A Simple Life: the cost of consumerism and the American Dream

We are tightening our belts because it's necessary in these tough economic times, and also because it's unhealthy in my mind to become obsessed with things and the pursuit and maintenance of things, which is the American Dream. All Americans are suppose to want MORE for their children. More what? More STUFF! Bigger and better homes and cars and material wealth. Well, I'm not buying into that.

I have been in hurricane-ravaged jungles and worked to re-build villages, access potable water, and provide basic medical care for people whose children die in their arms from malaria, starvation, and disease. I helped facilitate the building of homes for people living atop steaming garbage landfills in The Philippines. I worked and lived in Papua New Guinea (PNG), facilitating the building of houses for people whose children die one after the other for lack of adequate shelter. I will never forget any of it but over time it has lost the sharp edge it once had, as I have become accustomed to American consumerism.

It's not just people living overseas who suffer from extreme poverty. Two of our adopted children were hospitalized for starvation and dehydration prior to joining our family, and they are American-born children.

Here in America and around the world, poverty is all many people will ever know. That's why I want to live a simpler and more thoughtful life. The fact that I believe it's good for the soul is a wonderful bonus! One doesn't need to do anything as radical as what we're doing as a family, going six months without buying anything non-consumable. It can be as simple as giving up a daily latte or eating home instead of eating out. If we make do with less we will have more to GIVE.


**The above picture is of a baby we cared for in the Solomon Islands after cyclone Namu in 1986.**

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Spending Less: A Six Month Challenge

Our oldest son and his roommate came home last night, looking for food. Normally, we would have something yummy on hand to feed them or we would order a pizza, but we just went a week without spending a cent and we went into it with our cupboards rather bare. I fed them the kidney bean soup I'd made the night before and they were grateful to have it, because they're both out of money and they were hungry.

We explained to our son that we've already embarked on our next challenge, to go six months without buying anything that's not consumable. Our goal is to spend not more than $150 a week, excluding our mortgage, medical co-pays, and regular bills.

Later this week our son will be coming home to cook with me. He wants to learn how to eat simply and make his dollars stretch. In this economy he feels lucky to have even a part time job, but he finds it hard to make ends meet and he's struggling. So I gave him a list of what he will need, things like potatoes, carrots, and dried beans. We talked about the cheapest places to buy groceries and narrowed it down to two places, one of which is WalMart.

Those of you who know me know that while I love WalMart prices, I HATE WalMart crowds. When I think of hell I think of WalMart with it's aisles packed full of people, pushing carts aggressively, and mile long lines to cash registers. But Wal Mart is the option that's closest to me, so Wal Mart it is.

Some of you may be thinking that these challenges aren't that challenging. If so, I challenge you to try it! There are so many things we take for granted. My friend, Christina, noted that she found herself stopping to buy a bottle of water for $1.25, without even thinking about it. Those little expenditures add up! For those of you who are addicted to coffee, those daily Starbucks treats aren't cheap but because it's just a few dollars at a time it doesn't feel like such a big deal, but if one spends $3.00 for a tall Starbucks latte five days a week, that's $60.00 per month! That's a pretty significant money leak.

So, what about you? What are your biggest money leaks? Also, if you have any cost saving ideas, recipes, etc. please share them!


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Unleavened Bread

My challenge, to go one week without spending a cent, has been less about cutting back on spending and more about making do with less because it's good for the soul, because we've become accustomed to too much excess. I remember, back in the day, when I was living in the jungle and I vowed that I would not return to American consumerism. Despite my best intentions, it happened.

Recently, I've begun to feel as if my stuff owns me and that's not how I want to live. I don't want to be a slave to my mortgage or the quest to maintain a certain lifestyle. I found myself dreaming of walking off into the woods and finding a cabin somewhere far away from the world of consumerism where I would grow my own food, haul water from a creek, and live a very basic lifestyle in nature. Of course, it's a very impractical dream but that doesn't stop me from dreaming it. After all, I have lived that lifestyle overseas to varying degrees.

The practical side of me kicked in and I started thinking that I can simplify my life without running away. Living a week without spending a cent, without turning the heat above 65 degrees, has just been a starting place.

I'm making my way back to a simpler life. I want to be able to use my excess to GIVE and not to accumulate. I guess I'm not much for the American dream of having MORE and MORE and MORE each generation. It seems to me that the abundance we've experienced as a nation throughout the 80's until now has led to a shallow obsession with possessions, material wealth, and financial success. We've stopped being a people of depth.

I know that's not true of everyone. There are many exceptions. And some Americans are living in abject poverty without ever having known what it is to have plenty. I don't mean to dismiss the suffering that exists, I simply seek to address the issue of our abundance and lack of gratitude, our departure from simplicity and move toward excessive consumerism.

Baking unleavened bread with my daughter has been a blast. We've experimented with this and that recipe, trying to come up with tasty meals from the dregs of our cupboards. You know those items that sit on our back shelves and never get used? I have canned yams, pumpkin, and garbanzo beans. I have a big 'ol bag of dried kidney beans and a jar of raw honey. It's stuff I shuffle to the back of the cupboards whenever I bring new groceries in after my weekly shopping trip.

