Have You Ever Been *Hungry*?

NO, never. I've been very lucky. When I left my husband and had no money no job with two kids, my parents took me in. When I was struggling to make it on my own I got WIC to help make ends meet. I count myself LUCKY

I grew up really poor, in my early years. There was no "free lunches" in our school district. (It was very small and rural.) My parents would sometimes send me with a jelly sandwich because they were worried they would get in trouble. There were many, many days...I had nothing to bring. I would pretend like I wanted to read. We often had bare cupboards, and nothing to eat. Our electricity got turned off for weeks at a time. We had constables coming to the house with warrants, because there wasn't any money in the account for the check to clear. I remember one time my mom wrote a check for $3, for a few cans of beans and a package of hotdogs, for the next week, for our family of 5. She cried in the car on the way home, and I didn't know why. Of course, I know now it was because there was no money to cover the check. Sometimes, I would have a single cold hotdog all day, and we wouldn't have food for days and days. It was common. My dad got promoted and my mom got a better job around 2nd grade. We started doing a lot better, and I never went hungry after that. I have not been hungry in a very long time. However, I definitely remember the pangs. I remember falling asleep in class, because of no energy. Almost fainting walking home, from the hunger. I do think I knew what it was like to be truly hungry. Not in the sub-saharan Africa, third world country kind of way. But, yes. I do remember being painfully hungry and having a distended belly. Not that I'm saying that to appear strong, or like I've suffered. Certainly, I haven't. I always knew food was coming from somewhere, eventually. I didn't have to worry about someone not caring, if they found out. I don't think I know anything about what it's like to starve, simply what it's like to be hungry sometimes. I think there is a huge difference between hunger and starving.

Food in our house was often can of beans and sphagettios spread out over a few days. A hot dog, or bread with jelly. Sometimes we got hambruger helper, but that was a super special thing. It didn't happen often, at all. No special birthday dinners, or Christmas dinners. In fact, my worse Christmas ever...was the one where we had no food, no heat, and no gifts. Thank goodness, that stage only lasted a few years. It REALLY has shaped me in so many ways. It was one of the contributing reasons, why we choose to only have one child. I know I can feed him. I don't find great joy in food. I eat it, because it's necessary. Now, I don't have an unhealthy relationship. I am not afraid to eat, or anything. It was just never a big part of my life. We never used food when celebrating. I think my sister after that, have had an unhealthy relationship with food. She will eat and eat. It's an emotional addiction for her. I am very easy to please, food wise. Anything tastes good to me, really. I can tell you, that I feel very compelled to donate to our local food pantries. I always pick up some extra food when I grocery shop. The good stuff people can never get at food pantries.

When I was in elementary school and middle school my mom was in an abusive relationship. Very long story short, she did what she had to do so we could survive. We spent over a month living in her car, and then almost 6 more months living in a women's shelter. Had she not disappeared like she did (her parents knew where we were, but that was it) I firmly believe that we would both be dead. There were many nights that she went without food so that I could eat. I remember waiting in lines at churches and shelters to get a meal, worrying more about our safety than anything else. I wasn't in school regularily, so the shelters and churches were the best bet. Usually meals consisted of easy foods. PB&J, spaghetti dinners, stews. I remember the hot meals the most because those are what you miss the most when you don't have it.

As far as my perspective on food, I get paranoid if we start to run out of staples. Bread, milk, peanut butter (although i can't bring myself to eat a PB and J today). I also am very conscious of portions. I hate to throw out food, so I will put a little less on my or my kids plates and then get them seconds if they want more.

The bigger impression on me wasn't the food, but the safety. The warm bed, the hall light on. Those things will stay with me forever.

