To Those Who Are Struggling Financially Right Now ...

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. Today I really wanted to do a message from my heart to yours and yours being specifically those people that are struggling right now, struggling financially in these economic times. In this particular video, I'm not speaking specifically to indigenous peoples or indigenous allies, speaking to anyone who thinks they are struggling or knows they are struggling financially right now. I want to share with you what helps me, has helped me in the past when I've faced huge financial challenges. And what helps me now. Let's talk about it. Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Zane River first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And like I said today, I want to talk to those who struggle, those who are struggling financially. And I definitely know what that feels like. Been there, done that. When I first became a single mom, I was the mom of a one and a half year old and a three and a half year old. And I hadn't been working for several years while I had my children and I was suddenly on my own with two kids to support. But I had a secret weapon. And for anyone who follows my channel and has watched a few of my videos, and by the way, if that is you, thank you so much for your support. You have no idea how much your views help. But for anyone who has followed my channel, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that my secret weapon. Excuse me, try not to sneeze here. Sneezing is not my secret weapon. My secret weapon was my mom. And it like with so many things with parenting, if you haven't figured it out yet, and maybe we're not meant to figure it out till we're grandparents, but it's not what she said that resonates. It's not what she said that lives on. Even though I quote her all the time, it's what she did, the example she set. Now, my parents always struggled financially. Having three children is a vow of poverty. My mom was a stay at home mom and my dad worked at the local sawmill. Oh, he made good money. But like I said, raising a family and maintaining a home, expensive. But once we, once my youngest brother got into high school and we went to high school in the next town. So we were gone for the entire day. At that point my mom decided that it was time for her to help my dad support our family financially. Now you've heard me talk about my mom, that she had a grade four education, the types of jobs she could get either because she had a grade four Education or the fact that we lived in a town of like 400 people. One industry, Sawmill Town definitely limited her options. So my mom did what so many in our small hometown did. She went to work at the sawmill. My mom wore work boots. My mom wore a hard hat. My mom worked on what was called the green chain. She piled lumber 8 foot long, 2 by fours for a full shift, 7, 8 hour shift every single day outside. That meant if it was 40 below or 30 above, she was still piling lumber. My mom ended up with 18 inch biceps, which she was incredibly embarrassed about because she was always the lady. My brother and I thought it was uber cool. I still think it is. But she did what she could. And for a few years there things seemed to lighten up a little bit. But it wasn't long after that the dad got sick and he couldn't work anymore. And mom became the sole income. Dad had his pensions, of course, but mom was the one that worked. And then dad passed away. And I saw. I saw the fear set in. The fear that I know so many of you are feeling. The fear of how the heck are we going to do this? The fear of I have no idea what to do. The fear of what it might do to your family. So the first hurdle was my mom was afraid she was going to lose the house. I'm not going to go into the reasons why. They're personal and in my parents story, not mine. But that was rectified very quickly. And she discovered that no, the the house was actually paid off thanks to my dad's life insurance. So the house was safe. But she was up to her neck in debt in bills that were fine and manageable with two incomes, but not anything she could handle with just the one. So I was 17 at the time and the eldest in the house. So I watched my mom and we talked about this a lot. I knew my mom needed someone to talk to even though I had no idea what she could do. Luckily she just needed someone to listen. And maybe that's the first step for you. And then my mom went to a lawyer and she it was lawyer that helped her solidify things for the house. And the lawyer drafted a letter for her to send to all her creditors, basically explaining the dad had died and that mom was more than willing to honor the debt, but that it might take a little bit longer. And in the letter it stated what her bi weekly payment to whichever creditor was going to be. And I remember those letters and helping her send them out. And sometimes it was a ten Dollar a week payment, sub a twenty dollar bi weekly payment and sometimes it was fifty dollars. And for the one she wanted to clear off quickly it was a hundred dollars. And she sent out those letters and then she created her book. It was an accounting book like you can buy them at, you know, office supplies stores where it just has the journal pages inside the three column accounting pages. If you know nothing about accounting, it just columns on a piece of paper. And every one of her creditors became a page and she wrote out the total she owed them. And every single time she made a bi weekly payment, every payday should put her little payment in there and subtract it out to get the New Balance. And the one thing I found interesting at the time, and now I see her