Stephanie Land

Quotes by Stephanie Land

• I have what's known as a 'spirited' child. Mia has run me ragged since she knew how to walk. She'd run across soccer fields as a toddler, never once looking back. I have learned how to navigate her strong nature while nurturing it as well. I raised her to think for herself. I raised her to question.

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• It didn't take me long to go from financial stability to fearing homelessness.

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• I grew up in what some would call an immaculately clean home. I hated my mom a little for it. I wasn't allowed to paint my nails, since they'd chip and 'look trashy.' My brother and I didn't run around in clothes that had holes or were stained.

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• Over the years, as I lived in low-income housing, collected government assistance, and lived well under the poverty level as I put myself through college, the comments people made about poor people started to sting. The poor are dirty. Hoarders. Their houses are a mess. Their kids are wild, untamed, and feral-looking.

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• The small things that make Christmas magical are the things children will remember. It doesn't matter what they open on Christmas morning, I don't remember what was in half the boxes I opened as a kid. What mattered were the decorations, the cookies that were mysteriously eaten, and the stockings that were filled.

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• Being a single mom, I fought my way through living in poverty, feeling like I wasn't ever enough, feeling an annoying tug that we as a family possibly weren't complete.

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• Once I thought that if you had a house on a hill with a fence and 2.5 baths and 3.5 kids, that was happiness. I naively thought that if I lived in a house like that there was no reason for me to be stressed or depressed, that the things I was experiencing would be untouchable and solved and I would do great.

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• We need leaders who are able to vividly remember how it feels to experience hardship, trauma and pain, who make us feel less alone.

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• Struggling to take care of my daughter on my own, I needed whatever government assistance I qualified for - a few hundred bucks a month in food stamps, free school lunches, childcare vouchers and coupons for milk and cheese - while I simultaneously worked as a maid, juggling 10 clients between going to class to put myself through college.

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• The poor, and especially poor people of color, don't have the luxury of raising 'free-range' children without risking severe consequences. Parents of color don't receive a visit and a warning if their children are found playing alone; they are immediately blamed and far more likely to be arrested or lose custody of their children.

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• Once it was clear that Donald Trump would be president instead of Hillary Clinton, I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to gather my children in bed with me and cling to them like we would if thunder and lightning were raging outside, with winds high enough that they power might go out. The world felt that precarious to me.

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• I don't like to think of goals I set at the new year as resolutions. I like to think of them as summits on my personal mountain. Each year gets me closer to the dreams I want to achieve, and the goals are those benches to sit and enjoy the view along the way.

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