I was hungry as a kid. I just thought it was how people felt! I grew up with 5 kids in our family and my parents did their very best. I would often notice that my sandwiches had little bites in them (my mom would always laugh and say we had RATS! I knew it was her...I just didn't know why!), we didn't have enough money for my parents to eat well. The weird thing is that I didn't ever feel badly about it. I really and truly just thought that's how life was!
As an adult we have had to go to the food bank. When my husband and I were first married we had no money. It was really really tough to get enough to eat. We both were working fast food, he in the morning and me in the afternoon. We would take food home from there and that's what fed us. I think both of our bosses understood how poor we were and would give us things to take home. I had to suck it up and apply at the food bank because we needed to eat! We would always feed my son first (who I had before I married my husband,different dad) and then get whatever was left. Sometimes we would just eat cans of green beans or corn. We ate a ton of potatoes, rice, beans, and hamburger helper. It was tight like that for about a year. Since then my husband refuses hamburger helper. He says it reminds him of how tough life was for us.
Thank GOD we were able to pull ourselves up out of that. The food bank was a life saver even though most of the food was nasty (canned meat is not good)...but as the saying goes...."beggars can't be choosers"
Things are still tight, although no where NEAR as bad as that first year. I am sure to buy what we need before I ever buy treats. I cut coupons and never buy anything if it's not on sale. I also went and volunteered at that same food bank because I felt that I needed to give back since they helped us so much.
L.

Yes.

My first husband was here on a student visa when we married, and was not allowed to work. We moved to eastern Oregon for two years to a small community-college town where he could study aviation, his chosen field. The only work I could find for the first year was temporary agricultural jobs, which are (or were, don't know if that's changed now) allowed to pay only 2/3 regular minimum wage, and work employees 60 hours a week before paying any overtime, so that's what they did.

I was doing hard physical labor, could barely pay the rent on our tiny apartment (it was high because there were lots of college students competing for housing in a tiny town), had to come up with my husband's tuition, gas and car payments, and there was almost nothing left to eat on. We began accumulating a rising balance on our gasoline credit card, which also alarmed me.

My husband was very social and would always be fed by generous friends, but for about the first four-plus months, I ate two (free) apples a day for lunch, and a cheapo TV dinner with two tiny tacos and a small side of beans and rice for dinner almost every day. Sundays I didn't work, and went without the apples. Most weeks, there wasn't even money for a loaf of bread.

I became alarmingly thin, and neighbors guessed we were in financial straits and would occasionally bring us a bag of potatoes or onions (which they raised) or cans of green beans, so I made a few stews by adding dumpster carrots or whatever else I could find. My well-fed husband was too disgusted with the food I could offer at home, so he usually went to visit friends for better eats.

I eventually got a job that paid slightly higher and was able to keep hunger at bay with rice and beans and some veggies, but I remember how difficult the hunger was for those first few months. My body would contract painfully around my stomach and keep me from sleeping. Ten-hour days of physical labor on very few calories made my work life nearly impossible, but I couldn't afford to slack off or I'd get fired.

I did not know that there might have been a community food bank. I had no idea about what social services might be available – I had always just made it on my own efforts, and continued to do so. Plus, in those days, I would not have believed I was worthy to ask for any kind of help, because I had been raised poor, and had been taught that my needs didn't count for much. I had often experienced hunger as a child, but I think I've blocked out most of my memory on that score. My mom's paycheck always ran out before the end of the month.

But those months were hell. I'm so grateful, looking back, that I didn't have my daughter yet. I would probably have stolen food if that's the only way I could have fed her. And of course, then I'd probably also be in trouble with the law.

Knowing how acutely painful hunger can be, I give regularly to food banks and services for the homeless and hungry, especially children, who are not at fault if they are hungry. Children's brains and bodies cannot develop normally if they are poorly nourished, and they can't learn well in school if they go hungry. And I cannot endure throwing food away. I'm still far from financially comfortable, and I've found ways to cook just about any food, cheap, wilted, whatever. I don't use meat that smells spoiled, but I never let it spoil.

And growing numbers of children, and their parents, are seriously struggling over the past three years. We Americans used to pride ourselves on our generosity as a nation. But as even average families are becoming more concerned about their financial futures, they are giving less, and food banks are becoming too strained to meet the very real needs.

