My Mother Wasn't Trash
Gripping article about what living as working poor in Appalachia can be like.
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https://www.thisappalachialife.com/single-post/2017/05/10/My-Mother-Wasnt-Trash
At first reading, the story of my mother's life seems like little more than a tragedy. However, it is much more than that. Her story reveals the stark realities of growing up poor. All across Appalachia, there are thousands of women just like my mother working, striving, struggling, just to exist. So many people in Appalachia have broken minds and broken bodies and broken hearts, and they do nothing more than survive because that's all they can do.
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Mom didn't finish high school, but she decided to pursue an education when I was a kid. She found it harder and harder to make ends meet working as a gas station attendant and grocery store cashier, and education seemed like a good solution. She earned a GED, then a diploma from a technical college. Nobody in her family had ever finished high school, much less attended tech school, and I will never forget how proud of her I was when I saw her walk across the stage and get her diploma. I was in middle school at the time, but I vowed that someday I would go to a tech school and maybe even get a four-year degree because I wanted her to be as proud of me as I was of her in that moment. For poor people, occasions for pride are so few and far between. Sense of accomplishment is a pleasure rarely afforded to those who are impoverished. I suppose that is why I still choke up every time someone I love tells me they are proud of me. The truth is, Mom would have been proud of me no matter what.
As hard as she worked, Mom was never able to fully escape poverty. Even after she became qualified to work in an office rather than behind a cash register, she remained a part of what economists call the working poor. It turns out that all those years of lifting and standing while working dead-end jobs had taken a toll on her body. By the time she finally landed an office job with benefits, she needed lower back surgery. For the last twenty years of her life, she lived with chronic pain, and she tried an endless array of prescription drugs - both those prescribed to her and those not - but she never could keep the pain at bay.
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