Beyond Survival photo contest: four entries

Earlier this year, we asked Mainers to submit photographs for a contest called "Beyond Survival" to help us all understand the experience of facing financial hardship in Maine. Over the next few days, we're sharing some of those photos and stories on social media, and the full stories are reprinted below with permission from the authors.

All Maine families want and deserve to thrive, but Maine has 34,000 kids living in poverty--and provides the lowest TANF (income for families) grants in New England. We're working to pass LD 1877, to update Maine’s TANF program, provide more opportunities to parents and kids, and get more Maine families 'Beyond Survival."

We need your voices to help pass LD 1877! Sign up for updates and to get involved.

Genevieve, Kittery: "Who’s Got the Power?"

This is all of the documentation of two weeks worth calls and notes calling around to several agencies looking for help to prevent the disconnection of my electricity. Why no power? Recently, I received a disconnection notice from Central Maine Power. The disconnection date was 04/27/2023 and the amount to stop disconnection was $1924.38. The notice was dated 04/20/2023 and I received it in the mail on 04/24/2023. Not very much time to find nearly $2000.

One may be asking, “Why so much money?” I was also wondering the same thing. You see, prior to this I had been on a payment arrangement in order to tackle my unpaid balance. This means that I agreed to pay an additional $36 per month on top of my monthly total. Unfortunately, I had gotten behind over the course of the winter in making monthly payments in order to afford fuel to heat my home as well as having to pay for some unforeseen expenses.

As it turns out, breaking a payment arrangement means that I had to bring my account “up to date” in order to prevent disconnection. No negotiations allowed.

I immediately began searching for emergency resources. Day after day, I reached out to several different agencies for help. Within two weeks I had come up with $1400 but I still needed $524.38.

By this time the disconnection date had come and gone. It was now, May 8th and the power was officially disconnected. I spent all day on the 8th looking for more assistance and again on the 9th. Fortunately, agencies that had been unable to help me prior to the disconnection were now able to help with the remainder. By 3:30 pm on 05/09/2023, Catholic Charities had agreed to help with the remaining $150 and the power to my home was restored by 4:00!!!!!

What are the barriers to accessing help? There are a number of agencies out there but they all have different requirements for who meets their criteria for help. Here’s a few examples of what I encountered these past two weeks:

• Funding- so many people are struggling and these agencies have limited funding so they can’t help everyone no matter how much they want to.
• Income guidelines- general assistance told me I was over income even though my only income is disability.
• What constitutes an emergency- since my power was not disconnected YET , it was not technically an emergency, even though it was imminent.
• TANF requirements- as a person who is disabled, I unable to meet the requirements of the TANF program. The TANF program is not designed for someone who is not seeking employment.
• Judgement/assumptions- I was asked questions like why I let my bill get so high and why I wasn’t making payments on time. Someone advised me that I should be setting money aside every month for emergencies like this.

What’s the answer? I don’t have an answer but it starts with understanding the shared and collective experiences of those who are living in poverty. Choosing not to pay bills for basic necessities is a misconception. Living in poverty is about trying to prioritize the immediate need.

It’s a juggling act of trying to pay rent so one can avoid becoming homeless; feeding your family so they can be healthy; keeping the power on so daily life isn’t interrupted; not running out of heating oil so you don’t have to use electric heaters and end up with a $400 electric bill… and so much more.

Carrie Theriault, Alfred: "My Girl"

“Even through the abuse we had been stuck in the middle of, she smiled. This little girl is a hero. When my arm was broken she made me iced tea, helped me get into the shower, begged to let me see a doctor. She is the reason I was brave, because on her birthday that day she told me I wasn't being brave. Her smile never faded, so I never gave up. So we survived. Smiling.”

Natalie, Mariaville: "Free Food Hunting for Fungi"

Poverty is a cycle that once you fall into it, it’s nearly impossible to get out of. It’s harder so if you were born or grew up in it. It’s one thing going wrong, getting back on your feet for the next obstacle to step up. It’s buying a junk car because you don’t have credit, since everything you own is bought with money you saved for months or possibly years.

It’s having that same car reliably break down time and time again, costing you more than a newer car would have. Yet, you HAVE to get to work and school so there goes the savings, or picking what bills won’t be paid.

It’s choosing DAILY to put your mental, emotional, and physical well being on the back burner. Your family needs you to go to the dead end job just to have power, food, clean water and a roof over their heads.

It’s a cycle of renting until you are priced out of the market and have to move in with family, friends, or in a camper, tent or on the street. Its burning out because your body is telling you it can’t do it anymore, but you push through because you have no other options.

Its one injury or accident from ends not meeting. It’s “donating” plasma to buy your child shoes or pay for a field trip so they don’t miss out on the experience. It is having your child come home in tears asking if they were bad because “Santa” could only afford $20 worth of gifts and that includes clothes they already desperately need.

It’s having to explain why “vacations” are at home or a place of work. It is sending your kids with friends or family so they can go to an amusement park, knowing that you won’t have the money or time to take them.

It’s having only one car and having to stay in town at a library, parking lot or window shopping for things you will probably never be able to afford, because your partner is working and you can’t afford the gas to drive home until they are done. It’s looking at the ever-on gas light and wondering if you will even make it to work the next day or home that night.

It’s skipping meals, sometimes several in a row , so that your family has enough to eat.

It’s watching people live their lives around you and wondering what’s wrong with you.

It’s getting calls from friends and family bawling their eyes out, because they don’t know what to do anymore, and all you can do is listen because your are going through the same thing.

It’s hearing people around you say “ I did this when I was your age” - forgetting they had help getting started. It’s going for help and being called a liar or that your abusing the system.

Poverty is a cycle that EVERYONE who is in it wants their children to get out of, but can’t give them the tools to break it.

For me, personally, poverty is giving up on childhood dreams, watching time pass by - because that’s all we can afford.

Mom, 35, Central Maine: "The Tar-Paper Shack”

This was another of my childhood homes. It was completely unfinished on the inside and outside, wrapped in tar-paper on the outside and the inside had studs for walls, some had sheetrock, others didn't. We could move through them without using doors.

Nothing was painted or finished. The floors were plywood that my mother still scrubbed weekly and kept clean even though there was nothing worth keeping clean, it was worth it to her to take pride in our space. There were no doors, sheets hung for privacy on the bedrooms and bathrooms. Pink panther roll out insulation lined the ceilings, covered in poly plastic.

There was no foundation as it was built on telephone poles since my family could not afford to pour a foundation or do the groundwork where the house sat. The exposed "basement" made the pipes freeze constantly in the winter, even though we wrapped it in plastic every winter. I remember waking up at 5am before school to go down "under the house" and thaw pipes with a hair dryer so we would have water.

We threw wood up through a hole cut in the floor that accessed a place near the woodstove and wood box where my brother and I kept the wood box filled after splitting and piling all summer and fall, throwing it "under the house" out of the elements to season. The house was full of wood spiders.

We had no kitchen, only chipboard and 2x4's. We had to close off the back end of the house in the winter because we could not afford to heat it as necessary. My mother, brother and I all slept in the living room on a couch and mattress on the floor to be close to the woodstove. Otherwise in the summer, we each had a room.

It was a camp, basically. My single mother did her best to support my brother and I with whatever resources we had. I remember fighting with my brother over who got to use the toilet first when we finally got one along with a plastic shower stall, after living without one for 5 years in our previous house while trying to build this one.

My dad left the house in this condition when he moved out and left the family. Though there has been some progress on it (all the work done by my mother - shingling it and siding it herself because she could not afford a carpenter), it still stands there unfinished to this day.