Battling the Stigma - 4 Ways to Avoid Shame if You're Living in Poverty

Struggling with money should not be a source of shame.

Zoom Out

For me, it's important to zoom out of daily life, and the penny pinching, anagosing over every coin, feeling like it's all my own fault grind of daily life.

We're living in a time of crisis. The system is broken. That's why you're in the position that you are.

Some sobering facts for everyone:

• 27% of children are living in poverty.

• 49% of children in lone parent families live in poverty.

• 46% of children from black and minority ethnic groups live in poverty.

• 75% of children growing up in poverty live in a household where
at least one person works.

Inequality is a huge problem in the UK. In 2020-21, 37% of total disposable household income in the UK went to the fifth of individuals with the highest household incomes, while 8% went to the fifth with the lowest.

Connect

We're pack animals. We were never meant to go through all this alone.

It's important that we all keep talking about our experiences, and connecting with each other about it in order to see how similar our situations are.

Join the Made for Mamas community on Facebook, or instagram, and let's get those conversations started.

Take a Bow

What you're going through is unbelievably tough. It's easy to give yourself a hard time, and beat yourself up about all the things you think you might be doing wrong.

But what if you took a moment to acknowledge your efforts, and cut yourself a bit of slack, and congratulate yourself on all the things you're doing right.

Are the kids fed today? And clothed, and going to school. Can you still find space to hear them with empathy, and listen to their day with interest, and have their back when they need you.

I've seen a lot in recent years about gratitude journals, but do you know what I'd love to see more of - journals where we praise our small wins during hard times.

Reframe

I love this technique. I'd much rather be smug than be a victim.

A lot of the habits that we develop when we don't have enough money make us brilliant eco-warriers. We're not flying on loads of foreign holidays. We're not buying loads of new cars, clothes, and electronic goods. We're certainly not leaving our heating on full blast.

We are not taking from the planet more than we need to. Unlike others . . . .