My mother and stepdad brought two wonderful babies into the world 35 years ago. Mom delivered the twins naturally (they were over 8 pounds each, mind you) and breastfed them in a spectacular fashion (sorry, no photos of that). See how adorable!
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| Thanks to Mom, those girls were well fed! |
My stepdad suffered with PTSD from serving as a Marine in Vietnam (he was 19). He struggled with substances and other issues that I won't detail here. Addiction, when untreated, can have terrible effects on families.
My family was struggling to make ends meet and needed to use safety nets provided by our government to sustain us. I am not exaggerating to share that we sometimes only had peanut butter and saltines to eat. Even as we started to make ends meet, we received government cheese, powdered milk, and other supplies that helped stretch our family funds.
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| This was us back in "the day." |
Was it just that we were able to use food stamps while my stepdad was struggling with addiction? I argue that it most certainly was. He paid a high price for serving our country and I argue that it is imperative that we support all of our veterans (sorry for my little side-rant).
I remember the feeling of walking down to the local grocery store with funny looking money to bring groceries home. It was embarrassing to not have "real" money, but I was hungry. Thank you to our government for not making me go without food and for keeping me healthy when my family was struggling. We may have fallen on tough times, but we survived. I won't even go into the details of how White Privilege helped (how about that... side-rant avoided).
Peace to you and yours - Jackie
