“Steph, you need to share your story. If people don’t know you, they may just think you’re another one of these privileged Amherst College professors who’s championing a ‘nice’ cause.”
That’s what a good friend of mine told me after reading a draft of the fundraising appeal for my transcontinental run. She wasn’t the first person to encourage me to start talking. I’ve been working with experts in publicity and fundraising who have said, over and over again, that telling my own story is important.
It’s hard for me to share. I don’t want attention on myself during this run. I want attention on the fundraising for Feeding America. I just saw a statistic stating that 1 in 5 children is currently food insecure in the US. That’s 20% of American children. It’s a common issue, and a “dirty” one that a lot of us want to sweep under the rug. How many of us want to share that we can’t afford to buy food after paying our bills? That we can’t afford groceries even though we’re working full-time? That we needed medication this month, so the food budget is short? That we needed the car for work and it broke down… so now we’re living on canned soup and saltines? The rhetoric we often hear on TV is about “entitlements.” Welfare moms just need to go out and get jobs and stop relying on public assistance. Go back to school, work harder. It’s not the government’s job to help you.
That rhetoric hardly captures the complexity of individual stories. I’m planning to capture some from those willing to share with me along my journey, feature them on this site, and eventually write a book about them (and about the run).
Before I do that, it’s time to share my story. Here’s why I’m running across the country.
Reason One:
I’m running because I love running. Running has saved my life. I started running in 7th grade, in the fall of 1989, for my school’s cross-country team. I didn’t have it “good” at home, even though it may have looked idyllic on the surface. I came from a middle-class family, but one steeped in generations of abuse, and it’s taken me a lot of years of therapy to come to terms with that. My folks actually forced me to join the cross-country team (as opposed to another sport), because they said I didn’t “play well with other kids.” I’m grateful for that misguided reasoning today, because it led me to one of my great loves. I ran throughout middle school and high school, through being bullied and through anorexia. Running was liberating – when I took off in the fields outside my high school, armed with my big old yellow Walkman and Alice in Chains’ “Dirt” tape. At the same time, running was a punishment – for being “fat” and ugly, for being a “horrible child,” for being a nerd and a dork, for eating more than my allotment of 500 calories a day (taken mainly in the form of Lipton instant rice and Diet Coke).
I dealt with a lot of my teenage miseries by running… and by drinking. I started raiding my father’s liquor cabinet at age 13. I was alone a lot. During lonely summer breaks in high school, I remember taking my dad’s allergy pills – the kind that made you sleepy – and chasing them with a shot of straight vodka, just to pass out so the day wouldn’t seem to last as long. Vodka was perfect because I could fill that bottle up with water and Dad wouldn’t be the wiser, since he was more of a whiskey guy and the vodka only came out for parties every couple of years. I didn’t really party with other kids, mainly because I didn’t have many friends. I started out drinking alone; it was my dirty little secret, which no one would have likely guessed of the girl voted “most studious” for my high school’s yearbook.
After high school, I went to college and then grad school on scholarships, working one, two and often three jobs to support myself. While I had family support until I was about 20, it was loaded, and I tried never to ask for money. I did the things young people do, but I also went to extremes that most well-adjusted young people don’t. I don’t remember everything. I do know that I drank and drank and drank, sometimes with others, but most often, by myself. I do know that I hurt. I stayed in bad situations with boyfriends because I felt like I had no place to turn. I quit running for a while, once the drinking got really bad (1998-9). I got to the point that I was drinking about a bottle of hard liquor a day. I woke up by pouring shots of whiskey in my coffee, cruised through a day of Master’s degree coursework and a full-time retail job with a water bottle full of vodka, and passed out at night after throwing up post-full-pitcher of Miller Lite at a shitty bar called the Brown Jug. The vast majority of my benders were financed by my much-older boyfriends, whose motivations were dubious at best. Things got to a point that I threw up daily. One drink, puke. Two drinks, puke some more. I carried Altoids with me everywhere.
On April 22, 2000, I was sitting at a bar in Toledo, Ohio with a friend. I was 22 years old and had been on my own at that point for six years. I drank three vodka tonics. I set my glass down on the bar and said I’d never drink again. That was almost 15 years ago now. I haven’t had a drink (or a cigarette) since.
Withdrawal sucked. I didn’t realize what was happening to me – why I was so sick. Only one friend knew what was going on, because we worked at the same shop at the mall together; I kept spending so much time in the bathroom that she was extremely worried about me. I muscled through; I had no choice. And I started running distances again. A doctor recently told me I’ve just replaced one addiction with another. That’s really easy for someone to say. It’s another thing if you’ve lived it. Running is my medicine. It’s my sanity and it’s my meditation. The open road is my church. And thank God I have it.
Reason Two:
I’ve been there, as a food-insecure person. I’ve felt the shame and the stigma of admitting it publicly. Many of us HAVE been there at different points in our lives, to greater and lesser degrees. I’m motivated to talk about this and to share stories to reduce that shame and stigma, and to help change the rhetoric surrounding this issue – that rhetoric of “entitlement.” How about, “we all need a helping hand sometimes” instead?
When I was in grad school in Michigan in 1998-2000, working full time at minimum wage retail jobs, I couldn’t make all of my bills on 5-6 bucks an hour. It just wasn’t possible, no matter how hard I worked. Again, the “family support” was loaded, so I didn’t feel like I could ask for help. I was lucky at the time to be living near the one blood relative to whom I was ever close – my grandmother’s sister, Peg. Aunt Peg was the best – she passed about 10 years ago and I still miss her every day. She was the only one who knew – the boyfriends, the drinking, my crazy family dynamic, the scars from years of addiction and disordered eating… AND how hard I was working and how I couldn’t afford to eat and pay my bills on my full-time, minimum wage salary.
Aunt Peg lived out in the country and regularly received “senior boxes,” a service of emergency food pantries for senior citizens living on fixed income. She used to split her boxes with me. I lived for two years on those white-labeled cans of pears and applesauce with just a pear or apple on the front (no text) and the blocks of orange “cheese” that wasn’t really cheese but melted sooooo good that it made one hell of a yummy grilled cheese sandwich (on the half-price day-old white bread you could find for less than 99 cents at the time, another tactic I learned from shadowing her at the local Odd Lots). She canned vegetables from the garden and grapes from the vine, sharing the bounty of the land with her very screwed up great-niece, never asking questions, but just giving me a hug and a home-cooked meal of canned soup and fried zucchini in a cast iron skillet every Sunday night.
In 2000, I moved to southern California, and eventually dug myself out of financial hell by getting a teaching assistantship as part of a PhD program, plus another job or two or three. I was bound and determined never to be that poor again. I stayed sober. I married an amazing man who treats me well and always supports me. There have been ups and downs, but no matter how “up” things have been, I’ve never forgotten those feelings. Being an addict. Being abused. Being hungry and being afraid to ask for help even though I was a full-time working student.
I moved to western Massachusetts in 2011, and at the time, was working remotely, which gave me a flexible schedule. I started volunteering at the Amherst Survival Center. When I was given the choice of what placement I wanted. I chose the food pantry. The cans from the USDA, the blocks of cheese… they felt like home.
Everyone’s story is complex. We’ve all been through our own shit. I’m running because of where I’ve been and the story I’m compelled to finally reveal, now at 37 years of age. I’m running to tell the stories of other people, who have been in similar situations. It’s virtually impossible to judge – to call someone “entitled” – after you’ve run a mile in their shoes.
So – let’s run.
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