my clothing budget was $0

reflecting on my relationship to spending money on clothes

I was raised in a family without much money. My parents were labor organizers before I was born, my mom working and organizing in a sewing factory, and my dad working and organizing in a shipyard. My mom stopped working when I was born, and then had two more children, my sisters. My dad was seriously injured at work when I was 8 and wasn’t able to work after that. My mom went back to school to get her teaching certification and was the “breadwinner” (I put it in quotes because a teacher’s salary in Alabama in the 80’s wasn’t really winning much of anything) for the rest of my childhood.

My parents are amazing idealistic people. They wanted to teach us to have awareness about the world and what the lives of others were like, (which I also want to do with my children) but often the result was shame about having desires. I must have asked for things when I was a very small child, but I heard “we can’t afford it” so many times that at a certain point, I just stopped asking. It was rare to …