It’s been a long time/ I shouldn’t have left you/without a dope beat…blog to read through. –Alisha G.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve experienced sides of life that I hadn’t seen in a long time. When I was pregnant with Ashli, her dad and I lived off of food stamps and unemployment for a long time. I remember sitting in the DFCS office for hours waiting for my caseworker to see me thinking, “this can’t be my life. I’m a Spelman graduate with an extensive vocabulary. I’ve traveled and participated in the better side of life. Why am I here?”

I remember feeling like a statistic, a failure, a part of the bigger “problem” in America. I swore then that I’d never return to that place. It was embarrassing and, quite frankly, I didn’t like being a part of such a social stigma: single mother on welfare.

Fast forward 7 years later… Continue reading →