FWIW, I grew up as one of the poorer kids at a continual series of private schools whose Mum was college-educated (with a Master's!) but lower middle class by income, and who felt pretty poor a lot.
And it took me until my mid-20s to realize a) my Dad wasn't as badly-off as my Mum (tho he did have a lot of kids to pay for) b) my grandparents had saved very wisely and were pretty well off if not straight-up "rich" by some of my friends' standards...
And that I was very lucky to have two loving, if divorced parents, siblings with whom I had good relationships, grandparents with whom I had good relationships, the ability to get scholarships/financial aid...
...and perhaps most critically, the ability to think outside the box as to how to make my less-than-wealthy financial state convert into something approximating better-off (hint: Leave the US for uni) and land and deliver in a summer job that paid well
And also that I had the foresight to recognize that if I was going to marry hubby anyway, doing it at 21 was as good as doing it at 24-- except we'd probably save more $-- and that some career choices and financial habits would make me wealthier faster
I'm not a big fan of wallowing in victimhood. Yeah, sometimes growing up I had to-- or chose to, for financial reasons-- shop at thrift stores. Yeah, I didn't get a car when I learned to drive (or ever until I was 28). Yeah, my Dad died early and it sucked
Yeah, other people I was close to in my family died, too, and that sucked, and there are members of my family I haven't spoken to in over 20 years. Yeah, I got diagnosed with endometriosis early and was told I was infertile.
Whatever. I choose not to view any of that as some sort of handicap or impediment. It's just life. We should talk about bad stuff in life and fix it, but as a society, we should get beyond the victim mentality. It weakens and inhibits us, to be honest.
You know who else was a fucking victim? My moral hero, Elizabeth I. A tragic life in many ways. But I'm typing this from a state named after her because she took England to being THE major international power. Beat that. I bet she'd say "fuck victimhood."
We should all just say "fuck victimhood" and get on with making the world a better place, wherever we've come from, and whether it was through the shit or not. Everybody has an obligation. Just fuck do it and quit posing.