Bug - thank you for sharing your story. It really humanized a situation that I think we all read about but most do not experience.

I will think of you this December when I make a seasonal donation to Second Harvest .... and I'll make an even bigger one b/c of you.

I never went hungry as a child except as a punishment. My mom was brought up during the depression and she went hungry at times.

My grandma was the head chef at a local Jr College until they decided the head chef had to have a degree. My grandma was taken out of school when she finished the 6th grade because that's all the schooling a wife needed to raise a family. My mom and grandma had a garden to make sure they had something to eat all the time. In southern California it was a year round garden.

They would walk the streets between the orange groves and the packing plant and pick up the oranges and other citrus that fell off the trucks. Many people did that. They traded some vegetables for a hatch of chicks and raised them so they could have eggs and an occasional chicken for the table. My grand ma told me that a couple of times when the night time temperatures would drop she put the chicks in her night gown in her bed so they would stay warm enough and not die.

Fo me, I was taught to shop and bagain effectively with store people so ther was always enough to eat, even though we had apples with bruises and bananas with black spots and other produce that weren't picture perfect.

The only time I really went hungry was in college. There just wasn't enough money to go around. I bought a loaf of day old bread, a package of hot dogs and 10 lbs of potatoes and made it last for a month. I took my small motor cycle to the gas stations and would pour the oil out of oil cans I found in the trash into my motocycle engine and empty the hoses from the gas pumps into the gas tank. But I got through it and graduated. How did it affect me? I don't throw food away. I don't care what the date is on the package, as long as the food is good, I'll eat it. I know from experience that the date on the package is just another government program gone amuck. It wouldn't surprise me that the Food Manufacturers Lobby got that date enacted so people would throw out good food because of that date. Then they could make more money selling more food. The longest I went without food was 10 days, but that wasn't because food wasn't available. But that is another story.

When I was in the third grade of school, we went to a rural school. They had a fund raising carnival. One of the things was a penny pitch. If you got a penny in the bowl, they would give you a baby chick. I won 30 something and the principal was pitching pennies beside me. He gave me the chicks he won. We went home with 65 baby chicks. My dad and mom and dad were floored. We raised 63 of those 65 chicks to frying pan age. My dad was a first sergeant in the airforce. He would invite one of the young airmen under him and his wife out to our place for chicken dinner. The soldier would cut the heads off 4 or 5 chickens. The adults would pluck them and we'd have chicken for dinner. My dad would give the young soldier two chickens to take home with him and his wife. One time I asked my dad why he invited them over for dinner and then gave them some of my chickens. He told me that they were having a hard time and they were hungry so he was helping them out.

That's why I help people when ever I can. That's why I tell moms here how to make their money go farther. That's why when someone comes up to me and asks for money for food, I don't give them money. I give them food. Buying food inexpensively is my one talent and I don't bury it.

I have been severly chastised by a mom on ths site for buying "old meat and used bread". I guess she was one of the rich ones that never had to do without. That's life. You can always find someone better off and worse off than you are.

Good luck to you and yours.

Yes I have, it is terrible. I finally plumped up to 89 pounds in high school my senior year. I was 5'1 wearing a size 10/12 little girl jeans.

As a child I have been to food banks or stood in line for a box of whatever food they were handing out. Lots of times my mom was too hung over or strung out to get up to go in line (gotta get there early or forget it).

Now I always have an excessive amount of food, just in case. I throw a lot away cause we simply cannot eat that much. It's a double edge sword cause I feel guilty throwing food away but then I get scared I won't have enough.

I enjoy volunteering but I have a hard time because I want to bring everyone home with me (I have before).

Sleeping is the best remedy for a hungry belly.

