EPISODE 24
"JUST
WORDS"

Welcome to JUST WORDS.  The stories of working people in our community.

I'm Marc Steiner

The distance between living at home and living on the street is probably something many people don’t think about. But for many of us, the distance is not that great Even for those who make a decent living, we’re just stretched too thin. And for those of us who make, say, 30 thousand or less a year? The distance from home to the street us a very slender thread.

I was working for a restaurant and I was an assistant manager for 7 years and that is when I got pregnant.

That’s Beth. She was 42 and already raising two kids on her own when she found out a third was on the way. This pregnancy would turn out to be different from the others.

Because of me being older, you know, my doctor said I had to limit myself towards the end. And since my job didn’t have any benefits, no maternity leave or anything like that I left there to go to an easier job so it would be less labor and I could work just a little bit of the hours. So I went to work and after I had the baby I was out of work, couldn’t get nothing, and that’s when bills got behind and I started, I got really depressed, started medicating myself. I was just really depressed and I was worried. I was worried. I’ve always stood on my own two feet and always took care of what I had to take care of. And I just felt like my back was up against the wall and now here come this baby. In the process of all that I was getting evicted. I was losing my place because I couldn’t afford it. The lady I was renting from threw all my stuff away. She didn’t have an eviction notice or anything. She just rented a dumpster and threw my stuff away.

I remember like it was yesterday my oldest daughter coming home from school one day and I was in a stupe. Wasn’t doing nothing all day, I had been drinking all day and taken some nerve pills, I was depressed. I was home all day. I wasn’t working. This is after I had the baby. And uh….I just sat home all day and I remember my daughter coming home from school and looking at me and asking if I was okay. And I was like yeah, I’m fine, I’m sure, I’m fine. But looking back on it and the look in her eyes like, You’re NOT okay, you’re not the mom that got up and went to meetings every night and came home and did things and had a reason to get up and do stuff. I just wasn’t myself anymore. I think what contributed to a lot of it was being older, being pregnant, being a single mom, and being by myself and then losing the job and then worrying about what I am going to go, now I got the baby and I got to worry about daycare again, and just worrying about what I am going to do, and not having nobody. And I was miserable.

Beth knows she is responsible for the decision to begin using again. But how different would this story be if Beth had had even minimal job protection when she became pregnant? We’ll hear more about Beth next week.

Just words is a production of the Center for Emerging Media, produced by Jessica Phillips, through a grant from OSI-Baltimore: investing in solutions to Baltimore’s toughest problems, with audacious thinking for lasting change, on the web at OSI-Baltimore.org.
Visit JUST WORDS on the web at centerforemergingmedia.org, or
email us, at justwords@wypr.org