Tag: Car Accidents

Time To Be Grateful

Blogger’s note – I once worked for a rental management company. Sometimes people were evicted. I rarely saw any of that up close, though one memorable experience was checking a vacated house next to our office to see if any roaches were still alive after fumigation . . . later in my life, I left a bad romantic relationship and dropped into St Louis with a suitcase and $500 – no car, no job and no friends. I had to sleep in the room I rented with the light on (after cleaning all the trash out for the owner who didn’t do it many weeks after I started sleeping on the couch in their living room). Yeah, the roaches were still that bad . . .

What if you were a single parent with a child ? You work full time for $14.00 hr. You bring home roughly $800.00 per paycheck (bi-weekly).

Your monthly bills are:
$1,000.00 / rent
$ 150.00 / electric
$ 250.00 / car payment
$ 150.00 / car insurance

So do the math :
You bring home about $1,600.00 a month and your monthly bills average about $1,550.00 (give or take). You’re making it – barely. This amount does not include groceries, internet, cable, cell phone, etc.

Now, it’s a really cold December and you get a surprise power bill for $600.00 (blogger’s note – something like that actually happened here in the local area where I live). How do you pay that ? To put it simply, you don’t, because you can’t. Therefore, your power gets shut off. Your lease requires connected utilities, so now you will get evicted. You try to make your case in court, the judge doesn’t care. You are given 10 days to leave voluntarily.

If you’re lucky, maybe you found somewhere you could live, the rent is only $650.00 a month, but you only have 3 days to spare and you must pass a background and credit check first. And you won’t pass it because you just got evicted, even though you’ve never been a criminal. Even so, you’d be looking at $1,300, just to move in, after paying the deposit and first month’s rent.

The landlord shows up at 7am with the police and they change your locks. Now, you’re living in your car with your 7 year old son. You have everything you could salvage in the car with you. You try to get a storage unit, but you don’t have a billing address, so they won’t rent one to you. You have only taken what would fit in your backseat. You pay to shower at local truck stops and eat whatever you can cook in a gas station microwave.

Someone sees you are living this way with your son and calls Child Protective Services. Guess what happens next ? ? ? Your child is removed from you. And now, you lose your job too. (Because “as an employee who has lost their child, well it just reflects poorly on the company.”)

At this point, you apply for an apartment with a waiting list of 3-7 years. Then, you go to Wal-Mart and put in a job application. Returning to your car, you see that your back window has been smashed. Someone has helped themselves to your belongings.

Now, remember that it is December and really cold. Your only shelter is no longer safe.
You call your car insurance agent, who says your deductible is $1,000.00 and the bad new is now they’re going to increase your monthly rate because you’ve become “ high risk”.

As a last resort, you call the homeless shelter. All their beds are full. I’ll stop here ….. because you probably understand the point of this story.

The people we work with everyday are these people. We may even be these people ourselves.
We are all so close to homelessness and often we don’t even realize it.

All it takes is –

  • one unexpected bill
  • one fender bender
  • one lay-off
  • one house fire, etc.

There are people all around us who are poor, homeless, or in need of assistance. Be grateful that you’re not in their shoes (if you are not already).

Stay humble and be kind – and always, BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE.
Many of us are struggling in some way.

Blogger’s note – My youngest sister spent 4 years homeless. I don’t know how she survived it but she did. Sadly, we are estranged because her untreated mental illness causes her to be very cruel towards me. Still, I am always grateful that she is no longer living on the street.

A comment on the story above shared a “game” that has been around awhile. It illustrates a similar point – the terrible choices some people have to make every day, just to barely get by (if they’re lucky). Here’s that game – LINK>PlaySpent.

Ending on a happier note – just Everyday People . . .

When It Is Family

A woman’s sister writes – My sister asked me to care for her baby. The mom signed the form to terminate her parental rights, when her baby was only 2 days old. She had been in a car accident during pregnancy and lost her job. She is now financially stable, has her life together (her baby is only 5 months old now) and wants me to discontinue my adoption process regarding her baby.

The problem is – we don’t want to give her baby back. Is there anything legal – my sister, the baby’s biological mom – can do ? We’re so close to finalizing the adoption, all that is left is the home study. What do we tell our child, when she’s older, about why we refused to give her back to her original mom ?

Just goes to prove, that just because we are siblings born into the same family, once we are adults, all bets are off. I’ve seen it many times in many situations.

One commenter said – I truly can not fathom doing something so obviously horrible and disgusting. The fact that this woman is aware that what she’s doing is wrong because she wants to know what to tell the child (once they get older), well, it just makes it even worse. How incredibly selfish. That poor baby !

Important points not to miss – this women is the mother’s sister ! The baby’s Aunt ! In MANY families …. family members do HELP family members in crisis, to care for their children. Often via a parent-placed, joint custody with the more stable family having primary physical custody. The best thing about this is that there is no need to change the baby’s birth certificate. Any sister could raise her sister’s child appropriately, while calling herself Auntie. In some Indigenous cultures, it is not unusual for a primary caregiver to be called “Auntie” when that person is not the child’s actual mother. A term of endearment for the care given.

An overwhelmed pregnant women in crisis. with poverty related issues of housing, employment, transportation, food and daycare insecurity …. such a woman is easily manipulated into thinking she is not enough. Then in this particular case, add the huge factor of her physical injuries ….

This woman never offered her sister the option of providing temporary care. It was adoption or no help at all. That makes it very easy to see how this situation developed.

Most infants placed in foster care will remain there an average of 15 months with maybe 2 – six month extensions. That this Mom got herself back together in under 6 months is phenomenal. She has maintained contact with her infant and is now in a position to parent her child. Ethically this is a No-Brainer. This woman should definitely reunify her niece with her original mom. Need to tell other children why ? Family helps family. OK, someday you can tell the child that you did miss her living with you but you don’t regret doing the right thing at the time.

5 months is only the blink of an eye in this child’s life. Transitioning this baby as soon as possible back to the child’s original mother is important. Time is of the essence. Do the right thing !!

So often a pregnant woman in temporary crisis is pushed into a permanent solution – and then things get better. Most adult adoptees will counsel such a woman to sincerely try parenting her child first, before surrendering the child to adoption. Many times, this leads to a happy ending for mother and child.