No offense but this post is bringing back a lot of terrible memories, thank God that was my past. And I know I could have skipped over this. But I do have one fond memory of a teacher that felt terrible for me so she would bring me lunch everyday with a special treat. We moved about 3-5 times a year, so this teacher would pick me up from wherever I moved to, just to take me to school. It's crazy to think that a Teacher could do that, that could never happen nowadays. It only lasted the school year cause she couldn't keep up with all our moving. Thank you Mrs Minter :)

Oh my lord.....This may get long..but then again I could always surprise myself and not have alot to say.

I have starved myself for weight reasons. Back while I was a dancer. I did it because I had to be the best...and in my mind thin was the best.

Now that we are in place where we dont have ANY extra...It gets interesting.

I have Celiac. My specialty food is VERY expensive...So I can only buy a little at a time. The self life is not great on alot of it anyways.

When it is the Wednesday before Pay day.....I am only eating one or two small meals a day. Because I have to ration what I have I can eat.

I am getting really invented on how to make hardly anything into a feast for my kids.

We make too much money to get food stamps. And I do not want to use WIC, for the pure fact there are more people worse off then we are. I do not want to be that person.

I have safety nets in case of emergencies. My mom will sometimes do a check.cash exchange with me so that I can go get food from the sotre...and then she will just cash check on pay day. It helps alot.

After almost Starving to death I fear that pain. Because for two weeks that pain almost killed me...Literally.

It still comes. I have learned how to pace myself.

My kids will never go hungry.

I laugh because we were taken out to an amazing dinner at a place called el Gaucho for my father in laws birthday.

It was a seven course meal. Sides were ala carte. So there was a ton of food left.

We left with three bags of left overs. Like three big brown paper sacks....We ate like pigs for two days after!!

We eat when ever we are some place with food. and we always take home extra. Because although there is always some form of food at our house....Rice can get old very very fast:)

It has been very humbling and has made me thankful for every single thing we have in our lives.

It has also made me expand what I am capable of doing......I am hoping for a vegetable garden this spring if the Winter is nice and allows it:)

Always an interesting question, Ephie.

I grew up in a family that had warped values, and one of these was that the kids were what I would call "food poor". This meant a bowl or two of cheap cereal in the morning, no food for a morning snack, working in the cafeteria for hot lunch, and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the rest of the day. It was considered by our folks that since we were receiving hot lunch, that would take the place of dinner. Consequently, eating more than our one PBJ in the afternoon/evening would result in severe punishment. We once busted into one packet of Top Ramen and *never* did that again.

Food for the kids was rationed. The adults ate what they needed. I won't say there's nothing worse than going to bed hungry when your parents are eating what they like (fries from the deep fryer, steak, etc.), but it's a very warped way to live. My younger sister suffered severe malnutrition. I never had enough energy and received "D" grades in PE. It took me years to realize the reason I was always tired during those years....

As an adult, I've had to use food pantries a couple of times and was on food stamps as well. We were careful with those resources. It is humbling to have to ask for food. Yet still, I would prefer that to living with our "food poor"-attitude parents any day.

Well i fasted one time for 10 days on purpose...i was pretty hungry day number 3.....but that was for detoxing purposes.

Back when i was traveling with my husband(then boyfriend) offering discounts on energy bills door to door we were pretty broke.We were teenagers. One time it got so bad we tried to fish for food, literally....fished, in lake Michigan. I used to gather change off the street to buy bean burritos. I used to consider ramen soup "lucky". I used to go to the lobbies in the area that had free coffee. Id load it down with sugar/cream so i could stockpile calories in order not to get light headed and ill.(i like my coffee black) The problem was we were traveling..paying for our own lodging..in strange cities where we knew no one, work was bad and we were poorly paid. Had we been in our hometown no one would have ever let us go hungry, we wouldnt ever let our friends go hungry either.

I could never go hungry in my own town.

