This is not primarily a joke thread.

In the many groups I have led, I have found that many people were raised poor, or lived well below the poverty line for a significant period as adults, but do not identify themselves as such. Yet people raised poor, as they have shared with me, often feel like they are the "only one" in a group.

I think once we "overcome" being poor, we like to leave it behind. Yet there are real gifts that grow under dire necessity. When group members have taken a look into that old (or present) experience, the gifts have popped out. Poor people are resourceful people.

I'll start with a childhood memory--

My mom mostly did her grocery shopping, even in deep winter snow, on a three-wheel bike with basket. We were raised on beans & franks and Kraft dinner... There was often a choice whether we wanted breakfast or dinner, and there were never seconds. "Seconds" were school lunches or another night's supper. We ate a lot of thin soup, too.... Meatloaf was a luxury.

Yet we were surrounded by affluent suburbia-- my mom wanted us in good schools and that was where we landed when our family broke up and she found a job to support us-- she had taught herself shorthand and typing, and landed a job running a nearby orthodontist's practice. The pay was low but she got paid vacations and a pioneering retirement fund that she now lives on in comfort.

Gifts? I KNOW that I can always figure out what to do under any rough circumstances.

You?

~Susan