Food Stamps, Shame, and the Stories We Tell About Survival

We have to stop shaming people for surviving, while others are praised for “playing the market.” Same system. Different story.

Most people can’t imagine what it’s like to skip a meal. To feel the clinking, hollow pain of an empty belly. To try to sleep through hunger. To walk through a school day with a headache, not because you’re sick, but because there just wasn’t enough food in the house. Most people don’t know what it’s like to sit with that kind of uncertainty. I do.

SNAP, WIC, free lunch, school breakfast; those weren’t handouts. They were survival tools, life rafts, safety nets that caught my family during our hardest chapters. They gave my mother just enough breathing room to keep going, to keep surviving, and they gave me the stability to focus in school and be a kid who could still dream, even in the middle of chaos.

Years later, I’m degree(ed) up, building something meaningful, and I carry that past everywhere. Not with shame, but with deep clarity. My story reveals how the right support at the right time can change a life. Millions of us are proof of that impact.

Here’s my argument: government programs aren’t just charity, they are proven investments in people’s stability and potential. When we ensure basic needs like food are met, we don’t create dependency but rather build stronger communities.

Instead of honoring that truth, we shame those struggling, while powerful corporations accept government money without scrutiny. Mothers using EBT or elders needing extra help face judgment, but corporations do not.

People love to discuss who’s “living off the government,” yet the conversation rarely includes defense contractors, Big Oil with tax breaks, or large farms routinely collecting subsidies.

When the government subsidizes corn, wheat, soy, and dairy, it shapes what we eat, making processed foods cheaper than fresh foods. This helps everyone, not just farmers or SNAP recipients. If you’ve never used SNAP, you still benefit from subsidized meals, but only some are made to feel small for it.

And now, here we are in the richest country on the planet, watching basic benefits get slashed and hunger rise. The contrast could not be starker: while elected officials argue about who deserves to eat, billionaires build ballrooms and yachts. Families count coins at checkout, while millionaires write off luxury meals as business expenses.

The issue isn’t about scarcity; it’s about how our policies reflect our values. We have the means to end hunger; what’s missing is the political will to make poverty prevention a priority, recognizing it is shaped by policy, not personal failings.

I write this not just as someone who made it through, but as someone who knows many still deep in it. I was the firstborn daughter who learned the math of food stamps before I ever learned algebra. I was the one who stood in line with the list, calculating totals and learning early how far twenty dollars can stretch when you have no other choice.

There was never shame in that; I knew it only as resilience, strategy, and love.

Ensuring people can eat is not only an economic decision but a clear moral one. Our actions define the kind of society we want to be.

We can choose better because we all deserve better.