Has it changed me?, yes i believe im a good person to be in a foxhole with. In a pinch i could make my own bread,cheese, pasta....etc grab a few staple veggies, baking products and cheap fruit and i can make my whole family nutritionally sound. During the recession we needed to save so my grocery trips were less than 20 dollars to feed us for 2 weeks. Ive never had to go hungry since having kids. But now i dont save on food. My family eats the best of the best.

Ephie, I have been fortunate to never be hungry. I know that my parents gave us food and did without when we were little, when they didn't have much. And I know my mom and her brothers had very little coming out of the Depression. They grew food in their garden and raised chickens. The chickens paid the doctor and put meat on the table.

I've worked in a food bank and see people come in who have lost their jobs. Some people are just dirt poor and live paycheck to paycheck. Some people are upside down on their houses and cars, and trying to figure out what to do. There are people who have never had to deal with a financial crisis before in their lives, and they don't know how to handle it. It's kind of strange to say this, but those who never had anything seem to know how to handle it best. Those with debt up the wazoo because of lost jobs and a hefty mortgage, and a car that's about to be taken by the repo man are walking in a fog. And seeing them come into a food bank is hard to watch. They feel terrible being there, and we feel terrible that they are.

That isn't to say that people who constantly live paycheck to paycheck don't have pride too. But they have learned how to cope. The newly poor haven't. I wonder sometimes how those I met are coping now.

As hard as it is for them all, they are excited to see fruit and meat and bread in their boxes. All of them. And eggs - their faces light up at seeing eggs.

It's a humbling experience. I urge anyone who has some time on their hands to go work at a food bank.

Dawn

No, I haven't. We are very fortunate in all aspects of our life right now (jobs, health, etc.) and I am grateful for that every day. I truly am.

I love being able to have the means to donate to food banks and sponsor needy families in our area. If I ever won the lottery I would seriously put that money to some gosh dang good uses, not cars and a big house, but to families that need and deserve it. For now though, I give where I can :)

No, thank God. I think the only reason we did not go hungry at some point was because we lived in a parsonage and did not have the expense of a house. We did eat gifts of produce from our parishioners' gardens/farms. [this was when I was growing up]

The only time I was offered rations was during a horrible storm in Missouri in '06; my family & I were eating at a park & someone from the army brought us some. We had only been without power for 4 days and had access to food; others went a lot longer without power.

My mom grew up poor and told me she sometimes ate mayonnaise sandwiches and wore burlap dresses. My grandpa worked in a creamery; my aunt got diptheria and the whole family was quarantined (in the 30s), and the only reason they did not go hungry was because the local grocer gave my grandpa credit.

My dad was one of 10 siblings, also in a pastor's family. I'm pretty sure the church took care of them as well.

But coming from this background and having people come to our door at the parsonage, I do have a great deal of compassion for people in dire situations.

Really, really hungry like you've described with NOWHERE to turn? No.

College poor? Like I had my dinner, have nothing in my room and about .75 to my name? Yes....but that's not the "hunger" you're talking about.

I know people (close family and friends) who have been. Who have knocked on doors asking for "anything...crackers...a hot dog...a cup of coffee." I also know well people, who had there not been a soup kitchen or food pantry, would have starved.

I am also amazed at the fact that, in our school district, typical mddle class, that there are SO many families on the free/reduced breakfast & lunch programs. I wonder what they do in the summer--as the program does not run when the school is closed. :(

When me and my husband first got married we decided to take a chance and become cross country truck drivers. The company we worked for was totally taking advantage of us and there were times we'd get no pay check or worse we'd owe them. We had weeks were we survived on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. We would even cut the sandwiches into small pieces to trick ourselves into thinking we were eating more. It was horrible but we prayed a lot and strengthened our relationship through the struggle. We left that behind us and now we have two beautiful daughters and a place of our own. My husband went back to being a mechanic and was doing really well until these last six months it has gotten slow and we are struggling again. I have to figure out how to feed all four of us with 10$ for the next two weeks. By the grace of god we have family that helps us from time to time but we don't want to take advantage of anyone so we don't always share with them that we are having a hard time. I'm going to start looking into food banks but my husband has personal issues about getting help like wic or welfare. He grew up watching people take advantage of the system and even though we are the people it was made for he refuses to count it as a resource. My daughters are always fed, they always have food no matter what because if I have even a dollar it goes to them. I do look at food differently we eat smaller portions to make it stretch and we don't snack much because we utilize our money on meals only. I drink lots of water to feel fuller and we accept leftovers from friends and family all the time. I am grateful to the point of tears that we can have dinner on our table every night.

