My mother's expression of her poverty.

My mother is a has Doctor of Philosophy graduate degree from Simon Fraser University, which she acquired through a scholarship. She's a brilliant woman, who is new out of university and can't even get a job as a barista. She claims it's because she is overqualified, and too old. She should not be living below the poverty line, but she is. This is what she had to say about it recently;

Do you have a family home? A family history? A place that you can go back to? A family cabin in the woods? A sense of permanence and extended family? Congratulations, you've got permanence privilege. I bet you never thought of that, but it's a thing. Many of us are fairly rootless -- I, for one, have parents and siblings and children but no place I consider 'home'-- not a house, a city, or even a country which I consider my true home. There's no 'there' to return to. There are no cousins in my vicinity, no links to family much beyond my parents and my awesome kids. I have a few decades-old friendships, but beyond that, I have no real connection to anything, everything in my life seems temporary.