Advice please: Amplifying Homeless Voices
As you may know, I've been zoning in on a focus for my poverty book. I'm still in the middle of an ambitious immersion journalism project wherein I've been living in abject poverty for almost ten...
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My New Political Polling Job
Now that I'm a pollster, it's incomprehensible to me that the data I'm producing is actually useful to anyone. We almost always call land lines, which a lot of people don't even have anymore. Eighty...
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ABOVE THE POVERTY LINE! WOO HOO! THANKS Y'ALL!!!
So grateful, and ready to give back! Yesterday I woke up with a scratchy throat and cough. If I had still been in South Carolina, there wouldn't have been anything I could do about it. I would have had...
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Having Left the South, Health care at last & the underground red state...
The tiny house I'm saving up for Hey y'all, having left the South, things have changed. Most importantly, I have health care! It's pretty good except for the long waits. I have a pinched nerve that...
View ArticleI'm Disabled, My Boss Abused Me, Now what?
I started working at a political polling firm on 10/2/15. On my application I indicated that I had a disability, and on the first day I went to the HR person to tell her about my Asperger's syndrome. I...
View ArticleThe Horror and Shame I Can't Get My Head Around: Why #Black Lives Matter
Like every good-hearted American, the events of the past few weeks and months have been increasingly discouraging and depressing for me. All of the videos, some of which I can’t watch...at first I...
View ArticlePolitical Comedy is Crucial: Black Voices Matter.
I was distressed to hear that The Nightly Show was cancelled. I think Larry Wilmore is smart and funny, the rest of the crew is talented each in their own way, and I found the show welcoming in that...
View ArticleCan't stop crying. Scared to leave my room. Help.
I can’t look at new stories. There doesn’t seem to be any hope anywhere. Even Colbert’s reaction didn’t help. Half the country hates me as a woman. America just elected an abusive, bullying sexual...
View ArticleIs the GOP plotting to make Pence president?
What if the Republicans impeach Trump and Mike Pence becomes President? This is a man who has said that gay people should be imprisoned. While Trump seems to be getting in the Republicans’ way, Pence...
View ArticleFeel bad? Watch #UnitedShades and be uplifted.
I just finished watching the first episode of the new season of United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. It was a pretty shitty news day, and I’m in a pretty shitty space. But Mr. Bell has...
View ArticleQuick poll: What should my freeway sign say?
My 40” by 90” painted white cardboard is ready. Now I can’t decide what to paint on it! It’s going up on I-5 in Eugene on an overpass near the mall, kinda in Springfield, which is Trump country. Please...
View ArticleMy First Freeway Sign
When I first read FreewayBlogger’s posts, I was intrigued. The stuff he does looks so cool! And way more people read it than read our blogs here (no offense, my fellow Kossacks, but we’re preaching to...
View ArticleNearly homeless & dancing as fast as I can (one of a million poverty...
The government is falling apart, and America as we knew it seems to have ceased to exist, but not much has changed in the households of the poorest of the poor: it’s the beginning of the month, and...
View ArticleWonderful Woozle Needs Vet Care Urgently
This is my dog Leonard, the best dog in the universe. He was picked up as a stray at around age 5 and rescued from the SPCA by a fostering program that helps little dogs. They neutered him and placed...
View ArticleMy Self-Defeating Shame of Poverty
In therapy, I am discovering some deep-seated stuff in my psyche; as it turns out I was raised to believe that I’m a bad person, deserving of punishment. And I internalized that idea of myself as an...
View ArticleHelp! and Advice--Can't--Reach--Safety
I’ve been underemployed for most of the past year. Last fall, I developed a plan. I won’t give up on using my MA in counseling; I’ll keep applying for jobs, knowing that it might take years to find a...
View ArticleMaking a garage habitable in 1 week: I don't know...
For now, we have to let go of judgement about whether or not renting an unfinished garage was a good idea. For various reasons, there was not another option. So I have to make the garage work. It does...
