Can We Be Kind to One Another?

1964 Galaxie 500, the car I lived in was a 4 door but otherwside, this is Gertrude. Montana. Summer. 1982.

My family is wealthy. Through blind chance, I was born into financial privilege.

Throughout my childhood I was always the 'wealthy' one in my circle of playmates, most of whom rented homes from my father and step-mother.

As a result of this I was told that I didn't know pain and that I had never worked a day in my life.

I could not share with my friends that my body was torn open by rape. I tried to tell them...They shut me down. It didn't matter. Didn't count. I didn't feel pain from that because the electricity was always on at my house.

People think I don't work because I am and often have been a stay-at-home mom. I've also worked 2 or 3 jobs at the time trying to keep the electricity on as a single mom with 3 kids. With regards to stay-at-home moms, we exchange careers, social status, decades of income, and a solid, bonded peer group for the love of our families. Most of us work 14-16 hour days and stay up half the night feeding babies for a good portion of those decades. It’s work. We don’t get paid it, but it is work, make no mistake.

Anyway…

I've always had a great deal of privilege but that does not mean that hurtful things don't hurt, that being beaten bloody didn't hurt, that sexual abuse didn't hurt, that being abandoned by my mother at a very young age didn't hurt.

It's always baffled me, this kind of badge of honor people wear as a way of being cruel to those with financial privilege, the abject heartlessness they throw at us as if when we bleed it doesn't count.

I see my daughter going through it now. She has 'friends' who shunt her words, thoughts, heart aside as if nothing she says is valid because her life has not been filled with bills that probably won't get paid.

As if financial suffering is what makes a person good or valid or heart centered.

As if financial privilege completely negates other life experiences, or a person's ability to live with a good and open heart, as if punishing and invalidating someone *ever* makes sense. Especially as if it makes sense to tell someone they don't matter, that their lived experience didn't cause them pain *due to an accident of birth!*

I was born into privilege and experience it now, but was broke for decades in between. Unlike poop, money does not necessarily flow downstream. Privilege does and I've always had some of that--I'm white, I was attractive, my family has money, all of these are privileges.

I've lived in a car with two men for months at the time. Dug pennies out of the sofa to buy cheap day-old bread to feed my kids. Pawned my rings to feed my kids.

My mom was poor as a church mouse. We often lived without water or electricity at her house. I’ve experienced what it is to live without abundance

And there is absolutely no way that I believe that anyone can say they feel more pain or that it is worse due to financial instability. I have lived financial instability and it was definitely not worse. The closeness of the people who live that way, the actual bond of being broke is its own support system.

If you have *ever* pulled this horseshit on anyone call her or him right now and apologize. We are all heartless sometimes. We are all blind sometimes. We all owe someone an apology. Here is an opportunity to offer a very specific one.

Have you done this to someone? Invalidated them because they were born into privilege?

Have you experienced it?

And, if I have EVER invalidated you in any way, or hurt you for any reason, especially due to your having greater privilege than me, I wholeheartedly apologize to you. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.