When I say we were poor growing up, compared to others we were doing just fine. Sure, we ate a lot of food from Grandma’s garden in the summers and took the canned jars home that she offered us. We had to make a pound of hamburger feed four…two of them male with hearty appetites. And my dad used to grow a garden on the empty lot out behind our house. I remember we would get half a beef and eat from the freezer for a year. We didn’t have a lot of extras, and we lived in a small, modest house in a clean, safe neighborhood…so we were actually pretty golden.

It wasn’t like my mom’s upbringing out on the farm in the post-depression poverty of the 1930’s. Grandma once told me, if it hadn’t been for the cow, her family of eight would have starved to death. They grew and canned their own food, had a cow and a couple of pigs, and grew a patch of sorghum for their only sweet…molasses. It was a hard life. Still, five out of the six went to college.

When I left West Virginia in 1973, I was a newlywed and just graduated from x-ray school. I headed out into the world with great hopes and joined my husband in England where he was stationed with the Air Force. I couldn’t work overseas without going back to school and we wouldn’t be stationed there long enough to even finish. So, we had a baby instead. 

Living life in the military in the ‘70s wasn’t too bad when you were overseas because you got a stipend for living in a foreign country. When we got back home, though…that was a different story. We were stationed in Colorado where the cost of living has always been higher. We were lucky to get an apartment through HUD housing. It was brand new…had never been lived in. I felt like we were living high on the hog…even when we had nothing more than the barest essentials. 

When Hubby #1 and I separated, I was still in HUD housing. The only difference was, I started receiving WIC and Food Stamps to supplement the small part-time job. It was hard to get a job when you haven’t worked in your chosen career since school and it’s been two years. I was lucky to find that one.

Eventually, things improved. I moved up in my career field, made more money, moved in with a friend and shared expenses. I remarried when Daughter #1 was five years old and Hubby #2 was in medical school. We struggled to make ends meet as I supported us while he was in school. We struggled as he joined his first practice. And then, things got much, much better and we didn’t struggle anymore.

I know I’ve been blessed by that union in many ways. It gave me Daughter #2 and it gave me the ability to buy a house when the marriage ended. When Mr. Virgo came along five years later, we joined our households and life was very good. I haven’t had to make a choice between medicine and food. I lived in a camper for three years after Mr. Virgo died because I WANTED to…not because I HAD to. There’s a big difference there.

Once I settled back in West Virginia, I saw much more poverty than I remembered growing up. I know ours is not the only state, but there are places here in this beautiful state that are struggling like third world countries struggle. My friend Diane sent me a video tonight that broke my heart. A single mom, trying to raise her kids in WV and what she has to do to bare get by. You can see the video HERE. She is articulate and on point and I think she should run for State Delegate and help fix this.

Unfortunately, poverty is the only “trickle down economics” that is demonstrable. It’s a family disease that gets handed down through the generations and it’s extremely hard to break out of the poverty cycle. I’ve seen it in my own extended family. It’s not the same world where Grandma fed her family with a cow and a garden. There’s an ever widening chasm between the haves and the have nots and it’s our children’s children who will pay the biggest price for it.

❤️

“”If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.”

Leviticus 25:35-37 ESV