Originally published on CanadianDoomer.ca, November 10, 2011. Updated for Just Plain Living, 2025.
Let’s start with a confession: I’ve spent more than a few mornings nursing a coffee and trading “can you believe this?” stories with friends – sometimes out of solidarity, sometimes out of pure survival. The day in question? Water turned off (thanks, landlord), kids bouncing off the walls, and me mentally rearranging priorities before breakfast.
Enter our friend – the one who works for Children’s Aid. (Yes, she’s one of the good ones. She’s the sort who brings Timbits, not judgments, and somehow manages to believe we’re pretty great parents. I like to keep friends who challenge my own stories.)
We spent the morning discussing everything from the price of groceries to why modern schools make us both want to homestead in the woods forever. Somewhere in the middle, I said something offhand: “Well, we’re poor, and – ”
She cut me off. “No. You can’t say that. You’re not poor. I see poor every day. Families stretched so thin they crack. Parents who feel they have to compete with people making three times their income, so they rack up debt for Christmas and then have no groceries. No books in the house, no food in the pantry. Some folks earn more than you and EJ ever have, but a lost job or sick child would sink them overnight. That’s poor. You? You’ve got a huge library, food in the cupboard, money tucked away, kids who eat better than some doctors’ kids, and a home full of love. You’re not poor. You’re resourceful and low income, but you are not POOR.”
She was right – and her words stuck with me. Because in that moment, she redefined something I’d been carrying around for years: the idea that “poor” was about numbers, not about how we lived or what we actually had.
Later, when car repairs drained our emergency savings, my mother echoed it:
“POOR people don’t sigh because the car bill ate their savings. POOR people don’t have any savings. POOR people don’t buy 50lb bags of flour or keep food in reserve. Poverty isn’t just about what you earn. It’s about what you can withstand.”
It got me thinking. My grandfather used to say wealth was all about land – you weren’t rich unless you owned the earth beneath your feet. Around here, that would make us poor indeed, but I know farmers with hundreds of acres and barely two pennies to rub together. Meanwhile, I’ve met folks with fancy jobs and nice houses who owe more on their credit cards than they’ll make in years. Are they wealthy? Or just high-income and perpetually one step from crisis?
So here’s where I land:
We are not “poor.”
We are resourceful. We’re low income, maybe, but we’re rich in skills, love, food, and – most of all – in the ability to ride out storms.
True poverty isn’t just a lack of cash. It’s a lack of safety net, options, community, and hope.
If you’ve ever paid a bill from savings, cooked from your pantry, or watched your kids curl up with a book from your own shelves, you’re already ahead of the game – even when it feels hard.
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