Turning Tides: Something from Nothing

GIFT OF DIGNITY People might say that I go over the top; that I’m feeding into today’s extravagant standards. But I’m not out there to change society just to make kids feel like human beings within that society. And I know firsthand how one good outfit can be a hatzalas nefashos — it saves a girl’s dignity. It makes her feel like a human being

D on’t think that growing up on a farm is about wideopen spaces and cattle lowing in the fields. It’s not. It’s about money.

My great-grandfather thought he would give his descendants security when he took his hard-earned money and bought a plot of farmland down in Georgia. Maybe it worked for a while but by the time my parents took on the farm it was all about applying for government grants and taking out loans selling off first cattle then fields then negotiating desperately with the bank which wanted to foreclose.

It wasn’t just that I grew up with no money. I grew up with parents who were so desperately fighting this financial battle that they had no headspace to think about our needs. There was no point in asking for things — there was no money to buy anything; I knew that too well.