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Ok so for me I’ve always been a person who felt like they knew very little and so I’ve often been obsessed with learning anything and everything I can and lately I’m hit again with the awareness that the older I get and the more I read, the more I want to know and learn. The following is, I suppose, just a story about that:

When I began to gain interest in poverty I was somewhere around 20 years old and my brother had just been released from either rehab, the psych ward, or jail- I can no longer remember which- and my parents, refusing to take him back at that time, told the people releasing him to take him to the nearest homeless shelter. They obliged. While this was the only instance I can remember of any of my family being in a shelter, it scared me just how close people I knew and loved could be to a state of utter dependence on the system. (For those of you more concerned with my parents’ moral code at this moment, take heart in the fact that he only spent 3 days there before they took him back as usual).

Anyway, it was because of this event and because of my interest in mental health that I went on a couple trips to various countries to look into what exactly people received for help when they were down and out as my brother had been. The studies I did focused on the variety of cultures I was looking at and their individual approaches to the mental health care system for those without a place to even call their own. While my research was primarily focused on the cultural differences within this matter, when I came back to the states, rather than focus on culture I began to focus more heavily on the general concept of the underprivileged within the context of mental health. I suppose all this is simply to say that I knew culture somehow made it different, but considering the fact that I was back in the states I ignorantly assumed that the way it was practiced here was indeed the way it was practiced here and that little variance would take place in terms of people served and the cultures they came from. Good lord how I was wrong.

To be honest, the thought began to occur to me when I started working with the urban poor and noticed that the men in my shelter all came from a particular neighborhood of Boston, that the majority of them were of a particular cultural heritage that was non-white, and that my shelter- of all the shelters and services our organization offered- was the most ignored and under-funded. Being young and green however, I can imagine that I said to myself “its because they’re from an urban neighborhood” rather than “ its because they’re predominantly non-white”- and as such I moved to the largest city I could find to go ahead and work with that.

As my education progressed and my experience progressed however, I saw just how little things had to do with being from an urban neighborhood. Urban neighborhood was one thing- urban black, urban Hispanic, or urban any-non-white population, was quite another. That’s not to say I didn’t find any white urban poor, they absolutely are there, it’s just to say that through whatever racists constructs, what I was seeing was that culture still played a big part in what a given community was afforded for services. Anyway, even though I was beginning to see all of the issues at play for what they were, and even though I was beginning to take on a more aware perspective of culture as it played out in other aspects of my life, a conversation with my roommate while I was still in grad school led me to look much further into the issue of rural poverty. Again this led me slightly away from culture, race, ethnicity and their roles in the system and more towards a general concept of poverty outside the cities.

Naturally though, this story didn’t and doesn’t end there. See, lately I’ve been speaking to a friend who grew up in a rural area and through my discussions with him I’ve been reading books about indigenous peoples and the difficulties experienced by those populations, and once again I am faced with the realization that culture, racial background, and skin color, play a part in what is afforded to whom in terms of services, rights, and privileges. Now maybe its been my ignorance and maybe its been the ease with which I get moved off track into other subjects, but the issues of race and culture, colonialism and whiteness as an oppressive tool, and the ways in which these issues seep into every other facet of life are becoming increasingly difficult to step away from- intentionally or otherwise. The more I realize just how much this occurs the more foolish I feel and yet I cannot sit here and pretend it doesn’t occur and that I haven’t taken part (even through simple complacency) in my own life.

Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that my condemning myself for my obtuseness and ignorance, and any self flagellation will not change the situations of the poor no matter where they are or who they are. But in the end my questions and my interest in these matters only get more complex and confusing to me. Because, what I want to know now is: how- on top of every other issue these communities are facing- I can help people deal with the fact that this system, in which we all live and breath and work and play, is still either intentionally maintaining the status quo to benefit the few, or is willfully ignoring the fact that inequality is still prevalent (and inequality is a generous term for it). How do I, as a clinician, help people deal with this more readily- and how to do I deal with it within the context of my own personal life more openly?

I mean, I know that in the last years since I’ve graduated I’ve been working on this with the children I work with and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to some of the matters and addressed them, but the more I read and listen and learn, the more difficult it seems to deal with these issues one at a time- there are just too many, and it is so very overwhelming to both my children and me. At the very least I think I’m beginning to see clearly just how pervasive an issue this is, and as late as I may be to the game at least I’m here now.

Anyway, I think for me it will become more and more important to deal with these issues within my work since I do want to work with the rural poor, and I know I need to be prepared for that. Alternately though I also realize that the best way for me to learn how to deal with something is to put it into practice and experience it, and so hopefully I will get to do that with the population I want to at some point in my life. And I will work toward that steadily.

Anyway I guess that’s just on my mind lately. I know I promised you guys more about death, but this felt more pressing tonight.

Sweet Dreams.