I feel like this is something that no one ever talks about because somehow it’s deemed shameful or somehow being poor makes you less of a person.

But here’s the thing all my life I have been poor, so poor that we would spend a week or two with barely any money because we were waiting for the next pay checks to come in, don’t get me wrong here my parents worked hard everyday to put food on the table for me and my sister and to put a roof over our head and they are both incredibly smart and devoted people, but the cards life felt them never made them wealthy instead it made them humble.

Part of the reason that we were so poor was because my dad struggled with alcoholism for most of my childhood, he was never a bad person to me he still isn’t, he tried every way he knew how to quit but it never worked, it got so bad that he went to the doctor because we were so poor and he felt so ashamed to have put his family through that, they told him that there was a tablet that he could take for a year that would stop the craving for alcohol.

So he took them and he hasn’t touched a drop since, he hasn’t wanted to and he is so happy to be free of it, but over the years he lost his confidence in himself and settled for a job that he could do easily rather than one that would challenge him, my dad is one of the smartest people I know, he was placed in the top 5% of the country because he is so smart and because he has worked so hard.

The modern belief for my generation is that having money and expensive clothes and jewellery is somehow better than having little money and regular clothes.

And if I’m being honest with you that really pisses me off. I am a good person, I am a kind person, I am intelligent and hard working, I am always there for my friends, and I will give whatever I have for anyone that needs it, for me growing up poor was a blessing because it taught me humility and kindness and how to give even when I have nothing to give and how to make the most of the small things because that’s all some of us have got.

No one ever talks about being poor and that’s why I thinks it’s so important to start talking about it now, this is the decade of acceptance so why aren’t poor people being accepted too, if you choose to believe that people are only poor because they are lazy then please think again because my dad works ten times harder than his boss that gets paid ten times more than him.

Start talking. Xx