I am a 27 year old, single parent to a 7 year old. When I’m not being a parent to my child, I spend my extra time at work or doing homework. This wasn’t always the case. In 2010, I went into treatment for an addiction. I was on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families for a year. While I had been on TANF on and off in the past, this was the longest I needed assistance. I was not working at the time and had taken time off from school.
Whenever anyone asked what I did, I would get really embarrassed because I hated being on state assistance. I returned to school once my treatment was completed and graduated with my AA degree. I am now a full-time undergraduate student at Seattle University. The point of this story is to remind people, before a judgment is made about a welfare recipient and how lazy they might be or how they are abusing the system, remember me. I know I am not the only one out there that has fallen on some hard times and needed a little help. There is a very small amount of TANF recipients that actually abuse the system, the rest are people just like me who want better for their families.
Tierra Lovelace
Lynnwood
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