Maid Stephanie Land Quotes

I love you, I whispered to myself. I’m here for you. Reassurance of self-love was all I had.

Our space was a home because we loved each other in it.

Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation - the crime being a lack of means to survive.

The months of poverty, instability, and insecurity created a panic response that would take years to undo.

We work, we love, we do. And the stress of it all, the exhaustion, leaves us hollowed. Scraped out. Ghosts of our former selves.

Like I had been in the wrong for leaving a man who threatened me. I knew there were countless women out there in the same situation as I had been.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

Every single parent teetering on poverty does this. We work, we love, we do. And the stress of it all, the exhaustion, leaves us hollowed. Scraped out. Ghosts of our former selves. That’s how I felt for those few days after the accident, like I wasn’t fully connected to the ground when I walked. I knew that at any moment, a breeze could come and blow me away.

I felt like sitting down meant I wasn't doing enough--like the sort of lazy welfare recipient I was assumed to be. Time lounging to read a book felt overly indulgent; almost as though such leisure was reserved for another class. I had to work constantly. I had to prove my worth for receiving government benefits.

I could be as reckless as I wanted with my heart, but not with hers.

When a person is too deep in systemic poverty, there is no upward trajectory. Life is struggle and nothing else. But for me, many of my decisions came from an assumption that things would, eventually, start to improve.

It seemed like certain members of society looked for opportunities to judge and scold poor people for what they felt we didn’t deserve.

None of that worked. What my mind needed to know was that someone was there to make it all better. That summer, through gritted teeth, I’d decided that person was me, not a man or a family, and it would only ever be me. I had to stop hoping for someone to come along and love me. I had to do it myself, ducking my head and barreling through anything life brought.

We were expected to live off minimum wage, to work several jobs at varying hours, to afford basic needs while fighting for safe places to leave our children. Somehow nobody saw the work; they saw only the results of living a life that constantly crushed you with its impossibility. It seemed like no matter how much I tried to prove otherwise, “poor” was always associated with dirty.

When people think of food stamps they don't envision someone like me, someone plain faced and white, someone like the girl they'd known in highschool, someone who'd been quiet but nice, someone like a neighbor, someone like them. Maybe that made them too nervous about their own situation. Maybe they saw in me the chance of their own fragile circumstances, that with one lost job, one divorce, they'd be in the same place as me.

I had to stop hoping for someone to come along and love me. I had to do it myself, ducking my head and barreling through anything life brought.

Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation—the crime being a lack of means to survive.

Despite being wealthy and having the two story houses of our American dreams, the marbled sink bathrooms, the offices with bay windows looking out at the water, their lives still lacked something. I became fascinated by the things hidden in dark corners and the self help books for hope. Maybe they just had longer hallways and bigger closets to hide the things that scared them.

Due to my self-employment, I had to report my income every few months. Earning $50 extra could make my co-pay at day care go up by the same amount. Sometimes it meant losing my childcare grant altogether. There was no incentive or opportunity to save money. The system kept me locked down, scraping the bottom of the barrel, without a plan to climb out of it.

We spend so much time scrambling from one thing to the next, getting through it, getting to the end, and starting over again, that I would not forget to fully breathe in the miniscule moments of beauty and peace.

Instead I had brief moments of familiarity on a highway, memories ingrained in me so deeply they could almost pass as a belonging.

Maybe the stress of keeping up a two-story house, a bad marriage, and maintaining the illusion of grandeur overwhelmed their systems in similar ways to how poverty did mine.

I’d sunk to a new low, but I wouldn’t let it sink me.

After years of living in the absence of friendliness, after the toxicity with my family, losing my friends, the unstable housing and black mold, my invisibility as a maid, I was starved for kindness. I was hungry for people to notice me, to start conversations with me, to accept me. I was hungry in a way I’d never been in my entire life.

Time lounging to read a book felt overly indulgent; almost as though such leisure was reserved for another class. I had to work constantly. I had to prove my worth for receiving government benefits.

walked along a deep precipice of hopelessness. Each morning brought a constant, lip-chewing stress over making it to work and getting home without my car breaking down.

My only real hope was school: an education would be my token to freedom.

Considering the epigraph from Maya Angelou, what is involved in “making a life”? What role should “making a living” play in that?

Most of my friendships had faded over the last year because I’d isolated myself and hidden from the embarrassment of my daily life.

I love you. I’m here for you. I love you. I’m here for you.

Tell him your plans,” she said. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

Hippie types who hadn’t a clue about makeup, knew how to start a fire, and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in the garden. I’d missed these people. My people.

I was overwhelmed by how much work it took to prove I was poor.

articulate,” to use the condescending praise word bestowed by elites on unexpectedly intelligent people who lack higher education

Every single parent teetering on poverty does this. We work, we love, we do. And the stress of it all, the exhaustion, leaves us hollowed.

