Food Stamps: Helpful Or Successful?

When I was younger, I had always imagined that it would be empowering to shop in a grocery store, and pay for food without food stamps. I thought that it would feel good to let the cashiers and customers know that we weren’t poor and on welfare. As growing up, that was a reality that I didn’t even want to admit to myself, much less anyone else. I think society made me afraid to be poor, and as a result my pride grew to extreme heights as well. I remember with great clarity the time we did buy food without government assistance, but it didn’t go the way I had always dreamed. For some unknown reason, my mother’s food stamps had been shut off, and one day, we went to a grocery store to pick up dinner. The entire trip I only had one thing on my mind. I had spotted a box of cookies, and I wanted them desperately- in the way that a child “desperately” wants something. So, I begged my mom to let me have them, and eventually, she relented. I was satisfied, and my mom picked up some random dinner items. Then, we put all her items on the conveyor belt, plus my cookies and the cashier scanned them all in. I waited as my mom swiped her debit card, and it came away declined.
I can’t recall if I was embarrassed. I do remember thinking that I should be embarrassed, but the only thing on my naïve, …show more content…
A person who would suffer, rather than ask a friend for help, and that was a problem. It has actually been a problem of mine until rather recently. I discovered that I love helping people. It makes me feel good to help someone, because I’d like to think that if I needed help, someone would help me. And I think that’s when I realized that I needed to let go of my hubris. Escape from the thing that was chaining me and embrace who I am. I realized that needing help is not something to feel shameful about, because everybody needs help. And though I’m not shouting my background circumstances to rooftop, I will no longer be ashamed of where I come