Part 4 of a Survivor's Story
What now? Where do women go for help?
In the three weeks we’d been apart, Mark had managed to paint an ugly little picture for our friends. He was the victim, a martyr. I was a rebellious woman who wouldn’t submit to authority. He tried to be patient with me, to guide me, but I was stubborn and hard and wouldn’t allow him to lead. I found this out when I called a friend for help and was told that she couldn’t “enable my sin” and that I should go back to my husband.
So in desperation, I packed the kids up into my Dodge Caravan which had thankfully been transferred from my mom’s name into mine for tax purposes, and found my way to a crisis centre.
My visit to a women’s crisis centre
The woman was kind. Someone else took the kids and played with them while we sat and talked. She gave me some information on the different kinds of abuse and asked me if I’d experienced any. But she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about some sad, silly girl with a baseball batwielding husband and a black eye. I told her no, I hadn’t. She told me that if I were escaping as abusive situation, she could find me emergency housing fairly quickly, but if not, I could be on a waiting list for subsidized housing for years. Still… Mark hadn’t been abusive. And I didn’t want to lie in order to manipulate the system. I was worried about what would happen to him if people thought he was abusive. He could lose his job.
After putting my name on a waiting list for subsidized housing (so many forms!), I left the centre with the kids in tow and planned to spend our first night sleeping in the car. I drove to Walmart and found a spot in the corner of the parking lot to hunker down for the night. I wasn’t even crying. The kids had fallen asleep on the drive and I was just staring into the distance, completely numb.
And that’s when the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the Sky sent a Flying Spaghetti Angel. Her name was Tammy. She was a friend I hadn’t seen since high school and hadn’t talked to in years. I burst into tears the moment her eyes met mine through the windshield. She sat patiently in the passenger seat while the whole story came pouring out of me in sobs. When I finished, she said, “Fuck, ____.” I remember because it was the first F-word I’d heard in years.
We slept on her couch for the next several months. The kids will forever remember Auntie Tammy as the woman who taught Momma how to swear. Like I talked about previously, many victims of IPV do not recognize their own situation as abusive. I knew things were bad, but I definitely wouldn’t have used the word abuse. Unfortunately, acknowledging abuse is often the only way to speed up the process of finding shelter or housing (Anderssen, 2017). Women who do not suffer from a serious mental illness or substance dependence or who are not experiencing domestic violence miss out on the opportunity to have their names “bumped up” on waiting lists (Anderssen, 2017). Most women’s shelters prioritize women escaping IPV, so if you’re not quite ready to acknowledge your truth, you will fall between the cracks (Anderssen, 2017). I was lucky to have a friend to stay with.
As for the subsidized housing , I did get a call that a unit was available. Almost 4 years later. After I’d moved three times and settled a day's drive away. Subsidized and geared-to-income housing is in short supply and priority is given to women who are escaping IPV, especially those with children (Anderssen,
2017). But even victims of IPV are likely to wait years for a unit to become available (Anderssen, 2017). When one does become available, you take it. It doesn’t matter if it’s small or in a bad neighborhood. If you turn it down, you may not get another chance (Anderssen, 2017).
Desperate times call for complete humiliation
Okay, so I had a place to sleep. We weren’t going to freeze to death or get eaten by a pack of rabid wolves. But I couldn’t sleep on Tammy’s couch forever. I needed money. Income. I haven’t worked in ten years. What would I even do? I came up with a plan to apply for a second career grant (which I eventually did get), but I would need help to get by until I was approved.
Oh man… I was going to have to (gulp and die of shame) apply for welfare. Welfare. Welfare was for awful, lazy people who didn’t want to work for a living. It was the system my cousin manipulated so she could maintain her crack habit. It was for those people, not for me. But desperate times… so I left the kids with Tammy and pulled up to the Ontario Works office on my last quarter tank of gas.
I swear it’s not mine!
I sat in the dingy, smelly waiting room for three hours, scared out of my wits by a dishevelled man standing in the corner yelling profanities at the wall, only to be told that I didn’t qualify for assistance because – get this – my name was on a shared bank account that had money in it only a week before. Mark’s account. Mark’s money.