I'd asked my child to be resilient and cope through a life of being tossed around from one caregiver to the next, and she screamed from underneath that weight. How would a stay-at-home mom, whose child had tantrums for normal things, understand my daughter's anger?

More and more, I got the feeling that people who needed government assistance were assumed to be a very uneducated bunch and were treated accordingly. How degrading, to learn that since I needed money, I must not know how to keep my utility costs low.

I wanted to tell her that undocumented people couldn’t receive food benefits or tax refunds, even though they paid taxes. They couldn’t receive any government benefits at all. Those were available only for people who were born here or who had obtained the documents to stay. So those children, whose parents had risked so much to give them a good life, were citizens who deserved every bit as much government help as my daughter did.

I was starved for kindness. I was hungry for people to notice me, to start conversations with me, to accept me. I was hungry in a way I’d never been in my entire life.

I had to keep an underlying faith that things would eventually get better. That life wouldn’t always be a struggle.

My hope was, if everything else in her life was chaos, at least she knew that wherever we called home, there’d be pancakes cut in the same way.

Even though I kind of hated everything about it, most weeks it was the only time I sat in a room with other people.

Most everything shut down in the Northwest when it snowed only a few inches.

He’d done everything right—good job, gorgeous house, married a woman he loved and traveled with—but despite all this he was still dying alone.

But whether you called it SNAP or food stamps, the assumption that the poor stole hardworking Americans’ tax money to buy junk food was unchanged.

things that I never could: “Honey, could you take this?” or “Here, can you hold her for a second?” The child could go from one parent’s arms to the other’s. There were countless times I told Mia she had to walk, because my arms were tired and I couldn’t hold her anymore.

I found myself wondering what it would be like to have enough money to be able to hire someone to clean my house. I’d never been in that position before, and I honestly doubted I ever would be. If I ever had to, I thought, I’d give them a big tip and probably offer them food or leave them good-smelling candles, too. I’d treat them like a guest, not a ghost. An equal.

After a year of abuse, threats, and screaming insults thrown at me, that question came with much relief. Most of Jamie’s rage had been invisible. It didn’t leave bruises or red marks. But this—this I could point to. I could ask someone to look at it. I could say, “He did this. He did this to us.

Maybe The Alchemist had been right. Maybe if I took the first step toward my own dreams, the Universe would open and guide the way. Maybe, to find a true home, I needed to open my heart to love a home.

I wondered for a minute if Pam would fire me for not being able to work. I'd never missed this much work before, and that history at least seemed to work in my advantage. But for a few seconds, I didn't care. I hated the job almost as much as I hated relying on it. I hated needing it. I hated having to be grateful for it.

I knew I was one of the hard workers, like Henry had said, but I also knew I could be replaced. I had to provide for my kid. The pull to live in a better environment was too strong, even though it meant turning down work.

As a poor person, I was not accustomed to looking past the month, week, or sometimes hour. I compartmentalized my life the same way I cleaned every room of every house—left to right, top to bottom. Whether on paper or in my mind, the problems I had to deal with first—the car repair, the court date, the empty cupboards—went at the top, on the left. The next pressing issue went next to it, on the right. I’d focus on one problem at a time, working left to right, top to bottom. That shortsightedness kept me from getting overwhelmed, but it also kept me from dreaming.

Single parenting isn’t just being the only one to take care of your kid. It’s not about being able to “tap out” for a break or tag team bath- and bedtime; those were the least of the difficulties I faced. I had a crushing amount of responsibility. I took out the trash. I brought in the groceries I had gone to the store to select and buy. I cooked. I cleaned. I changed out the toilet paper. I made the bed. I dusted. I checked the oil in the car. I drove Mia to the doctor, to her dad's house. I drove her to ballet class if I could find one that offered scholarships and then drove her back home again. I watched every twirl, every jump, and every trip down the slide. It was me who pushed her on the swing, put her to sleep at night, kissed her when she fell. When I sat down, I worried. With the stress gnawing at my stomach, worrying. I worried that my paycheck might not cover bills that month. I worried about Christmas, still four months away. I worried that Mia's cough might become a sinus infection that would keep her out of day care... . I worried that I would have to reschedule work or miss it altogether.

Arguing with them would reveal too much about myself, and I was never out to get anyone’s sympathy. Besides, they couldn’t know unless they felt the weight of poverty themselves. The desperation of pushing through because it was the only option. They couldn’t know how it felt to be me, the morning after the accident, about to drive a car down the same road where there was still glass from my car’s shattered windows, going on with my life like everything was normal, because that was the only choice I had.

