by Kathy Panicola

Created on: April 17, 2009

As a former recipient of food stamps I have been on the receiving end of the social mark of disgrace, I have been in the grocery store and I have seen the rolling of the eye's, I have heard the whispers behind me while I purchased my grocery's with my food stamps. I had watched people judge me without even knowing me, or my reason for being on food stamps. I'm sure there are recipients of food stamps that fit the stigma that society puts upon them. But not everyone fits into that criterion. My family and I truly didn't, yet we were put into the same category as the those who abuse the system.

People watch one or two programs or news reports about how the welfare system has been abused, how someone has sold their food stamps to buy drugs, or how 'Susie' is on welfare, on drugs, and pregnant with her eighth child and doesn't know who her baby's daddy's are, and how she can't work because she isn't very educated, and she has no real working skills, and she comes from a mother who was a drug addict and brought her and her siblings up on the food stamp/welfare system. And how the cycle more than likely will not end with her, because her oldest child is now pregnant herself at seventeen, has dropped out of school and is now on welfare to care for her child. Yes, these things do happen and yes, they are terrible, heart wrenching reports. They are the things that cause people to get mad at the system, and sadly put a stigma on all who receive assistance.

Honestly, not everyone receiving assistance is doing any of the above, but yet all who receive are herded together like cattle, and branded with the stigma of society. Most are hard working people who need help, and thats what the system is for. Here's a headline for you; "Hard Working Couple Need Food Stamps To Supplement Their Income," not impressed. Not many people are with the truth. Headlines like that don't sell news papers, or make people want to tune in. Believe it or not, there are more people, who fall under that headline, then the one's who fall under the head line; "Man Puts House In Mother-In-Laws Name So Wife Can Collect Food Stamps." My husband and I were that couple who needed help supplimenting our income, yet most around us didn't see it that way. Most saw us as 'Susie', most were whispering,"they must be drunken drug addicts, who are just to lazy to get up and get a job." No, not true, we both got up every morning and went to work, (most of the time we worked over time) and still we didn't make enough

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