This isn’t the world I promised them.

This harsh, unforgiving landscape of unattainable dreams. It’s like walking through a wasteland of middle America. It has literally become something so unfamiliar to me that I can’t bring myself to claim her anymore. Her. The United States of America. HER. She is being smothered by corporations and profit.

This isn’t the “just work harder” world I grew up in, where a single mother making just over minimum wage—with a degree—could afford to buy a home and a new car.

I speak from experince because I bought my first home in my early twenties. At the time, I had two children in middle and elementary school that were just 23 months apart. I worked, hard. I sucked up overtime any chance I could, and I was able to purchase my first home with $2,000 as a down payment, and I had a 2.7% mortgage interest rate.

I was doing just fine and that’s the dream I sold my two children: if you work hard and you make the effort (seek out that overtime!), you will be able to have this too.

God, we are so far from that dream it actually physically hurts.

They don’t know why they have to work so hard for so little.

Companies have no loyalty. There are little to no life-long career positions any longer, and if there are they are being taken over by AI. There used to be companies you could trust and sadly that is no longer the case. Everyone is on the chopping block these days, in more ways than one.

Corporations and conglomerates have taken over everything.

Insurance is outrageous. Mortgage and rent rates are through the roof. Groceries are too damn expensive. Eating out anywhere has become a luxury or a splurge. Even McDonald’s. Hell, even good old reliable Taco Bell is more expensive than it used to be. And forget attempting to eat “healthy” that’ll set you back even further.

How do I reconcile this with my kids?

I see hope fade from their faces every single day and it is a mourning; a grief I never imagined I’d ever see.

How do I remain an encouraging force in their lives when they are both in their thirties, have eyes and ears, and can fully understand what’s happening around us?

How do I say it’s going to be okay when I’m not okay?

As far as they are concerned, their mother is exactly where she wants to be. But the truth is that that isn’t the case at all. I am just as stuck, just as incapacitated as they are.

I am barely scraping by while trying to provide emotional and financial help. I’m being priced out of healthcare. I live in an RV full-time. I have no savings, no retirement, no 401K. Nothing. Cancer took that money from me. It was either go bankrupt or go to the morgue. Those were the two best choices I had in front of me at the time…so I lived, long enough to watch my country crumbling around me. Long enough to watch the spark in my children’s eyes dim. Long enough to feel helpless as I try to explain or rationalize the irrational. It’s devastating.

So, what do I do?

What do I say?

What explanation is ever going to be good enough to withstand the scrutiny of generations to come?

I can’t apologize enough for the lies we sold our children. I am ravaged with grief and anger. I am frustrated that we didn’t do more as a society to protect our children from the predators they’ve faced for decades. They have survived so much—9/11, two major recessions, Covid-19, technology whiplash, the student debt explosion, social and cultural shifts, political turbulence, two major wars, climate crisis, Epstein files and ICE raids—just to name a few.

That list does not do them justice. And what is “Boomer” advice?

“Pick yourself up by the bootstraps.”

“Work harder.”

“Work two or three jobs.”

“Get a roommate or 12.”

Literally, anything other than regret, or awakening, or responsibility.

We have met our children’s future; we cultivated it and now here we all are, standing around with our collective d*cks in our collective hands, doing very little, if anything at all, to right the wrongs of our indulgence. For that, I will never forgive myself for not fighting harder.

This is not the world I promised my children. And I am deeply, deeply sorry.

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