The Heat of Our Shame:

The Hope of a Shared Meal

I’m 53 years old, and my body still remembers the feeling it learned as a kid. It’s a heat that starts behind the eyes and consumes the rest of me. Embarrassment. Shame. It was the soundtrack to being called a “welfare kid,” a “bastard kid.” My memory is Swiss cheese—a survival mechanism, I’m sure—but the body doesn’t forget.

That heat came back as a young, single mom in a small town. It burned in the grocery store aisle, fumbling with paper food stamps. The fear was a constant companion: the fear that I would never be able to provide, that I was failing my child.

I’ve been hungry and been unable to tell my closest family and friends. I knew their beliefs. I knew what they thought about “those people” on assistance—that we had some moral failing. They really believe that because they haven’t needed help, they never will. What they don’t understand is a truth I’ve lived: everyone is pre-disabled. Life can turn on a dime.

I "climbed" somewhere except really out. And the most demeaning part was listening to the people around me talk about “those people” on welfare. You people are heartless and you don’t realize how close to it you are.

This is why we need pro-humanity educators. We need to learn how the "bootstrap" myth is a lie designed to keep us isolated and blaming ourselves instead of seeing the systems built to make us fail.

Photo by Kampus Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-handing-an-aluminum-platter-to-another-person-8931674/

When I heard that SNAP benefits were being cut, I don't see a budget line. I see a calculated move. I feel it. It’s meant to stress an already stressed system and divide us even deeper. The cold, political language is a world away from the hot, real shame of a mother who can’t feed her child.

This system makes the traumatized responsible for their own trauma. And for European Americans like me, that trauma is the very air we breathe. It’s the white supremacy culture woven into all we do. It’s the way we are taught to see help as a weakness, community as a threat, and domination as strength.

It’s what makes it so hard for me to get donations from white, middle-class communities while Black women are already organizing mutual aid. We are frozen in our own disconnection.

That’s why we need Racial Trauma Centers for European Americans.

This isn't about shame. It's the opposite. It’s about what we’re building with EAGER: creating a space for us to deconstruct the poison together. To heal the parts of us that were taught to be cold, competitive, and cruel. To finally feel the grief for the community we never had, so we can start building it for real.

We need a place to heal from the lie that we are only as good as what we can produce, a lie that makes us look down on those who need help today and terrifies us that we’ll be them tomorrow.

But what does healing look like? It’s practical.

When I imagine what would have saved me, it was a community kitchen—a place stocked with food and space to cook and eat together. It was a place you could go when you needed your space, but never had to be truly alone.

The first step isn't complicated. It’s looking at what your house wastes. It’s connecting with five houses and making one meal a week for all. Give everyone two days off to finish the leftovers.

This is what deconstruction looks like in practice. It’s moving from a system of isolation and shame to one of shared abundance. The pro-humanity educators give us the language. The Racial Trauma Centers give us the healing space to let go of the old stories. The community kitchen is where we practice a new way of being, together.

I’ve been on all sides of this—the recipient, the professional, the donor. And the real obstacle is clear.

The problem is not a lack of food. There is truly enough for all.

The problem is a lack of connection to self and others, enforced by a culture that benefits from our isolation.

The heat of shame can only be cooled by the warmth of a community that sees you. It’s the work of our lives to build that, first by healing ourselves, and then by passing a plate of food from our hands to yours. It’s the only way any of us get free.