Hi friends!! Hope this blog finds you well and enjoying your summer thus far with the kiddos and family. We've had sleepovers galore, play dates...so much so that the poor guys over here got put back on a schedule because Momma just doesn't know how to exist in a sea of chaos!! I just feel completely out of control without one. Probably says something about my personality, because my husband can exist with or without one....and my kids prefer not having one!! ha ha!! But I am one of those people who like to know what's coming, know what they are supposed to be doing....you get it.
So the other day I was reading the news and I came across a statistic that shocked and appalled me...and one that relates very strongly to Pass It On, Baby! In 2010, over 21% of children in the United States will now be living below the poverty line. Over 1 out of 5....completely unbelievable to me and so very sad. I sat down with my husband and talked at length with him. My mind working the way it does, I wanted to know who was to blame. Not because I need some scapegoat, but because I always feel that if you can identify the problem, you can get to the solution. As we were talking, I was completely aware that I kept focusing on the problem and the solutions, and he talking about just understanding it all from every different perspective....totally different ways of looking at it.
He practices something that I need to try to put in action a little more. I like to think of it as "compassionate understanding". He doesn't want to talk about who's at fault, he just wants to see the situation from all angles and understand it. Never judges it....just understands it. So say we are talking about the illegal immigration issue...I'll be all up in arms about who should do what, who's to blame, how to fix the situation....and all the while, he is telling me individual stories from all sides, so I can understand the situation truly. He looks at pretty much all situations like that....I'm the black and white thinker and he's always talking to me about the gray.
I used to get so annoyed during these conversations thinking that understanding the situation has nothing to do with fixing the situation, but I was wrong. Understanding, and not judging any one side of the issue has everything to do with fixing it. Because when you do have a suggestion or an improvement, it comes from a place of love and respect....not blame. It results in truly helping the people at the heart of the situation, not judging who was right and who was wrong and then figuring out a punishment for who was wrong.
On a very small level, take an argument between two siblings where one hit the other and then the children came and told their mother. (Not that this would EVER happen in my house.... ;) I used to handle the situation by saying, "Who hit?" "Why did you hit?" "We don't act like that in our home, so you are in time out." "Apologize to him and go sit on the stairs." But in handling a situation like that, the child that did hit never learned compassion. He was never asked to think about how his brother felt or how he felt in the past when someone hit him. That type of discussion probably does a lot more to deter a child from hitting then the five minutes on the stairs....And so I'm learning as I go. :)
That is one of the nice things about Pass it On, Baby! The help DOES come from a place of compassion and understanding. It is not our job, nor our intent to ever figure out WHY someone is in that situation, but it is our job once they have reached out to us -- to help them. To love them and to treat them just how we'd like to be treated if the situation was reversed. What is gained from behaving in any other way? Sometimes I think that judgment itself, is a lot of the problem. Instead of wasting time talking about why the problem occurred, what if we just accepted it and moved toward a solution?
These families that reach out to us do so based on a lot of factors....and simply put, none of them really matter. What does matter is that when we read those notes, there is a mother hurting and a child going without on the other end of the note. That's where our focus belongs....Hugs and love to each one of you reading these words tonight.
In love and kindness,
Email Elizabeth & Heather
I appreciate your discussion on this topic. I have five children, and currently we are trying to survive on a mere $800 a month plus some food stamps. I remember the day that I realized that we were living far below the poverty level.We live in a dilapidated 2 bedroom mobile home that is literally falling apart at the seams. I constantly have to listen to people ask me why I just simply don't move, or get a better job, amongst other things. I get dirty looks when I use my food stamp card quite often. It is so hard to be judged like that. Where else am I going to find a place where I only pay $275 plus propane for rent? I can barely afford that much, so how can I be expected to pay three times that much for a better place? I am going to college to get an AA in child development so I can get a better job. You can not know how it feels to look at every home you see, even those that are not in very good shape, and wish that you could have a home like that. Or when you are in a store and someone is buying all this stuff that you can only long for. Sometimes just a little bit of understanding and empathy is all a person needs. Sharlene-Oroville
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