I grew up poor. For most of my childhood, I lived in a household where the annual income was below the threshold needed to qualify for most social services. My mother, my siblings, and I would not have survived without the support of services such as WIC, Section 8, Medicaid, SNAP, Free/Reduced Price Lunch, etc.
We would not have received that support if my mom had not spent hours upon hours filling out and filing forms, providing documentation upon documentation to offices, filing appeals, going to offices in person several times in a row. My mom would not have been able to spend those hours without lots of help from family members. We would not have survived in the times between having those supports without lots of help from family members.

Folks have many different definitions of “poor.” Mine is this. I don’t mean that my family lived paycheck to paycheck, I don’t mean that we couldn’t afford the newest toys and fashions. I mean that, without the social safety net provided to families experiencing poverty, we would have had prolonged instances of being unhoused, we would have experienced hunger and food scarcity more often, and we would have suffered physically and mentally from a lack of access to healthcare.

I realized that my family was poor at a very young age. It’s difficult not to notice when you are the child of teen parents, when you share a room with your nuclear family in another family member’s household, when there are almost constant conversations, deliberations, and arguments about money and bills. At 3 or 4, I already knew to ask for the lowest-priced item on the menu on the rare occasions when we went out to eat. At 8, I figured that the cause of my family’s poverty was the fact that my parents had us as teenagers, and were therefore unable to attend college full-time, get a degree, and obtain a job that would provide them with a living wage.

The moment when I decided that I must do everything I could to “escape” this condition stands out very clear in my memory.

I was in third grade, living in a house with both of my parents for the first time in my conscious memory. My parents were not together – they just moved into the same house out of financial necessity. We lived in a huge, empty house in the suburbs of Las Vegas, Nevada. It had 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 living rooms, and a sparkling kitchen, a stark contrast to the bedrooms and apartments I was used to living in. It was huge, and it was empty, because my parents could not afford to furnish it. We had a futon in the back living room. The front room was left empty, until my dad signed me up for Girl Scouts and offered to keep the entire troop’s supply of cookies in it. My parents, in their late 20s, were both trying to work and go to community college part-time, and they struggled to pay all of the bills.

When you are poor, and you live in the suburbs around families who are not poor, you are constantly aware of the things you do not have that others do.

The moment when I decided I had to “escape” poverty, I was very aware of not having a bike, and aware of my parents not having the means to buy me one. My brother’s friend, who lived down the street, had recently gotten a new bike. He looked like he was having the time of his life as he rode past our house. It was a few months before my birthday, and I was sitting in one room of this big, empty house, thinking about how I wanted to ask for a bike for my birthday, and listening to my parents argue in a different room. I realized I could not ask for a bike, without feeling guilty about my parents needing to make some other sacrifice in order to give me what I wanted. Or without feeling guilty about causing the pain and shame my parents would feel if they had to tell me that they could not afford to get me what I wanted.

In this moment, I thought that I must prevent my potential future children from ever feeling this same way. I though that if I devoted myself to doing well in school, I could go to college, so that I could get a job that paid more than a living wage, so that I could afford to give my potential future children whatever they wanted for their birthdays.

I didn’t ask for a bike, and by the time my birthday came around we were moving out of the suburbs and into separate apartments once again.

This was near the end of third grade. At this time, I was already receiving a lot of positive reinforcement in school. I was quiet, shy, introverted, I loved to read, and I had a good memory, key for being a good test taker. In fourth grade, I was identified by my teacher as “gifted,” and allowed to take a test that could qualify me for the Gifted and Talented Education (G.A.T.E) program. I scored high enough, and from the fifth grade on, I was given access to an education that would actually prepare me for college. The G.A.T.E. program led to Honors and Advanced Placement classes, and I encountered a slew of (mostly) white teachers who looked at me and my classmates as the “smart kids,” the ones who were “going somewhere.”

I attended Arizona State University – the only college I applied to, because college applications had fees attached to them. I arrived at ASU with about a years’ worth of credits, the result of Advanced Placement exams, most of which I was able to take because the test fee for students on the Free/Reduced Price Lunch program was only $5. I paid my tuition with a combination of Pell grants, needs-based scholarships, and federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans. I graduated in 3 years, Summa Cum Laude, with a degree in a field that I no longer wanted to work in.

