Solidarity.  John Paul II made this a household word as he invited the world to stand in solidarity with the oppressed people of his native Poland. 

I was given a lesson in solidarity last month.  Meet Tanisha*.

She was walking on the side of a downtown highway that "people like me" never go on.  With toddlers on both shoulders and two more little ones in tow, the 90 degree August sun beat on her.  When I asked if I could take them where they were going, she wept - so did I.  

It turned out she was going nearly 4 miles to bring some of her children - including an 18 month old and a two year old, who has cerebral palsy - home from their cousins' where they had stayed while she gave birth just a week before.  (Typically, postpartum women are told not to lift anything heavier than their newborn.) 

Never once did she complain.  As I gave her one of my slings and started thinking about how to get her a stroller for the others, we drove to the grocery store and helped her fill up her refrigerator.  The pain of seeing just three things in it was almost too much for me - especially looking around and seeing no furniture, not a single chair or lamp, and knowing that she didn't lack food because of spending it on frivolities.  

The children had almost no clothes, the 3 youngest only in diapers & oversized t-shirts.  Strictly prioritizing every penny, Tanisha works hard as a cook at a posh hotel & receives support from the baby's father, both financial & emotional - he's a very doting dad.

Stereotypes shattered.  Assumptions dissolved.  Here is a woman working hard, not even receiving food stamps or welfare, putting every penny into high quality medical insurance for her special needs child, leaving nothing, absolutely nothing for herself - not even "frills" like beds or decent shoes.  The father of the youngest is involved, telling me how he grew up without a father and that yeah, he knows how very important he is to these children.  The children are happy, respectful, & kind.  My children love them!  None of them ever complain, while Tanisha is the model of thankfulness, for everything.  She breastfeeds them for nearly a year & also pays her bills every month, with no debt.  In fact, when I asked what would it take to give her a little breathing room each month, she said, "Maybe $50?"


Tanisha herself grew up in foster care.  She readily admits that she has made many mistakes, but I'm astounded at just how well she *is* doing.  How anyone can grow up without a family and be such a caring, loving mother to her own is simply amazing.  Her hardships are countless.  In a city that has only a barebones mass transit system, she gets everyone where they need to go.  She begged her doctor to let her go back to work at a week postpartum, but he wouldn't let her till 5 weeks or so, meaning no paycheck all that time.

In fact, one of my eye-opening experiences was realizing that in a 5 mile stretch of this major highway, there isn't a SINGLE grocery store.  The closest one is in a college section of town that has long been populated with lower middle class, rather than "the poor."  Or the black.

I pondered and prayed on how best I could help.  No one wants to fall into the trap of "giving a man a fish" every day instead of "teaching him to fish to feed him for a lifetime."  My husband and I discussed again and again "what would it take to move this family from scraping by to stability?"  Not wealth, but stability.  As I talked more with Tanisha, I realized that those "big ticket" items are impossible to get if every penny goes to food & bills. 

Getting my homeschool group, Bible study ladies, family, & St. Vincent de Paul Society to the task, we furnished her home with our spare beds, high chairs, couches, clothes, fresh produce, & a freezer full of ground beef.  Several families are pledging $10/month to get her that $50 breathing room.  We're raising money to buy a barebones car with plenty of life in it that one of the homeschooling families has - Tanisha's able to pay the gas & insurance for her short, infrequent trips, but has no way to set aside a little each month to pay for something huge like a car.  St. VdP is working on getting her in their Uplift program for long-term support with financial counseling & education.

She's still paying the same amounts for the same stuff, but now living in a home with furniture, clothes, & a little stock of food.  Life's a little more comfortable.  She's also signed them up for food stamps now, & WIC for the new baby.

One of my biggest lessons has been that a great way to help on a person-to-person level is to get those "big" items.  If I struck it rich, I would love to start a foundation that helps person-to-person, case-by-case, with the small differences that make self-sufficiency possible.  That first $200 to buy a bunch of whole chicken, for instance, so that the next few months can be spent saving for the next bunch of chicken that the person can buy on his/her own - in bulk, at a bulk discount.  That initial investment would set that person up to be able to do it himself henceforth.

Another insight is just who is poor.  The father is in IT at a startup.  The mother looks like anybody you'd see in a mall, hotel, or salon (she's also licensed as a beautician).  Who would ever look at his coworker and realize that she's living in an apartment with no furniture and nothing but hot dogs in her fridge.

Yet another lesson is just the difficulty of it all.  I did nothing to be born into a loving, two-parent, financially stable home.  She did nothing to be born into a life of being shuffled from house to institution to house.  I can pat myself on the back about all I've done, but how much of that could have happened if I had been born in her circumstances instead of mine?  Would I have been as tough and brought myself as far as she has?  Or would I have wallowed in my misery, relying on government assistance more than myself?  

Not everyone's a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps type.  Not everyone should have to be.

It's a beautiful thing to see this family get so close to stability.  I can't say who's gaining more, though - them or me.





*Name changed