I went on a completely liquid diet that was about 400 cal a day for three months. I lost a ton of weight but I felt like someone hollowed me out in the middle and placed a collapsed star in my gut. The black hole wanted to inhale everything I saw but I so wanted to fit into a cute little black dress that I suffered. I vomited bile I was so hungry. Over the weeks the pain lessened and my body slipped into ketosis. I would drink my shake for breakfast, shake for lunch and then after my dinner shake, I'd head to the gym and work out for an hour. I was tired a lot but thrilled at the results. In the middle of my weight loss journey we had to move and I had to pack up my kitchen. We found ourselves on the road a lot, house hunting and the like. With my kitchen inaccessible, finding myself far from a blender and my gym, I started slipping back into eating real food again and putting the weight back on.

A year later after eating normally I regained all the weight I lost and am sitting back at the same weight I was when I started the diet. It was brutal but I'm seriously tempted to try again. Over the last five years I've been within five pounds of the same weight so this is apparently a "comfortable" spot for my body to be in even though I'd wish it otherwise.

What I experienced and what someone who has limited or no access to food for monetary reasons are different psychologically but the physical pain is similar. On one hand there is the physical pains of hunger with the knowledge that food is right there in reach, and only sheer willpower alone is keeping you from eating it. And on the other hand the physical suffering is combined with the emotional knowledge that there's no food there even if you wanted to give in. Both are a form of suffering but the difference is one is self inflicted and the other is not.

I would like to say I did during my divorce but it was all self-inflicted. I refused to take anything from my family but the fact is my family was always there if I needed them. Not sure if that makes sense.

The other strange thing is being from where I was there were more options open. My friends seemed to ask me over for dinner more. I worked at a restaurant that didn't mind me making snacks to take home. You know what I mean?

I have been through a lot but this particular thing I find myself unimpressive. Even though I went through the motions I don't think I could understand what it is to be hungry.

A couple times.

When I was homeless, I survived on one 99cent whopper a week for some time. I went from 167 with a sixpack (military weight/fit) to 123 and you could see my hipsockets and I couldn't lift 20lbs.

When I was paramilitary, we usually ate well (you really need 5,000-10,000 calories a day for the kind of work I was doing). I got back up to strength very, very quickly. But there were weeks at a time where we couldn't get to the extraction point. So you go hungry, until you can. It hurts, but you know you're either going to clean, well fed, and asleep SOON... or that's just never going to happen for you again. So there's not the desperation/fear attached. Nor the apathy. You live on adrenaline and any rainfall you can collect. Ha. I remember when Joe licked a leaf he shouldn't have for the dew on it. Looooooopy doesn't even begin to describe it.

Much Later, by choice, I got by on 400cal a day for about a year and a half if I ate at all. I was modeling (for pay) and dancing (for fun).Rather ironically, I remember specifically getting jobs for "the sacred duty of filling R.'s tummy". I would not willingly starve again. But I had a reeeeally biased view of what starving was by that point. I REMEMBER when a whole chicken mcNugget looked like waaaaay too much food. I'd nibble at it over a few hours I was physically active during this time, so I didn't get "weak" like I had when I was homeless (10mi hikes a day on days I wasn't dancing 6, 8, 10 hours). I destroyed my health. But it seemed like So. MUCH. Food after my time homeless, and after bad jobs where we were stuck waiting for transport for days and days, that I couldn't be told otherwise. Same token... I was GAINING weight on that 400 cal a day. I was up to 180. ((which for me, with my height, is like a size 6 or size 8 on an average height woman. 167 is like a size 2. I wore the same clothes at 167 and 123, btw. My BONES create my minimum size. Which is a 10/12 at 123 or 167))

