand the reality of life under the poverty line. Every decision that she made was scrutinized, yet her thoughts and her story remained ignored by all of the people who chose to judge her. Or society looks for the deviance, shame, and failure of poor and homeless people, yet I feel as is Linda is finally creating a platform for people to start to feel like they will be listened to. I think she addresses a lot of the issues that we have covered in class while using her own experiences as a means of starting a discourse about poverty that looks to understand poverty as a lived experience, instead of blame those who’s lives have been characterized by it.

I thought this week I would address some of the statements made by Paul Ryan on Bill Bennett’s Morning In America radio show on March 12.  It is challenging to pick a place to start in regards to what IS wrong with what Ryan had to say about what he claimed to be both the causes and the realities of those who exist under the poverty line. However, I think it is safe to start with a direct quote from Ryan stating that, “Your buddy Charles Murray or Bob Putnam over at Harvard, those guys have written books on this. Which is, we have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. And so there’s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with” (Rep. Paul Ryan, Bill Bennett’s Morning In America” radio show, March 12, 2014) What I essentially got from this was that Paul Ryan is not just blaming poverty on poor people, but he is claiming that within “inner cities” there is a literal culture of human beings (specifically men, according to Ryan) that are “not even thinking about working” and thus are not interested in the “values” and the “culture” of work…. I was mortified. Through this interview on the “Morning in America” radio station, Paul Ryan essentially verbalized what we have acknowledged in this class as one of the major issues with poverty in the United States. This issue is that while the percentage of Americans who live in poverty continues to rise, while funding for government aid continues to get cut, while low income housing continues to disappear, while programs and services continue to change by request of political figures who have never actually experienced poverty, Paul Ryan has decided that it is the sheer culture of “these people” that is perpetuating poverty in America. He created a discourse about poverty and those who exist in poverty that not only blamed the millions of Americans who’s lives are characterized by the realities of living beneath the poverty line, but characterized a culture that “these people” all exist in and thus dictates their desire to not simply just not work, but Ryan goes so far as to suggest that the idea of existing above the poverty line is not even within reach of their psyche. He suggests that “they” are content in “their” poverty and practically suggests that “these people” believe to be above the concept or “culture” of work.   To assume that this statement has a racist foundation (or is blatantly racist, depending upon how you chose to view it) is not incorrect. For starters, he referenced a man in his interview who he claims to have “written books”, on this theory of a culture of poverty and men in inner cities choosing not to work. What was interesting about this reference to me was that the man he mentions is Charles Murray… a white nationalist who has used “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of certain people.”(Southern Poverty Law Center).  When later questioned about the racist connotations of the statements made on “Morning in America”, Paul Ryan claimed that race was not at all a part of his message. As quoted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “According to Murray, disadvantaged groups are disadvantaged because, on average, they cannot compete with white men, who are intellectually, psychologically and morally superior. Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes.”(Souther Poverty Law Center)… So through my understanding, to reference Charles Murray as a glowing reference suggests that Ryan not only believes the writings of a white nationalist to be a valid form of statistical proof for a “culture of poverty”, but that Ryan is also reading and utilizing white nationalist beliefs in the decision making behind his political stances. As well as that, to blindly reference an entire demographic of people as “from inner cities” does not in any real way help his case, seeing as how that statement, besides being too vague to even be used to designate a particular location, is riddled with an association to people of color. Seeing as how more predominately urbanized areas in the United States (if that is what Ryan is referring to when he says inner cities) are more greatly inhabited by people of color. I was shocked at how a politician could make the conscious choice to reference an entire demographic of people as existing in a “culture of poverty” through what he claims to be as essentially their own doing, and then to never specify who these people are, but simply states that they are from “inner cities”. Ryan literally uses this essentially undefined “group of people” to justify his desire to get rid of the social safety net programs used in the United States that are currently assisting over 90% of people in America! As we have been discussing in this class there is an American discourse about poverty that aims to blame the individual. The reality of the current state of poverty in the U.S. as many (not white nationalist) authors, researchers, etc. have documented, is that more people exist in poverty than not.  Poverty is not, and has not been a “personal problem or implication” for poor people, because we exist in a society where the majority is poor. The more our politicians continue to ignore the issue of poverty as lived experiences of a majority of the American people, the longer it is going to take for it to be properly addressed in the future. The further we cut funding for government based aid and the further we continue to push away and ignore the needs of “these people”(as put by Ryan), the longer and harder it is going to be once politicians like Ryan finally realize that this issue of poverty is too large to be swept under the rug anymore. Beyond the intrinsic racism that riddled the statements made on March 12, besides the overwhelming ignorance and injustice that is a politician referencing a white nationalist as his source of evidence for a political claim against the American people, and besides the fact that he at no point took responsibility for the role of policy or programs put in place by politicians like himself as a cause of poverty, Ryan’s theory of a “poverty culture” and of men who “don’t think about work” just simply is untrue. Since we have learned to view poverty as a structural problem through or readings and discussion in this class, the fact that Ryan was unwilling to attribute any of the ways in which government aid, policies, and programs have not been working to help get poor people out of poverty, but instead blames the people as failing to utilize these programs correctly proves how this discourse that is created by particular politicians is damaging not just our discourse about the American majority who exist in poverty, but how it is changing our mindsets as a society. Ryan’s statements insinuate that we have reached a time in the history of America where the systems don’t fail the people but the people fail the systems. If the policies aren’t making a difference, then they need to be changed. Welfare queen ideologies and blaming poor people as “taking advantage of the system” have both been statistically disproved and cannot continue to be the way that the people who are supposed to be dealing with the issues facing the American people can continue to sidestep having to make any real change.  I am glad that I am taking this class, because I can confidently say that I have an accurate understanding of poverty in way that it seems even some politicians and policy makers do not.

References:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/paul-ryan-inner-cities_n_4949165.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/12/1284169/-Paul-Ryan-references-White-Supremacist-in-Inner-City-Men-too-Lazy-to-Work-comment

Over Spring Break a group of 30 students and faculty from the University of Redlands formed the Spring Break Plunge group of 2014 and set off to Colorado to help those effected by the flood that occurred in 2013. There was very little information going into the trip about what exactly we would be doing and what exactly the damage was like. There had been very little media attention that anyone in the group could recall having seen during the actual time of the flood and debatably there was skepticism about what real “disaster relief” there was to be done. Early mornings and late nights of hard physical labor characterized our day to day experiences and we were tired and sore but the people that we met were so thankful for all that we were doing, that it never felt like too much. The damage was very real. It was humbling to see the true force that something as overlooked as water can have. Entire homes, roads, concrete, sides of mountains, plumbing, electrical setups, etc. were all destroyed by the flood. Peoples entire lives were uprooted and changed. People went from having homes and neighborhoods and business to having nothing. We have been discussing in class how homelessness and poverty can happen to anyone given the right circumstances. This flood proved that to me in a way that really gave a visual understanding of how temporary financial stability and stability in general can be. It was heartbreaking to see how overwhelmed and lost some of the people looked. They were having to deal with so much at a time where nature was still not necessarily working with them.

After the flood it snowed and the temperatures kept dropping which made everything freeze. This made it exceedingly more difficult to try and sort of clean any sort of debris. It required the we have to break through layers of ice before we could even really make any progress. However every time anything was accomplished we were able to see a change in the people of the towns and business that were were working with. We could see their hopes lift and we could see them begin to feel less defeated and more empowered to get their homes and lives back. The church we stayed at also welcomed us all with open arms and were very accommodating and embracing even though very few of us identified through religion. It was truly incredible to be so well received and appreciated by total strangers. It was even more incredible how quickly those strangers became our temporary families and friends.

As our time continued we hear more crazy stories about the flood and were able to really get to do some incredible work. Small things started to make huge differences and we began to appreciate the work that we were able to bring to the table. It was incredible to help the people of Colorado in any way that we could and it was incredible to get to know Colorado through the resilience of its people. I have an entirely new understanding of hunger and homelessness in regards to natural disasters and in regards to community. The people in the towns and business’ helped each other and bonded over their misfortune. They let us into their lives and made us feel appreciated and helpful in ways that I have never felt before. It was a once in a lifetime experience and truly changed my understanding of human potential and community.