I was the first of both of my grandmothers’ children and grandchildren to graduate from college. It took me twelve years to achieve what I set my mind to at 8 years old. And yet, 2 weeks after graduating, I was forced to leave my student job, and 2 weeks after that I accepted the first job offer that I received – because I had to pay rent on July 1st, and I had no more money left in my bank account.

In my first job out of college I made $16 an hour. I knew then that it was more than my parents made throughout most of my childhood. I felt that the dream I dreamed at 8 years old was actually attainable. Around that time, my then-boyfriend, now-husband moved into my apartment with me. Almost my entire post-college life, I have shared my living costs with him.

In 2015, I decided to make a career shift, a decision that resulted in me accumulating around $6,000 in credit card debt. A debt that just continued to grow for the next 5 years, until it hovered around $9,000, no matter how much I paid toward it. That debt, along with my very meager savings account that never seemed to make it very far past $1,000, my need to surreptitiously check my checking account balance while in line at the store, my need to frequently transfer money from my savings to my checking in order to afford the items I was in line to purchase, or the bills that are all due between the 1st and the 15th, made it clear to me that just going to college and getting a “good” job were not enough.

Even when I began making just over $50,000/year (before taxes), I still lived paycheck to paycheck, I still struggled to save more than a couple hundred dollars a month. This was even with paying far below-market rent, and sharing living costs with my partner. This was with a student loan payment much lower than most, just $107.55 a month. This was without children, without needing to care for the wellbeing of anyone else besides myself and my dog. I still did not feel as though I had “escaped” poverty. I still feared, almost every payday, what would happen if for some reason my check hadn’t processed. I still knew, upon receiving a full-ride scholarship to ASU’s full time MBA program, which required me to leave my job, that accepting the offer would have pushed me right back into poverty.

It was not until late in 2019, when I began making just over $60,000/year (before taxes), that I finally found myself able to save consistently, that I finally found myself with more than a couple hundred dollars left in my account after paying all of my bills. It was not until I began making almost five times more than the Federal Poverty level annual income for a family of 1, that I felt that “escaping” poverty was something I, as an individual, was actually achieving.

For all of my adult life, poverty has felt like a storm, a shadow, that has followed me, that I have been constantly trying to outrun. A storm that, with one stumble, one pause, would overtake me once again. I have spent my entire adult life sprinting to outrun that storm, and only now do I feel as though I’ve gained a good enough lead on this storm to slow my pace to a jog.

Poverty is something that I have only been able to outrun due to an immense amount of privilege. My white-passing privilege made my teachers more inclined to give me the positive reinforcement that made me believe education was a mechanism I could use to achieve upward socioeconomic mobility. My parents’ privilege of being US citizens made it easier for them to seek out and qualify for social safety net supports. My privilege of having extended family members who are not poor and who could lend a helping hand, allowed me to have access to resources I needed, like a desktop computer. My privilege of having parents who, though they were never able to attend full-time, had attended community college on and off, made the college application process easier for me to navigate. My privilege of being a bilingual English/Spanish-speaker allowed me to work in the office in middle school, an experience which gave me the skills (read: how to use a copy machine) and insight (read: recognizing the white dominant values of professionalism and politeness that were required) that I needed to enter a white-collar working space. My partner’s privilege of being from a middle class background has allowed me to lean on my partner for support when needed.

What I have come to realize is that poverty is something those who have experienced it never truly escape. The trauma that I experienced as a result of being a child living in poverty will always be with me. The anxiety I have as a result of being a child living in poverty will always be with me. That fear of losing anything – my job, my health, my home – that would cause the storm to overtake me once again, will always be with me. The empathy and resilience I learned as a child living in poverty will always be with me.

I share all of this because I recognize that many do not truly understand all that it takes for someone to outrun poverty, to achieve upward socioeconomic mobility when the place they’re starting from is poverty. Many believe that all it takes is hard work. Many believe that it is attainable for anyone, as long as they have the right mindset and aptitude. I share all of this to let people who believe that know that – in the white supremacist patriarchal capitalist society that exists in the land currently known as the United States – this is simply not true.