That whole time period lasted about 4 years. True starvation, temporary-intermittant starvation, and some serious anorexia/female athlete triad by choie starvation. When I got pregnant not long after, and had to more quadruple my intake to 1800 (to only 1/10th of what I ate military).... my body had had enough of being jerked around and kept ALL of it. I doubled my weight in 9 months. Yeah. 180 x 2. Shudder. What every anorexic needs like a hole in the head. Well, it taught me humility. And 100 the first year, and 30 the second year peeled off.

It's taken me YEARS to recover the heart muscle, lost vision, and semi normal metabolism from those years. At this point I feel like I could write a 'Nutrition for Dummies' book... because I made every mistake there was from 19-23. Granted, some weren't my FAULT, but my body still had to go through that.

I have overeaten at work because I didn't have food at home. I also asked the church if I could eat the extra baby food and finger foods for lunch when I was running short on cash.

I can't say we've lived on the street but once my son was born we were hit by thousands of dollars in doctors bills. I couldn't work because I had to take my son doctors appointments several times a week and was breast feeding him. That was a big money saver! We lived on roman noodles, wheat bread and chicken for many months. May not have been healthy but 5 packs for a $1 is pretty awesome when your hungry. It was a very stressful time and I never told anyone how bad we were in debt. Thankfully we qualified for the medical write off on our taxes and so we were able to stock the cabinets once my son was old enough to eat solid foods. We are in a much better place now and I am grateful for that each and every day!

Growing up my parents never let us go hungry, we weren't rich (had 5 kids and one full time income) but I can't say that I ever went to bed hungry. However, as an adult, yes. My husband had been laid off and the unemployment got mixed up so it took a couple months to get it going. It was definitly a time when we didn't know if we should keep a roof over our child's head or feed them dinner. I visited food banks often, never one at the church I attended, too ashamed. Isn't that terrible? Too ashamed to ask for food during a time when we needed it becuase of an event we had no control over? Silly, I know.

After my husband went back to work, only a few months later, it was still a struggle, yes paychecks were coming in but we were so far behind on everything. I remember not eating dinner just so my child would be able to eat whatever I could throw together. Luckily, this all happened when she was very young and doesn't seem to remember it, and I don't think she remembers the boxes of food we had to go pick up.

Now, we are not rich by any means, but that time in our lives has taught me how to shop smarter; how to cook smarter. It was a hard time but I don't think I would ask to live it any differently. I know there are others out there who had or are now having it much worse. And I am greatful for all life experiences I have.

I wanted to add. Perhaps my child does not remember, however, I make it a point to talking about wasting food and to be greatful for what we have. We may not always have what we WANT but need to appreciate what we HAVE.

I just went to a food bank today. I have been frequenting soup kitchens this fall as well...and going to Food Not Bombs feedings. I have used them all a long time ago in the past, when I was homeless for a bit. Now I am just struggling as a single parent. It is tough to put food on the table for two and pay rent alone on one income, as well as pay for childcare. I don't have any luxuries..or even a car. I can't even afford to ride the bus most of the time..I have a bike. I wash much of my laundry by hand to save going to the laundry-mat. I am pretty frugal. I have become pretty creative in with cooking healthy meals. I make a lot of soups..cause it is the easiest thing to do with the veggies from the garden and food boxes. Oh I have a garden too, that helps out a lot. Tomorrow I am going to make pumpkin and kale soup:) I had to give up meat and bread for health reasons so it has been interesting going back to vegetarianism while using food banks. Food banks get so much bread, and very little fresh veggies. I am thankful for what I get though..I know that though I have experienced hunger, I have never starved. I really liked hearing other stories too, thank you for sharing:)