For today’s class we had to read part 4 of The Book Of The Poor. This section was titled “Lets Do Something”.  This really stuck out to me as I am coming back from spring break. This is because I spent my spring break working in Colorado with victims of the flood that happened back in 2013. After eight days of having to help people clean scraps up from all around their broken homes, pull water damaged insulation out from underneath houses, offices, churches, etc., cleanup miles of devastated land and broken rivers and streams, and help people try to move on from losing everything, this chapter really stuck out to me. Specifically Chapter 32 titled. “Our Evolving Standard of Decency”. It stresses the importance of understanding the word decency and being able to look at our past and future and use the knowledge collected from both resourcefully to make things work. I knew nothing about Colorado or its people and I had no real connection to what I was doing upon arrival. However, by the first day I knew that I was glad I was there to help. I was shocked at how devastated the land was and how little I had even heard of the flood back when it had happened. Entire neighborhoods, towns, etc. had been effected by water damage and flooding. Some of the devastation was mind-blowing. It was hard to believe that water could be powerful enough to collapse homes, and uproot cement sidewalks. There were people who had been away rom their homes for months and had no real idea when they were going to be able to move back in. There were entire trailer parks that were completely destroyed, but because the government wouldn’t label them as lost causes, they were not being taken care of. Everything was just rotting and beginning to pollute neighboring towns. I was astonished at how much was being done and how much more still had to be taken care of. The work was hard especially because everything was frozen. But the people who we met were so grateful, that they really did instill this new idea of “decency” in all of our hearts. It was heartbreaking to see how hopeless some of them had been when we had first arrived. However, every time we accomplished something new there was a visible change in the way that the people in the town began to react to their own situations. In the book, author Kenan Heise breaks down the meaning of decency as, “Technically, decency’s Latin root, decus, means what is fitting, what is honorable, what is of human worth.”(pg. 132) As complete strangers we had to come into peoples homes and help them pick up the bits and pieces of their lives. We had a schedule while also having to remain sensitive to their needs and emotions. While doing so they made an effort to help us to get to know their town and their history, they introduced us to as many members of the community as possible, they fed us, made sure we were taken care of, and were constantly thanking us. All in all, it was one of the more meaningful examples of human worth and decency that I have gotten to be a part of. I am glad that this was the reading that I got to do upon my arrival home from Colorado. It really solidified the whole experience for me and I am excited to discuss it in class.

I was reading the Huffington Post today and came across some interesting information that I thought pertained to this class. It was about the aftermath of a decisions made my conservative Texas legislators to cut the funding of family planning clinics by two-thirds. I was first off shocked by the decisions to cut that much funding. I truly blows my mind when government officials and political figures decide that family planning and assistance is something worth taking out of our budget. What didn’t surprise me however, was that the first demographic that was negatively effected by this was women. This particular budget cut wasn’t just taking away families’ abilities to get services and plan their futures in a constructive way, but it took away major health assistance for women (i.e. contraceptives, pap smears, cancer treatments, etc.) It then described in the article how Latina women living in the Rio Grande Valley were effected. What initially broke my heart for these women was that the original goal of this budget cut was to ensure that the efforts of Planned Parenthood were stifled. But, as this typically turns out, when you take away the access for women to properly understand and take care of their own bodies, then women’s bodies are the first ones to be negatively influenced. So much in this particular case, that it has been determined as an infringement on these women’s humans rights. They no longer have access to testing for sexually transmitted diseases, for basic checkups regarding their health, abortions etc. Without these forms of assistance these women are not only susceptible to becoming extremely ill, but are also now exposed to unexpected pregnancy and other issues relating to their sexual health that could deeply effect heir lives. This made me think about the homeless mothers in book that I read for our last assignment. Im sure those women could have had the information and assistance to make better choices regarding their sexual wellbeing and physical health had they had the information of how to be safe and how to advocate for themselves. It also connects to the book that I am reading now that deals specifically with policies. Without these resources that were taken away in the budget cuts, there has been a drastic reduction in condom use, women re having to chose between getting check ups and feeding there family, etc. These are choices that people shouldn’t have to make and are inevitably the ones that can send force a person into homelessness. What I mean by this is that if a mother falls sick because she couldn’t get a checkup on time, she cannot work and then her family can lose their income. If a mother has an unexpected pregnancy and she cannot afford to take care of another child, that could also lead to homelessness. There are plenty of ways in which taking the rights that women have to education, protection and care of their bodies can effect their overall quality of life. I was heartbroken by stories in the article and was exceedingly sad for these women. However, I was happy to see that there are still come women who are meeting up with one another to discuss their reproductive rights. I think that the empowerment that these women are still seeking to provide themselves and each other with is proof of how resilient women are, however I don’t think that they should be forced into providing it for themselves, or forced into thinking that they are the only ones that care about their reproductive rights. Women should be a priority of our society and yet we remain a particularly undervalued group in most of the world. In the same way that we have been discussing that to understand homelessness is to help end homelessness, to understand the reality of these women’s lives and what they need is to help end the oppression that they are facing on a day to day basis They do not deserve to have their rights taken away from them in regards to their knowledge of their bodies and the rights provided for their bodies. More or less what I meant to say through this post was that I am now starting to see that ways in which people need to start thinking more about one another. We need to think about the homeless, we need to think about impoverished and under supported women, etc. We just need to keep each other in mind when we make drastic policy and funding cuts and we need to think about who is truly going to be affected and to what degrees.

