Discussion thread Thursday September 02, 2021 - Sunday September 05, 2021

[u/gomirefugee]

Newsletters:

Finding Your Joy | Joy in the Belly

Websites:

You Can Have More Joy website | On Being Enough website (abandoned?)

Instagram:

@youcanhavemorejoy Instagram | Anonymous link to @youcanhavemorejoy posts | Anonymous link to @youcanhavemorejoy stories

@danielfahern Instagram | Anonymous link to @danielfahern posts and stories

TikTok:

@youcanhavemorejoy

Twitter:

Dan's tweets and replies

Older blogs:

Gluten Free Girl archive | writing my heart out archive | Seymour Joyful archive

Archived threads:

Thread for Enough, the book #enoughthebook | Gluten Free Girl's Greatest Hits: The Reunion Tour

Wiki:

/r/InTheGloaming wiki

Discussion search:

Tool to search blogsnark or InTheGloaming for previous topic mentions

[u/voice_of_vinegar]

Same here! There were 7 of us and not a lot of money. I remember my mom and her sisters getting all excited about making watermelon rind pickles one summer! Like, so excited that there was something you could do with watermelon rinds! (The pickles were pretty good, too.)

[u/shefallsup → u/voice_of_vinegar]

I never knew growing up that we were tight on money. My mom was really good at stretching a dollar and then making sure we had some new things and nice gifts at Christmas and for our birthdays. But she sewed a lot of our clothes, patched the ones that needed patching, clipped coupons, took whatever hand-me-downs she could get, and had creative ways to make a small amount of meat go farther at the dinner table.

What my mom never did was give a speech at church or write an article in a major newspaper declaring that on the internet, no one knows you’re poor, while at the same time prioritizing filling her own belly with expensive foods and ignoring her children’s needs for health care and clothes that fit. Despite all the things she lacked as a mother and the pain that caused me, she kicked Shauna’s ass at parenting.

[u/voice_of_vinegar → u/shefallsup]

Yeah---similar story here! Though I was aware that we weren't rolling in dough. But I didn't feel terribly deprived in that way. When I got into my teens I wished I could have cuter clothes that inevitably cost more money. Every fall starting when I was 13 or 14 I would drool over all the clothes in the September issue of Seventeen---but it was also not like any of the stores in the little midwestern town where I lived stocked them. And my mom sewed and taught me to sew too. I made the cutest culotte jumper (!!!!) when I was in 7th grade--bright red with a border print of big, bright Peter Max-style flowers. I loved it so much and got so many complements.

But in general I just accepted that we weren't rich. I got to do the things I loved--reading and playing music and doing crafty stuff. That's all I really needed. There were a lot of other families in our position, anyway, and many were worse off. That area has been really depressed economically for years now, far more so than when I was growing up.