That summer, through gritted teeth, I’d decided that person was me, not a man or a family, and it would only ever be me. I had to stop hoping for someone to come along and love me. I had to do it myself, ducking my head and barreling through anything life brought.

Living with illness or pain was part of my daily life. Part of the exhaustion. But why did my clients have these problems? It seemed like access to healthy foods, gym memberships, doc- tors, and all of that would keep a person fit and well. Maybe the stress of keeping up a two-story house, a bad marriage, and maintaining the illusion of grandeur overwhelmed their systems in similar ways to how poverty did mine.

Whether on paper or in my mind, the problems I had to deal with first—the car repair, the court date, the empty cupboards—went at the top, on the left. The next pressing issue went next to it, on the right. I’d focus on one problem at a time, working left to right, top to bottom.

There wasn't any fanfare in quitting my job. Most of my clients would know I'd left and been replaced by a new person. Maybe they would vacuum or position the throw pillows differently. Maybe the clients would come home to find the shampoo bottles arranged in a new way, but most of them probably wouldn't notice the change at all. When I thought about a new maid taking over my job, I wondered again what it would be like to know a stranger had been in your house, wiping every surface, emptying the garbage of your bloody pads. Would you not feel exposed in some way? After a couple of years, my clients trusted our invisible relationship. Now there would be another invisible human being magically making lines in the carpet.

Smiling and singing along to the same song might as well have been eating the same ice cream sundae.

Oh, baby,” I said, attempting to form my words like a hug.

Poverty was like a stagnant pond of mud that pulled at our feet and refused to let go.

Our space was a home because we loved each other in it.

Huntington’s disease.

Mothering, for me, so often meant learning to say goodbye in the hope of gaining trust in my return.

This promise to myself felt like throwing buckets of water on the only fire that was left in me, the only part that dared to dream.

After the frightening car accident involving Mia, Land argues to her father that she needed “to be able to tell people.” Why is this? What does Land need from others?

Every single parent teetering on poverty does this. We work, we love, we do. And the stress of it all, the exhaustion, leaves us hollowed. Scraped out. Ghosts of our former selves.

They don’t realize that skim milk is full of sugar?

All I had to do was call and ask. It always struck me that programs like this were never mentioned.

You wanna know how to make God laugh?

The Sad House made me look at the small space I shared with Mia, at the room we lived in, and see it was a home, full of love, because we filled it. Even though we didn’t have nice cars or a

Sometimes just walking behind a two-parent family on a sidewalk could trigger feelings of shame from being alone. I zeroed in on them -- dressed in clothes I could never afford, diaper bag carefully packed into an expensive jogging stroller. Those moms could say things that I never could: "Honey, could you take this?" or "Here, can you hold her for a second?" The child could go from one parent's arms to the other's.

Taking on debt and losing a job seemed an enormous risk, but I also had grown to understand something else: it would be extremely difficult to see a different future if all I could think about was making it through to the next paycheck.

It seemed like certain members of society looked for opportunities to judge and scold poor people for what they felt we didn’t deserve. They’d see a person buying fancy meats with an EBT card and use that as evidence for their theory that everyone on food stamps did the same.

All they saw were the food stamps, the large WIC paper coupons that bought us eggs, cheese, milk, and peanut butter. What they didn’t see was the balance, which hovered around $200 depending on my income, and that it was all the money I had for food. I had to stretch it to the end of each month until the balance was re-upped after the beginning of the month.

There wasn't any fanfare in quitting my job. Most of my clients wouldn't know I'd left and been replaced by a new person. Maybe they would vacuum or position the throw pillows differently. Maybe the clients would come home to find the shampoo bottles arranged in a new way, but most of them probably wouldn't notice the change at all. When I thought about a new maid taking over my job, I wondered again what it would be like to know a stranger had been in your house, wiping every surface, emptying the garbage of your bloody pads. Would you not feel exposed in some way? After a couple of years, my clients trusted our invisible relationship. Now there would be another invisible human being magically making lines in the carpet.

I wanted to tell Donna that it wasn’t her business what that family bought or ate or wore and that I hated when cashiers at the supermarket said, “On your EBT?” loud enough for people in line behind me to hear. I wanted to tell her that undocumented people couldn’t receive food benefits or tax refunds, even though they paid taxes. They couldn’t receive any government benefits at all. Those were available only for people who were born here or who had obtained the documents to stay. So those children, whose parents had risked so much to give them a good life, were citizens who deserved every bit as much government help as my daughter did. I knew this because I’d sat beside them in countless government offices. I overheard their conversations with caseworkers sitting behind glass, failing to communicate through a language barrier. But these attitudes that immigrants came here to steal our resources were spreading, and the stigmas resembled those facing anyone who relied on government assistance to survive. Anyone who used food stamps didn’t work hard enough or made bad decisions to put them in that lower-class place. It was like people thought it was on purpose and that we cheated the system, stealing the money they paid toward taxes to rob the government of funds. More than ever, it seemed, taxpayers—including my client—thought their money subsidized food for lazy poor people.