I tried to explain that this was my husband’s income and that he emptied the account as soon as the money came in every two weeks. She told me I should stay up all night hitting refresh and basically steal the money from him. How long do you think that will that last, Lady? He’s gonna catch on pretty fast. Then what?
She suggested I sell the van. The van was like the first mini-van ever created. It was a hundred years old. I’m pretty sure I would have gotten more money trying to sell a horse and buggy. It literally had a hole in the floor like the Flintstone car. Next idea please.
She referred me to a shelter, but I told her that I had a place to sleep. What I didn’t have was income. I just needed enough to get by until I could figure out what to do. Please, wasn’t there anything she could do?
Geez, didn’t she know this was already the most embarrassing moment of my life? Why was she making me beg for help? I had no money, no income, and no way of getting any for at least a couple of months. Wasn’t the whole point of social assistance to help people like me?!
She was sorry, she said, but there was nothing she could do. Basically, come back when you’ve been living on the streets for three months and then we can help. Guys, Ontario does not Work.
Here’s how I know Ontario Works doesn’t work
Social assistance, or what we call welfare or Ontario Works, has become increasingly harder and harder to get (National Council of Welfare [NCW], 2010). For example, if you have any assets like a vehicle or money in a bank account over a certain limit, you will be denied (NCW, 2010). That limit could be $50
(NCW, 2010).
The theory behind social assistance is that people can and will help themselves if they can get a hand-up. But with asset limits so low, low earning exemptions, and abysmal welfare rates, this is only a reality for a few (NCW, 2010). Again, it creates a situation where people who genuinely need help are falling through the cracks. You have to be nearly destitute to qualify.
Even if I had been approved, do you know how much I would have gotten? $900/month. For a single mom with two kids under 5. A little basic math reveals that it is nearly impossible to live on this amount of money, even if you include a child tax benefit. According to Canada Without Poverty, one in seven Canadians, many of whom are employed and working, live in poverty (2019). Marginalized people groups like women and Indigenous Canadians make up a large portion of that number (CWP, 2019). Never doubt – poverty is racist and sexist.
Hey old white dudes, how about we raise the minimum wage so everyone else gets to eat too?
Not the end of the story
Only because it would be uber-depressing to end on such a frustrating, depressing note, I’m going to
finish up with a happy(ish) ending. I got that second career grant and went back to school and I got a job I could work from home. Between that, my child tax benefits, and my half of the home equity, I was able to rent a small house out in the boonies for $600/month. Thank you dying rural Ontario economy.
We ended up moving five times in six years, but eventually, the kids and I ended up in the city sharing a house with a friend and her two kids. I applied to school again, and, between OSAP, child support, and the income I was earning from my part-time job, I was able to make things work.
Don’t get me wrong, it was hard. There were days I had to shuttle the kids from a sitter’s to before-and-after-school care and PD Day camps, just so I could get home in time to put them to bed at 8:00 and study pharmacology until 2am. But I worked my ass off, graduated with high honours, and eventually got a job in a field I love.
Sometimes I really struggle with accepting my past for what it is. I know that my beliefs and actions contributed the prevailing culture of fear and hate and polarization in the world. Believe me, I’ve written my share of apology letters. But I try to remember to be gracious with myself too.
The most life-giving thing I’ve learned in the last (ahem, however-many) years, is that I’m okay.
I’m loud and strong and feisty. I’m a woman and a leader. I’m smart, authentic, and compassionate. I’m also a space-cadet who will forget your name ten minutes after I meet you. And I will never, ever be a morning person. I will faint at the sight of my own blood, but I love to clean out other people’s pus-y wounds.
I have my own likes and dislikes and opinions and all of that is okay. I don’t apologize for who I am anymore. And instead of trying to make myself smaller to fit the world, I take all the space I need and try make the world fit me. Yes, I take up space. I have the same right to that space as anyone else – man or
woman. My opinions, my strength, my emotions – these things aren’t obstacles to be overcome or weaknesses I have to apologize for; they’re my God-given superpowers.
Yes, I’m a tsunami. Fucking hear me roar.
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