It's been a great experiment and it's not over yet. Before I forget, does anybody have a good kidney bean or canned yam recipe? If so, I sure could use it! ;)


Copyright Just Kate, 2010

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Putting Life Into Perspective: Living One Week Without Spending a Cent

There's so much talk about the current bad economy and it's certainly true that times are tough in comparison to what we've become accustomed to in recent decades, and yet I look at the pictures from Haiti and think how wonderfully blessed we are, and I want to reach right into the picture and bring those people into my home, feed them, love them, give them shelter and hope. There are ways I can do that figuratively and tangibly and that's good, but it's not enough. I need to use the compassion that I feel to put my own life into perspective and find new balance.

Last night, my husband and I watched a 2008 movie called "Defiance" about a band of Jews who survived for years in the forest of Eastern Europe, evading the Nazis. The story is true. Professionals and intellectuals and working men and women - people accustomed to prosperity - left life as they knew it behind and scraped out a meager existence in the forest where they struggled to survive and many died.

So, what does the current situation in Haiti have to do with the story of those defiant Jews? They are stories of human suffering and endurance. They remind me of how blessed I am, of how little true suffering I have known. Both help me put my own life in perspective.

Before we went to bed, hubby and I made a pact. We agreed that we will not spend a cent this week, beyond the gas he needs to get to work and back, and it's not like I've got the kitchen cupboards stocked. Today would normally be my grocery shopping day.

By the end of the week our cupboards will be bare. I look forward to exercising the ingenuity I will need to feed my family without the fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat that I typically pick up every few days over the course of the week. I get to look forward to it because it's a CHOICE and not a necessity, so the exercise won't be real in that sense, but it will serve as a good reminder of the things we take for granted in life.

I'll write about it as we go along, let you know what we're eating and what I discover in the process of living a week without spending, and I challenge you to try it too. Instead of joining in the talk about how tough times are, let's count our blessings and do a little something to remind ourselves of how blessed we really are.

©JustKate,2010

It's Been Worth It, Every Single Moment

It was mid-morning on a Sunday when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number and almost didn't answer it. Telemarketers. Some instinct prompted me so I scooped it up and spoke a wary hello. The words didn't make sense at first. Our son had arrived at the hospital by ambulance. He had been kicked repeatedly in the head. In the HEAD? He was unconscious, vomiting, twitching, having trouble breathing. They were putting him in a medically induced coma, intubating him. I heard the words but they didn't make sense. I tried to discipline my mind to hear the words in the right order, to put them in context. Our SON. HEAD TRAUMA. HOSPITAL.

As we drove to the hospital, my mind kept turning back to early summer 2008 when we'd raced to the hospital, following the Life Flight helicopter that held our daughter until it disappeared far out in front of us. Our daughter who had been covered in a torrent of blood, dragged by a horse, slammed into fence posts, kicked repeatedly by a 1,200 pound horse... So much blood. The scared look of the EMTs. The coldness of her skin. The shaking. A fear so raw and deep I had to fight to keep from losing myself in the vortex of it. I was so afraid when we walked into the ER. Miraculously, she made a full recovery. I remember the word "miracle" as it slipped from the doctor's lips.

Another flash. Waking up to a noise, something we couldn't identify, my husband and I. We had only been in Papua New Guinea for a week and everything was strange and new so the unidentifiable noise shouldn't have frightened us so, but it did. Immediately we went to our kid's tiny rooms that flanked ours. Our son was sound asleep but our daughter was gone. GONE. We looked everywhere. The front door was wide open. WHY? Time expanded and contracted. I remember screaming for my daughter, holding my son. Our compound was fenced in chain link topped with barbed wire. She was GONE. But out of the darkest night devoid of ambient light, our daughter came running, screaming for her father. She had been abducted but she got away. She came back to us. Thank God. Thank God.

Surely our luck would not hold out. It was unthinkable, monstrous. After everything our family had been through, there couldn't be another trauma. There just couldn't be. But there we were racing ever closer to the hospital and the unknown. Kicked in the head. Brain trauma. Coma. My mind stuttered. An absurd thought: It's nearly Christmas. As if that could somehow protect us. My father had been buried days before Christmas. There's no protection in Christmas, in the holiday season. People live and die and laugh and cry and love and hate and the world spins on its axis the same as any other day. I needed magic. I needed something to hold onto. Some reason to hope for another miracle, another saved child. Please God.