post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/nuestro-texas-rio-grande-valley-report_n_4849754.html

For this weeks reading we read Reeve Vanneman’s online summary of Christopher Jencks’, The Homeless. Many aspects of the summary stuck out to me, specifically chapter 7 titled, Social Skills and Family Ties. It brought up the notion that those who live alone and have little to no ties to a family are at a higher risk of homelessness. This interested me because recently we have been talking about the hopelessness of homelessness. Regardless of the reasoning behind why one becomes homeless there is this crippling hopelessness attached to it that seems to span across each experience that we have read about. To me, this aspect of homelessness is the part that seems to be the most damaging. Wether it be through the stories of the homeless mothers, teens, addicts, etc., each person described this inevitable emotional aspect of homelessness. This emotional frame of the homeless experience is what essentially acted as the “human” and “relatable” aspect of homelessness for me. The idea of being hopeless when you have nothing really is what in my opinion, makes homeless seem so all encompassing. I do think that if you don’t have a family or someone to at the very least share that burden with, the hopelessness of homelessness can become never ending in a way that permits and perpetuates its existence in a persons life.  I was also interested in the notion posed in chapter ten that suggests that homeless shelters do not necessarily help issues of homelessness and could perhaps be sustaining it. I have never personally lived in a shelter and I know the risks and potential issues that can come with living in them solely through the perspectives and experiences that we have read about. Yet, I cannot really believe that providing a means of shelter for people could be damaging. I feel like to suggest that homeless shelters perpetuate homelessness is in a way implies that one believes that homelessness is not an issue of circumstance, but of choice. While the article also acknowledges the idea of intentional homelessness, I do not believe that the reasons behind choosing to leave a home or family necessarily means that those people were given a choice. I also would argue that homeless shelters are by no means, “nice”. The reality is, is that you still don’t have a space where you are entitled to your own time, privacy, expressions, etc. You are living in cramped conditions with people who you do not necessarily know, and are being forced to abide by rules that permit little to no spontaneity, fun, pleasure, etc. To suggest that homeless shelters are providing with people who chose to be homeless with a “nice” alternative form of living is in my opinion pretty ignorant.  I also simply cannot get behind this notion that Americans seem to be so obsessed with that is essentially “There is a person out in the world getting something for free that I am not getting for free and that is wrong”.

On a personal note, I had an experience this weekend that made me really think about what my life would have been like if I was homeless. I very recently burned my leg. It is a third degree burn that covers about a third of my calf.  I remember debating whether or not I wanted to go to urgent care. Just being able to have the option to go and wait in a room for an unspecified amount of time with people who were both seriously injured or sick, or to just wait until Monday morning when I could go see a doctor on my campus and be given the proper care and instruction that I needed to get better was a privilege that I would not have had if I were homeless. I was also work on campus and have a pleasant and understanding relationship with my bosses and was able to go directly to them and talk about what had happened and be comfortable and capable of missing work for a few days until I could get it checked out. I didn’t have to worry about how missing a couple days of work was going to effect the way I was able to eat or effect my quality of life. I was able to take the time to let my body recuperate and heal without the stress of strain of having to worry about all of the ways that it could affect my life. Overall I am hoping that perhaps in class we can talk about times in our lives where being homeless could have really effected our physical wellbeing. While I am aware of the many ways in which homeless does constantly affect a persons physical wellbeing, it was interesting to really be confronted with an issue that had I not been financially stable or had medical attention provided to me in the way that it was, my quality of life could have been drastically altered by something as simple as a burn.

