Thank you for that.

I have worked at McDonald’s, Goodwill, housekeeping, and a slew of daycares in my time. I’ve always had a belief that the only thing I am good enough to do is minimum-wage jobs, so I never tried to get paying work as a receptionist or anything “better”. I’ve pretty much always been financially struggling, also, unless I had help from someone else — but I’ve worked my butt off to support myself on my own so as not to depend on the government because everyone thinks of me as a lazy slob working the system when I get food stamps to make sure I can eat.

Anyway, I digress.

I’ve also been lucky. I had the good fortune to have a(n older, white, better-off-than-I) belly dance and yoga teacher who had established herself at the local college and university take me under her wing and let me train with her for free. Eventually, I took over her class schedule while she had major surgery and recovered for a semester.

That ONE semester of teaching was the best time of my life. And I’ve never been able to return to that since.

I have pretty little confidence in myself. To see that someone says, “Hey, it’s sad when people buy into the ideas they’re fed about themselves that tell them they’re worthless, stupid, lazy, and incapable of working higher-wage jobs” (when we don’t even see those ideas running in our background) because they ARE smart and they CAN do better and they DO work hard, gives me some hope.

Thanks for that hope.