I wondered if Mom had ever felt this way about me. I wondered why she never leaned in close after she hugged me good night, to give me reassurance of her presence, that she loved me so, so much. I wanted to know, but not enough to ask. Sometimes I’d imagine asking her, demanding it over the phone, but I knew nothing would come of it. She was there; that was enough for her. Maybe that’s all she ever felt she needed to be.

The snooping was like uncovering clues, finding evidence of the secret lives of people who seemed like they had it all. Despite being wealthy and having the two-story houses of our American dreams—the marbled-sink bathrooms, the offices with bay windows looking out at the water—their lives still lacked something. I became fascinated by the things hidden in dark corners and the self-help books for hope. Maybe they just had longer hallways and bigger closets to hide the things that scared them.

I rarely questioned the how of things. I just knew what needed to be done. And I did it.

She needed us to be home, but I couldn’t explain that I might lose my job if I stayed home with her, and what that could mean for us.

Home was a place that embraced us, a community, a knowing.

in

Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation - the crime being a lack of means to survive.

Ser pobre, vivir en la miseria, se parecía muchísimo a estar en libertad condicional; el delito: carecer de recursos para sobrevivir.

Detestaba ese trabajo casi tanto como detestaba depender de él. Detestaba necesitarlo. Detestaba tener que dar gracias por tenerlo.

With all the things swirling around me that I had no control over, I could, at the very least, control my reactions to them. If I started crying every time something hard or horrible happened, well, I’d just be crying all the time.

I became a witness. Even odder was my invisibility and anonymity, though I spent several hours a month in their homes. My job was to wipe away dust and dirt and make lines in carpets, to remain invisible. I almost felt like I had the opportunity to get to know my clients better than any of their relatives did. I’d learn what they ate for breakfast, what shows they watched, if they’d been sick and for how long. I’d see them, even if they weren’t home, by the imprints left in their beds and tissues on the nightstand. I’d know them in a way few people did, or maybe ever would.

One afternoon, when I knew no one was on the property, I went through and got rid of the last of the baby clothes I had set aside—the special newborn outfits I’d saved for last, which I’d hoped, someday, another baby of mine would fill. At least I could exchange them at the consignment store to properly clothe the kid I already had, who seemed to need new pants and shoes almost constantly. But maybe that was the lesson there—appreciating the stuff you had, the life you had, using the space you were given. I wished it wasn’t a forced

My lived experience seemed vastly different than that of my peers—not even just the moms at the day care. Many times, I ducked out of possible interactions or potential chances at making friends with people I actually liked because I felt like I’d only be a drain. I’d suck people of the resources they had available for friends without being able to give anything back.

It was never a matter of “how” I did things. I’m sure any parent would do the same. Single parenting isn’t just being the only one to take care of your kid. It’s not about being able to “tap out” for a break or tag team bath- and bedtime; those were the least of the difficulties I faced. I had a crushing amount of responsibility. I took out the trash. I brought in the groceries I had gone to the store to select and buy. I cooked. I cleaned. I changed out the toilet paper. I made the bed. I dusted. I checked the oil in the car. I drove Mia to the doctor, to her dad’s house. I drove her to ballet class if I could find one that offered scholarships and then drove her back home again. I watched every twirl, every jump, and every trip down the slide. It was me who pushed her on the swing, put her to sleep at night, kissed her when she fell. When I sat down, I worried. With the stress gnawing at my stomach, worrying. I worried that my paycheck might not cover bills that month. I worried about Christmas, still four months away. I worried that Mia’s cough might become a sinus infection that would keep her out of day care. I worried that Jamie’s behavior was escalating, that we would get in a fight, that he would go back on his offer to pick her up at day care that week just to make it difficult for me. I worried that I would have to reschedule work or miss it altogether. Every single parent teetering on poverty does this. We work, we love, we do. And the stress of it all, the exhaustion, leaves us hollowed. Scraped out. Ghosts of our former selves. That’s how I felt for those few days after the accident, like I wasn’t fully connected to the ground when I walked. I knew that at any moment, a breeze could come and blow me away.

But it was a brief moment to take in what I had survived, a bittersweet goodbye to the fragile place of our beginning.

I missed having whole days to ourselves, stopping to look and learn and wonder. Now it felt like we barely got by. Always late for something. Always in the car. Always in a rush to finish meals and clean up. Always moving, barely pausing to take a breath.

My parents had moved on leaving me emotionally orphaned. I vowed to never put the same amount of physical and emotional space between Mia and me.