This is the revised version of my First Circle Paper. The Clan I applied to asked me to rewrite my original one for them, so I did, and this is the finished product of my work. Hopefully this is also what they were looking for as well.
Loss of Welfare funding in Washington State
Welfare is considered by many to be a “dirty” word. You
hear about someone who happens to be on Welfare and immediately form your own
opinions about the kind of person they must be. I’ve been on Welfare and
I’ve been called “white-trash”, “trailer trash” and other not so nice
names. The fact is, is that most of those people don’t know about me or
my situation from anyone else’s situation, and they have no right to make
judgments about me or anyone else.
The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is failing.
Many of the social workers are not given adequate training time and are
given hundreds of cases from the moment of their hiring date. My own case
worker had been with DSHS for less than 3 months when she received my case.
She had been given 846 new cases that week (mine, too) and was incredibly
over-worked. The pay for social workers is lousy. Their database
system is outdated by at least 15 years and there is no relief in sight.
But for those who don’t know what a valuable asset DSHS is for
our society, I’ll explain. DSHS has many wonderful resources available
for their clients. Job placement, job re-training, food stamps, cash
assistance, medical benefits and so much more. I went on Welfare almost 3
years ago, because I lost my job, was evicted from my home and found out I was
pregnant all within the same week. It was frightening for me to face my
situation like that. I was homeless and had no where to go, which left me
with only one option, to go and apply for Welfare. They saved my life,
and helped me get back on my feet. They provide a much needed resource for
many families, and sadly, that resource sees less and less funding every year.
The funding gets cut because there are so many people who are on
DSHS who abuse the system. People who like to be on welfare because it’s
“free” money in their pocket. Money they didn’t lift a finger to
earn. It makes me so angry to hear about people like that, because it
ruins things for other people who need the resources badly, and can no longer
count on it to be there for them when the time comes. It makes me angry
to listen to people who have never been on welfare, who have never been at a
place in their lives where their was no other solution, complain about all of us
“users spending all their tax paying dollars and why don’t we just go out
there and get a real job.”
People like that I pity, because someday, they may be in a bad
situation, and the money will be gone, there will be no one there to help them.
By that time, I will have finished my schooling, and gotten fully back on
my feet. I went off of welfare in March of this year. I’m in
school full time, hold a job and still manage to take care of my 2 year old
little boy. I was on welfare for him, because he is a precious new life,
who matters more to me than my own dignity. It was because of him that I
swallowed my pride and asked for help from the state. I have not
regretted my decision once.
I could be just as cruel as those others out there. Someday,
I may even eat my own words here, but I hope that day will never come. I
try to remember the Wiccan Rede “’an it harm none, do as you will.” I
am guilty in my previous paper of not having truly thought about what the Rede
really means. I am guilty of not having a true understanding of what it
truly meant. But since the original drafting of this paper, I have read
the Rede again, and I have thought about what it truly means. It’s
similar to the “Golden Rule” that many Christians try to follow (Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you). It means that sure I could be
cruel; I could insult the people on welfare and complain about my hard earned
tax dollars going to a useless state agency. But would I? I don’t
think I would. Because I know what it’s like to be on welfare and have
received the dirty looks from the checkers at the grocery store every time I
used my food stamps to buy my son’s food and mine. I wouldn’t wish
that on anyone, not even my worst enemy.
Instead, I will try to help others in bad situations. I
donate to the battered women’s shelter on occasions, mostly my son’s old
clothes, but to them, I’m a lifesaver. I am actually in the process of
helping redesign and upgrade the database for my local DSHS department, for
free. For that kind of work, I could charge nearly $90 an hour, but I
don’t because I know that they could use that money for others.
I strive to remember the Rede, and I try to remember that my actions affect
everything around me. Like when you throw a pebble into a lake, ripples
are formed immediately, affecting everything in the area. The ripples
fade, but the lake has still been changed, forever. That’s not to say
that I walk around paranoid all the time, fearing that something I say or do is
going to hurt something else. Simply by living I hurt things. I
don’t do it on purpose, but sometimes it cannot be helped. Yesterday, I
saw a particularly nasty spider in my house. Now, I am absolutely
terrified of spiders and will usually kill them on the spot. But
yesterday, I stopped myself from killing the spider and instead brought my son
over to look at it. I’ve never before seen the beauty in a spider
before, and yesterday, for the first time, I did. After we were done
appreciating the spider, I carefully collected it and took it outside of the
house. A major accomplishment for me, because as I said earlier, I hate
spiders.
The thing is, when I saw that spider, the strangest thought occurred to me;
“What if our roles were reversed, and he saw me as incredibly disgusting?
Would I want him to smash me?” I know, I’m getting off my
original subject, but that was a profound moment for me.
Now, I also remember that for every action there is an equal reaction, simply
put, The Law of Karma or Return. I used to “believe in the 3-fold law”
but after reading “All One Wicca” and thinking about it, trying to put
together why I viewed it as a hard, fast and true rule, I realized it was
because everyone else had said so. Getting back to the subject, I thought
about the people who are on welfare now, the ones who abuse the system. I
thought about how that law applied to them, and realized that their karma is
catching up with them. The loss of funding is a part of their karma.
It’s forcing those people to be responsible for themselves. They
have to go out and get real jobs to take care of their families. It’s
not a punishment from God or anything else, however, and sadly some of those
people will view it as such. These kinds of people abuse the system
because they don’t want to be responsible for themselves.
One of my best friends since high school is a single father of a developmentally
challenged 18 month old. His son cannot crawl, walk or even talk because
of his disabilities. Now, here’s the point: the mother, walked out on
her child 3 weeks after he was born, because she didn’t feel it was fair that
God would punish her with a “retarded” child. I wanted to slap that
girl when I heard her say that. The father on the other hand, knew that it
wasn’t the Gods’ fault (he’s pagan) it was matter genetics. He has
embraced fatherhood wholeheartedly, with all the ups and downs and loves his son
unconditionally. Flash forward to the present, Nika (baby’s mom) wants the kid
back because she realized that the baby allowed her to abuse welfare and get
free money. I’ve gotten involved now, and am helping my friend (the
father) retain custody of his son. Because he does care about his child
and he knows he must be responsible for his son’s needs and care.
I went on welfare, because I made mistakes, a few very bad choices actually.
I didn’t blame the gods, I knew those mistakes were my own, that no one
held a gun to my head and made me spend my money unwisely, no one made me skip
work, and (thankfully), no one forced me to have unprotected sex with my
boyfriend. They were all my mistakes, and I am doing my best to learn
from them and to improve my situation now. I am a full time student at my
local community college and I am working to get my Associates Degree of Applied
Sciences in Computer Science. I flunked my midterm last Friday, and it’s
no one else’s fault but my own for not studying. (Of course a broken hand
doesn’t help either, buy oh well!)
Ethic of Attunement
I went to the Seattle Folk Life festival over Memorial Day weekend. I go
every year and sit by the drum circle. It’s nice when I see people that
I recognize as pagans and others as Christians, dancing together in the spirit
of harmony, drumming together in harmony. We were all attuned to each
other. The beat of the drumming was hypnotic, and for a while, we all
danced as one. The air was fairly humming with energy and power. It
was a powerful time. It didn’t matter who worshipped whom or by what
names we all called our gods. We were one body, different yes, but at the
same time, we were the same. I have never felt anything else like that,
and I hope to one day experience that feeling outside of the Folk Life Festival.
But until that day, I return every year and dance for the glory of my
fellow man.
I have read and understand the Affirmation of Acknowledgement. (Actually,
I've always tried to follow it... some days are better than others.)