wisdom, when she would pay a creditor in full, she would not rip the paper out of the book. She would put the line through it and write paid in full. And she left it in the book because she knew one day, eventually, one step at a time, one payment at a time, that there would be more pages in that book that said paid in full than there was debt. Even though in the beginning every page was debt. There's this picture. I don't know what happened to it. I wish I still had it. But it was. And it's, what do you call those? A Polaroid picture. You know, the kind you take and develop in five minutes. You shook it out. That's why I made that, that gesture. It was a picture of my mom coming in the back door of our house for her lunch break. She was on night shift and she came home for lunch at 9 00pm and it's her in her layers of sweaters and her work boots and her work gloves. And I don't think she had the hard hat on in the picture, but she definitely had it in the truck with her. It was my mom coming home from work. And what I remember the most, and this is where she beats me every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Mom never complained. She was so grateful for the chance to feed her family. She made friends at work. She would come home and tell us some disgusting dirty joke she had heard from the guys in the lunchroom. She smiled all the time. My mom was piling two by fours in minus 40 degree weather and she didn't complain. So if you wonder where I get my resilience from, if you wonder how I have survived hard times, if you wonder how I survived 10 years of domestic violence, I had my mom not to lean on. But as an example of how to get through hard times and how to find a way to smile and how to take baby steps. If that's all you can take, at least you're moving and how not. Then how the the darkest night and the coldest winters eventually end. I can remember one particularly cold winter night that mom was on night shift. She came home for lunch. And this was long before the. You know, the most expensive vehicles had automatic car starters. Most of the time you jumped in and you froze your tush off while you waited for your vehicle to warm up. And mom only had an hour for lunch. And even though we lived maybe five minutes from work, sitting there and waiting for the vehicle to warm up would have taken a huge chunk out of her very short lunch hour. So she started it and I assume let it warm up for a few minutes and then just drove home. What we didn't realize is when she got home, we knew it was taking her a while to come in from the vehicle, which didn't seem right. Whatever. What we didn't realize was when mom got home and went to park the truck, she realized she had frozen her hands to the steering wheel. That's how cold it was in the truck and how cold it was out that night. So she removed her hands from the steering wheel. I'm not going to go into the gross details. And I made a mistake. So many people do. Her hands were burning now and stinging and hurting because she had basically just ripped them off the steering wheel. So she stuck her hands in the snow to try to calm them down. This is not what you do with frostbite hands. She came in, we realized what happened. Now we're taking her to the hospital, which happened to be in the next town, the same town we went to school in. And I'll never forget it. She was. She wasn't. My mom didn't complain. She didn't expect life to be easy. She knew it was damn hard. She also knew that the life she was leading with my dad was so much. And even after, my dad was so much better than what she had led before him. That night in the merge, the only time I ever heard my mom complain, the only time my mom had an issue where she didn't want them to cut her wedding ring off and they told her they had to because her hands were swelling up and it was going to choke off her finger. That's what she didn't want to do. So you may be scared stiff. And like I said, God knows I've known those times. I have gone three days intentionally Eating once every three days to try to make money last. I've drank a ton of coffee to try to keep myself from feeling hungry on the days in between. I know what poverty is like. I drove a car without a heater in January weather to try to earn enough to feed my kids and pay my household bills. I know how scary it can be. I also know how strong you are and how resilient you are. Even if you don't remember right now, what I need you to do is figure out something you can do. The antidote to helplessness is responsibility. Any single time, time you feel helpless, don't think of all the things that you don't control. Think of the things you do, which is you. There is always something in the house that you don't need anymore that you could sell off. There are people selling crafts on Etsy every single day. There is, you know, clothes that you don't wear anymore that you can put on Facebook, buy or buy and sell or whatever it's called. Do something. Do something. You know, I've had my water shut off. I've had the electricity shut off. It been there, done that. One step at a time. Because doing nothing only makes the hell last longer. Even baby steps will eventually get you across the room. I wanted to do this message today because I know a lot of people are suffering. People I love, people I like, people I've just met and people I don't even know. You got this. Believe in yourself. Figure out a way. I'd probably even be willing to bet that you faced harder challenges than this one and you will get through it. Figure out a way. That's not me just being pushy. That's just me being my mother's daughter. Until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.