View ArticleWriting to Save my Life: What Mental Illness Feels Like
I always knew I was depressed, but I didn’t recognize my own anxiety. I thought everyone’s body was like a clenched fist, that everyone had a knot of fire between their shoulder blades. The odd person...
View ArticleI made a mistake: living in an unfinished garage is a terrible idea
Today I took my friend Blue over to meet the garage landlord. She was not impressed. She advised me quite strongly that I would be making a terrible mistake, and I should keep looking, because living...
View ArticleLife IS the Obstacles: Finding Housing in the PNW (also, is the internet...
After making a mistake with the garage thing, I have secured a safe and lovely place to live. It is in a nice quiet neighborhood with big lawns, north of town. My new landlady read my craigslist ad and...
View ArticleLandfill Time Capsules: My Gift to Future Garbage Miners
At times like this I find myself meditating upon what the world will be like in 500 years or so. It’s really looking like it won’t be pretty and it makes me feel sad for my descendants, and yours, that...
View ArticleWonderWoozle Needs Meds: Can you spare $1?
Hi everybody! I had hoped I’d never have to ask for help again. But being disabled means one never stops needing help, unfortunately, and my family doesn’t claim me. It’s just a small need, $125 for...
View ArticleEveryone Needs Health Care, with No Math Required.
Here in Oregon, which has expanded Medicaid through the ACA, there’s a slice of the population staying poor so we still qualify for the Oregon Health Plan (OHP.) The cut-off income is $1385 monthly. So...
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How You Came to Exist (an excerpt from "Dear Daughter")
I’ve always loved fireworks. I grew up near DC, and more years than not I spent July 4th there as an adult. I’m super patriotic, like most progressives, so I cry every year. On the night of July 4,...
View ArticleHarassed at the park on Easter Sunday
Today I thought I would go look at the river and have some quiet, contemplative time. But when I was walking through the park, a man greeted me, and I failed to respond with the right sort of delight...
View ArticleQuiz: Which kind of Republican are you?
Hello, Republican friends and neighbors and relatives. How are y’all? I hope you’re hanging in there. I miss you. I submit to you there are only two kinds of Republicans, and I only need to ask you one...
View ArticleAsperger's and Isolation: Dear Daughter
I’ve always processed emotion by writing. When I want to really communicate with someone, I write to them. For me, only writing feels like I’m fully expressing my thoughts and feelings. When I’m...
View ArticleFood Stamps Cancelled=Hunger. Thanks, Drumpf
My SNAP got cancelled, and I’m hungry. It was a clerical error, caused by the new work requirements that went into effect January 1. Although I’ve been working all along, I now have to prove, with...
View ArticleGuide Me, O Wise Ones: RV Living?
I worry about becoming homeless again. Maybe everyone who has been homeless has this worry, like a PTSD symptom. As I grow older, this sense of impending doom heightens: at some point, I won’t be able...
View ArticleHow I Lost My Daughter: The Only Story I Have to Tell
Originally published at my blog Dear DaughterI’ve been putting off trying to write this. I can’t write it without making myself look bad, and I can’t write it without making Mother and Daddy look bad....
View ArticleLenny the WonderWoozle Needs Vet Care: Anal gland surgery? Sisters and...
I took Leonard to the vet today to get his butt squeezed. As you know, he’s formerly unhoused, and at some point suffered a butt gland infection so he has a lot of scar tissue in one of his anal...
View ArticleUpdate on Lenny's WoozleButt, plus me
When we last spoke, a vet had said he might need to have his bad anal gland removed, and I wanted to seek a second opinion. Thanks to everyone who contributed to Lenny’s vet fund! The new vet said he...
View ArticleDepression is like a black wave
It’s hard to write when I’m depressed. I don’t feel like doing anything, especially examining my past and explaining myself. My new roommate recently told me that he doesn’t understand depression...
View ArticleMy Family Separation Trauma: A Wound that Never Heals
I was separated from my primary caregivers, my grandparents, when I was five; thirty years later I was separated from my four-year-old daughter. Now she is 19 and we are estranged. None of this is of...
