Success and Failure

Being a good mother under adverse conditions means being gratified by little successes as well as the great ones and accepting a stream of failures.  Failure is only an impediment to greater success, and with persistence can often be overcome.  Persistence takes patience and perseverance and perpetually draws upon limited means.   Perseverance means searching, investigating and exploring any possible options so long as they maintain the best of our moral and ethical standards.  The world we live in has both opportunities and opportunists.  Trying to wrangle opportunity from the opportunists is challenging.  Many manage little more than their basic needs if that.  There is a growing number of these people.   We are not alone in this dilemma, it is becoming more and more of a pandemic.

We can withdraw from the global economy and try to reinstate the good old days of the 1950's or the idealism of the 1960's, but isolating ourselves from the troubles of the world will not necessarily keep them from our door.

The troubles may stem from a basic loss of confidence in part.

Confidence in the federal reserve for manipulations
Confidence in the federal government for incompetence
Confidence in Big Business for unethical behavior
Confidence in our legal system for making mistakes
Confidence in our medical system for being inadequate
Confidence in our religious institutions for hiding/protecting/facilitating immoral behavior
Confidence in our community for not seeing the problems or doing something about them
Confidence in ourselves for our own powerlessness

When people reach the breaking point it is the perfect opportunity for a motivational speaker...motivational speakers may want to empower the people or they want to empower themselves.  The former are true leaders and the latter are dangerous.  A true leader inspires success and the power hungry ultimately bring failure to the lives of others.

Paperwork and more paperwork

Well, as a single mother I have had many challenges.  My son is asthmatic and tests as borderline Asperger's Syndrome. I already was challenged by a dysfunctional family.  When you bring a child into that situation the best and worst come out.  I recognized the challenges my son was facing early in life.  I did my best to cope on my own since my family wasn't acting very trustworthy or dependable.  I attempted to get assistance from my son's father's family.  They are very poor and don't demonstrate a great commitment to child rearing.  My son's conditions drained me due to his continual inability to sleep restfully through the night and insistence upon sleeping with me.  We moved to a community with an excellent grade school, but a long way from the business district.  I had been through twelve hour days from leaving home for work to returning home from work.  It is hard on a small child to spend so little time with their primary care giver and so much time in a public setting with little individual attention.  I attempted to work locally but found my stamina was flagging.  I found no public assistance until I was ultimately broke and homeless.  We fortunately made it through my son's entire grade school experience in the same home and the same school.  I worked very hard to help him develop social skills, friendships and a positive self image.

Today I'm jumping through hoops to get some medical assistance.  I've managed to secure something for my son, but I have no coverage.  I'm working for a retail chain part time, most of their staff is part time, and I do my best to pay our basic expenses.  There isn't money left for food, clothing or medical care.  I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis.  I have probably suffered from this my whole life, but it became exacerbated by giving childbirth and raising a very special child alone.  I have been prescribed thyroid medication, which helps pretty well under low stress, but fails under high stress.  I recently went several months without medication because I had run through the grace period for people who earn over $170 per month.  I'm also trying to make sure we have a life line telephone and perhaps a few dollars toward electric bills this summer.  So these agencies need paperwork and more paperwork.  I need to hand deliver some of it tomorrow and mail the rest.  These help agencies love to reject, deny and refuse assistance for any number of reasons.  There isn't really much time that I'm not under stress.