Our son called last night. He said he couldn't remember what happened very well. He had been singing, he said. A bigger boy had told him to shut up but he'd wanted to sing. He remembered, he said, the hand over his mouth, biting it, trying to get free, then nothing. No, he didn't remember the ambulance, the three different hospitals, the days that turned into weeks. He was doing better he said. His mind skipped on to random thoughts of basketball, Christmas... What's the name of our little dog? I have a bigger sister don't I? Three sisters or two? Were you just here? When did I last see you? Today? Yesterday? I can't remember. The miracle of his voice on the phone. He's a boy with many challenges, a life story that's utterly horrifying, and we'd thought to protect him when we adopted him. We'd done our best. We cared for him in our home for ten years and then we entrusted him to a residential program, thinking he would be safe…

We thought when we adopted the kids that we would make everything better for them. We thought traveling the world, working for Habitat for Humanity, would be a good experience. We didn't expect our daughter to be abducted. We thought living in the country, having horses, would be a great experience for our children. We hadn't expected the awful accident. We worked tirelessly to find the right residential program for our son. It’s exhausting, the endless advocating, the advocating that will never end because he'll never be able to live independently. He has so many challenges. Despite our best efforts, our children have been hurt; we have not always been able to protect them.

When our oldest child was born, I remembering thinking that I would never allow him to be hurt, that I would protect him always. I remember thinking as we brought our adopted children home that the hardships in their lives were over. They were coming HOME and home was a safe place.

The truth is that the world isn't a safe place. It's a hard place but it's also full of goodness and light and love. Somebody recently said that our boy had to recover fully, that the universe owed him that much. The words while well meant, made me tired. The universe doesn't owe us anything. One tragedy doesn't exempt us from another. There's no "pass" that comes with Christmas or any other time of year. Life happens.

Occasionally someone will ask about our adopted children, will mention their "real" mothers and fathers. I have to bite my tongue. My husband and I are as real as it gets. Blood doesn't make a family, love does, love and endurance and caring. I never thought it would be this hard. I didn't imagine everything that could go wrong when we created one child and adopted four others. It's a good thing, too. Had I known, I likely wouldn't have had the courage to make this family that I so love.

All that being said, I simply want to say that it's been worth it, every single moment.

©Just Kate, 2009

Puppies, Parenting, and Unrequited Love

I woke up in the middle of the night to the mewling sound of our new puppy, feeling exhausted, sick, and utterly overwhelmed by her need of me. I staggered out of bed and scooped her out of her crate while she yowled with sadness and loss then snuggled into my neck, seeking the comfort of my breath and heartbeat. In that moment I was struck by the beauty and simplicity of her sadness and wanting. Animals are so pure in their love and need, so HONEST in their discontents.

Because I have the flu and didn't know what to do when the puppy's crying extended beyond a trip outside to go potty and a snuggle, I took her into the bathtub with me, cradling her against my shoulder, where she nestled under my hair out of the water but comforted by the steamy warmth of it. We fell asleep that way, my one pound puppy and me. As I drifted off, I remembered doing the same thing when we brought our first adopted daughter home and she woke me in the middle of the night, inconsolable with loss, desperate for love, afraid to accept it, so hurt and lost. Her pain was beyond my ability to touch. And so we retreated to the womb like sound of running water and warmth and I held her against my chest while she hit me and bit me and fought with all her might until her sobs subsided and she drifted off in hiccuping remnants of sobs.

Children aren't like puppies. When they lose their families and come to new homes, they aren't easily consoled nor can they express with any degree of simplicity the pain that they feel. They pull with their wanting and push with their need. They often kick and scream against warm arms extended. They don't snuggle in. They don't wag their tails when they're happy and wail when they're sad. They learn to cope in ways that are difficult to deal with and hard to comprehend.

My husband and I have been struggling for 15 years to heal the hurts of our adopted children. At times I know that we unwittingly inflicted more pain on them because we were lost ourselves, unsure of how to help them, frustrated by their lashing out, hopeless in the face of the complexity of their anger, fear, and loss.

There are simple manuals about what to do when one brings a new puppy home. There's a simplicity to it, a routine that works. Even then it's HARD WORK. While there are general guidelines in working with foster, adopted and step-children, there simply isn't a hard and fast formula that works. It's a journey full of pain, stark moments of joy, and all too often unrequited love.

When I need gratitude and requited love, I look to the dogs happily wagging their welcome every time I come home. I don't look to my children. It's not their job to love me back or even express gratitude for the shelter and love we've provided. It's my job to love them. I have to remind myself of that frequently. When I need the satisfaction of knowing I've offered real comfort, I pick up a crying puppy, run my hands along the quivering sides of a frightened horse. I visit an animal shelter and offer precious moments of touch to simple creatures that are frightened and alone. Then I turn back to my children and I do my best to love them even when they don't appreciate it or love me back. If you know a parent that's taken on the challenge of fostering, adopting, or step parenting, please offer your support and appreciation; and if you're a parent that's struggling, remember to look outside of your children for love, appreciation, and support.

©Just Kate, 2009

The Edge of Innocence

I am currently well into writing my first novel, a work of literary fiction entitled The Edge of Innocence. It's a story of innocence, incest and insanity, and a young girl's coming of age.

While the story is fiction it was born from the ashes of my past and is a tribute to those who have endured much and in the process become better, stronger and more compassionate.

To those of you who have been cheering me on, I thank you for your continued faith in me and my ability to write this story.

~Kate