View ArticleNo Food, No Money, Rent Due, Please Help
When we last spoke, I had moved in with Older Anal-Retentive Vegetarian and was dealing with her following me around the house, criticizing me, whenever I left my room. (You may remember that I have...
View ArticleIn which I am accused of fraud by Patreon. I get fired. A visit with Mother...
Things change so quickly. Last week my client got mad at me and fired me for the nth time. He accused me of stealing, but I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to have stolen. He’s fired me before,...
View ArticleWhy I Left the South, 3 years later: Progress mainly in the spiritual plane
Three years ago, I left South Carolina, hoping for a better life in Oregon, propelled by the Kossacks, Class of ‘15, who earned my deepest undying gratitude and restored my faith in human nature with...
View ArticleLenny needs vet care; working but not getting paid: Please help if you can
Due to an error on my paperwork, I’m not getting paid this week. Or next week. I don’t know when. I’m trying not to freak out about it, but there are several things that are urgent. As Leonard’s fans...
View Article"But he's a really good customer!"
Recently I was triggered by something Trump said, as so often happens these days. His response to questions about Saudi Arabia’s latest human rights atrocity, the likely murder of a journalist,...
View ArticleBook Report: "Democracy in Chains" by N. MacLean
I used to wonder why I’d hear Republicans call Obama a socialist. Can’t these morons use a dictionary? I’d think. Back then, I still thought words had precise meanings. I didn’t understand that the...
View ArticleOwn Your Righteous Fury
“We are outraged,” she thundered. “Hell yeah!” I said to the screen. “More of that.” Stacey Abrams’ lawyer was on MSNBC last night, speaking about the ongoing Georgia vote count, which Brian Kemp is...
View ArticleDisaster strikes! My computer is stolen. Also, disabled man needs a comfy...
When I came home from work yesterday and discovered my laptop had been stolen, I had an autistic breakdown that lasted several hours. I’m still not feeling right, kind of want to hide under a table....
View ArticleOld dogs, new tricks, and comfy chairs
My little dog Leonard is not what you’d call bold. You could pen him in with a six-inch fence. He doesn’t jump in the water at the river. You have to help him up on the bed and couch, which is not...
View ArticleI need advice and help please, my life seems to be coming apart, and I'm...
I’m so confused, y’all. I’m experiencing that thing where scarcity makes your brain not work right. Poverty is traumatic and causes PTSD, for real. I’m trying really hard, as you know, and I’m making...
View ArticleYes We Did! I got a counseling job! Thank you for believing in me.
Hey, y’all, I finally got a counseling job! It’s in Coos Bay, so I do have to move from Eugene, but it pays really well. I’ll be an individual and family therapist, working in a day treatment program...
View ArticleGoal Completed! You saved my life, abundantly
Back in Columbia, South Carolina, in the summer of 2016, we dreamed a dream together. As the hate flag finally came down from the Statehouse, to ten thousand people, crowded together in the broiling...
View ArticleHow's your mental health? Freaking out a little bit maybe? Here is support!
Hey y’all, I hope everyone is safe and healthy! I have mild symptoms so I can’t be helping as a therapist in my physical community, which is driving me nuts. But maybe I can help here. There are...
View ArticleI got COVID at work. And I'm scared.
I’m a child and family therapist and I work in rural red Oregon. Although I’m not a school employee, my office is located inside a middle school, where I run a day treatment program. When the schools...
View ArticleWhy'd they vote like that?
A lot of people are wondering why nearly 70 million Americans, pretty much half, actively chose to keep the dumpster fire. I think we need to figure out where we went wrong, so maybe we could fix it....
View ArticleNeed a little help in Portland OR next week
Hey Daily Kos family! I hope everyone is healthy and safe. I’ve been super depressed and anxious the past year. I’ve been struggling like this for 30 years and I’m pretty tired of it. I have a good job...
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