avatarMisty Rae

Summarize

Resilience, Resourcefulness & Humility

Life Lessons From Poverty

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

No Medium membership? No problem, read this story for free here: https://readmedium.com/resilience-resourcefulness-humility-05a1748c8ea0?sk=6e11c129ef3e2552565125db42a6c7ad

Poverty ain’t for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. Despite what some people say, there’s no beautiful nobility in it. It’s tough. It’s gritty and scary and it sucks — it sucks hard!

I’ve had times in my life when I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Times when I sat on the bathroom floor sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe because I had no idea how I was going to keep the roof over my head. Times when I wasn’t quite sure what the kids and I were going to eat because the little food we had didn’t add up to the ingredients for any sort of recognizable meal.

I never, ever want to go back there again, but in thinking about those days, I realized they very much made me who I am today and taught me a few valuable lessons.

The first lesson I learned is how to be resilient. It’s really amazing what a person can do when they’ve got no choice. I had no choice but to push through, to put together those random ingredients, to seek out resources, to do what had to be done. It wasn’t just me, I had 3 little boys depending on me.

It’s that resilience that propelled me through my undergraduate and law degrees while working a full-time job.

It’s that resilience that got me through my legal career and my decision to leave it.

It’s that resilience that gets me through depression, anxiety, and C-PTSD.

But resilience is a funny thing, when you’re relying on it, you don’t necessarily recognize it. It’s not until after the fact that you look back and think, “Wow, how did I get through that?

Now I know that if and when times get tough, I have the tools somewhere deep inside. I know I’ve walked through hell more than once and came out the other side and if push comes to shove, I can do it again. I don’t want to, but it’s nice to know I can.

I also learned to be incredibly resourceful from my days as a poor single mother. When the box is empty, thinking outside it becomes a necessity. Stretching 2 hot dogs, some noodles, a tomato, and a can of peas into a filling meal for 4 isn’t exactly easy, but it can be done.

Knowing where to find help, especially in those days, wasn’t easy, but it could be done.

That ability to create solutions, to think of things in a way that deviates from the typical has served me well in subsequent pursuits. It’s what made me a great lawyer. It allowed me to see a different set of facts within the facts, a possibility for a different argument or angle.

I think it’s made me a better writer too. I’ve won contests and challenges, in part, I’m sure because my take on the brief was a little off-center…well, a lot off-center.

Finally, poverty gave me humility. It’s hard to be all highfalutin about yourself when you don’t have a pot to piss in.

It doesn’t matter how pretty you are. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have, how well you write, how fast you run, or if you can play the kazoo. Poverty doesn’t care and you learn real quick that you’re no better or no worse than anyone else with the same $2.15 cents in their bank account.

I carry that humility with me to this day. That’s not to say I don’t recognize and celebrate my strengths, because I do, enthusiastically. But I know that doesn’t make me better than anyone else on the planet on a global scale. I’m better at some things. I’m way worse at others.

I also think I have a little more compassion when I encounter people in poverty. I understand the looks, the judgment, the resentment because I’ve felt its sting. I understand how hard it is to do better and plan for tomorrow when you’re not even sure how you’re getting through today.

I understand that advising someone to “pull up their bootstraps,” is useless when they can’t even afford the damn bootstraps to pull up.

All in all, I’m glad I learned these life lessons and that I continue to carry them with me today. I’m not sure I’d be the same person had I not gone through it all. I do know I don’t want to go through it again though and I know that the thought terrifies me, especially with the economy the way it is. Time to put those attributes to work…

If you enjoy my work and would like to support me in continuing to write, please feel free to buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/mistyrae

Life
Life Lessons
It Happened To Me
Poverty
Personal Essay
Recommended from ReadMedium