Last week the class presented the books that they had been assigned to read. Each group got up and gave essentially a summary of the book while also teaching the aspects of it that they thought were the most relevant to the class or caught their interest. I was extremely excited to present the book I had read by Deborah Connolly, titled, Homeless Mothers. My group and I had all thought the book was incredibly powerful and really provided us with a very human understanding and face for homeless mothers and the reality of their lives. Various cases and people were examined throughout the book by a social worker. The mothers were all white women who for the most part were raising their children on their own. The book highlighted and examined the realities of these women’s lives prior to being homeless. There were patterns in all of their lives from living in poverty as children, to teen pregnancy, etc. However, what really shocked me was that all of them had experienced some from of physical or sexual abuse or a combination of the two at some point in their lives. Most of them continued to be faced with various forms of abuse into their present day lives as well. It was truly heartbreaking to read about all of the appalling things that these women had been through. Not a single one of them had really been provided with an example of what a”good mother” is or should be or provide for a child. I resent the idea of a cookie cutter type of mother. The notion that there is a correct way to be a mother that is sculpted through various socially constructed ideas instead of by mothers infuriates me. However, I do believe that there are certain aspects of motherhood that pertain directly to the relationship of mother and child that can create a positive child and mother experience, and I truly believe that all of these women were not provided with that relationship in their childhood’s. The lived experiences of these women put into perspective not just the reality of homeless mothers, but the reality of motherhood as something that must be cultivated and taught through example. Women are not born knowing how to be mothers. I know personally that all of the ways that I shaped my own understanding of motherhood and the type of mother that I want to be was through being able to see the mothers in my life deal with raising me. Granted, I am able to know the type of mother that I don’t want to be in some ways through some of the practices used by the mother figures in my life, but if I was only provided with a mother that treated me in ways that I would not wanted to be treated or raised, then I still would lack an understanding of what I did want from a mother and what kind of mother I want to someday be.  These women had nothing to base their motherhood of off, in fact most of them were not cared for a all by their own mothers. Their mothers were either, addicts, emotionally or mentally unstable, not present, etc. It put these women in a extremely confusing emotional place with their children because for mother of them, their children were the first thing in their lives that were their own. This created dependent and in many circumstances unhealthy relationships with their children. The day after my presentation I saw Eve Ensler, (the write of the vagina monologues, writer, performer, activist, etc.) speak at my school. She spoke about the crippling effects of oppression and violence towards women on our society and on the women within it. I couldn’t help but connect the ways that she spoke about the abuse in her own life and the lives of the women that she had traveled the world meeting, to the lives of the women in the book. The whole experience really allowed me to think about the lives of these women as mothers and as victims in a very real way. I feel as if in many circumstances violence towards homeless women and mothers is explained as something that is happening in this very separate world from our own. This book and Eve Ensler really put into perspective the reality of how abuse, oppression, and homelessness can happen to anyone. It really made me think about things as both a bigger picture and on a personal level. I was extremely happy to have been able to see Eve Ensler speak, because it connected a lot of the realities of these women’s lives to the reality of the struggles of women everywhere. It made their issues seem less like as result of homelessness and addiction, but one of the severe misfortunes and abuse that tainted their early lives.

Recently for another class I have been reading the book Half The Sky, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The book basically highlights the heartbreaking experiences of women on a global scale. It addresses sex trafficking, poverty, abuse, and cultural and religious practices that are harmful, degrading, and dehumanizing towards women. It follows specific women and tells their stories of overcoming obstacles that in nearly each story seem to big and too horrible to be real. In so many ways it connected to the book that I was assigned for our group projects in this class called, Homeless Mothers, by Deborah Connolly. This book specifically addressed the issues that white women in poverty in the United States face as mothers. It covers addiction, abuse, poverty, childhood trauma of nearly every form, and all of the ways in which those aspects of these women’s lived experiences have effected their roles and obligations as mothers. I saw so many parallels between the women describes in both books. Of course differences existed due to cultural, societal, religious etc. differences, however there were themes present in these women’s lives and emotions that connected quite frequently. One of the most apparent similarity was the ways that these women care for their children. At times their legitimate parenting tactics are not always agreeable, yet, they all express this extreme desire to provide a “clean slate” and opportunities for their children that they didn’t have. Regardless of how they felt on an individual level about motherhood, these women for the most part seemed committed to making sure that their children did not have to live as they had. While the women in Half The Sky were debatably more motivated and in some cases seemingly more invested in overcoming their situations, I was overall incredibly inspired and impressed by the overall resilience of women who are faced with such appalling life circumstances. I was also shocked at how often financial insecurity played a role in the cause for these women falling into these situations. My perceptions of motherhood have changed significantly after reading both books and I encourage everyone to at least read one of them. It is truly unbelievable what women are capable of overcoming even when they have nothing. I am excited to continue reading and learning about poverty and homelessness because it seems to be so closely related and responsible for so many of the ways in which people struggle and suffer today.