💔 Refusing a System That Watches You

🧓 Aging & Refusing

Now I’m 63. People ask: “Why don’t you just go back on social assistance?”

Because I remember:
- how my mother was treated
- how I was treated
- how my child could have been taken

Because poverty should not be a punishment. Because survival should not cost your dignity. Because I have already paid too much.

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⚠️ The System Isn’t Broken — It Works Exactly As Designed

It is designed to:

• 🟥 Keep people terrified
• 🟥 Keep families in chaos
• 🟥 Keep women desperate
• 🟥 Keep elders powerless
• 🟥 Keep trauma inherited

And then society wonders why:

• ⛺ Tent cities everywhere
• 🧊 Overdoses at bus stops
• 👶 Children taken into abusive care
• 👵 Seniors dying on sidewalks

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❓ Reflective Questions

1. What would you do if you lost a parent at 11 and the government threatened to take the rest of your family?
2. What if you worked 11 years until your body broke down — and then no one cared?
3. How would you feel if you had $22,000 in debt after 4 years of school, only not to be employed because of pregnancy, the dot‑com crash, or 9/11?
4. What if parenthood meant risking losing your child to the system?
5. Why are women punished for pregnancy but blamed for not working?
6. Why are seniors discarded when they’re no longer “profitable”?
7. Why are the most personal details demanded online when every major system has been hacked?
8. Why does “help” feel like surveillance, not support?
9. Why do we criminalize people trying to survive?
10. What if this happened to your child? Your mother? You?

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🎥 The New Surveillance: Job Interviews as Evidence

Today, almost every job interview is a video interview. And that means:

• 👀 They capture your face
• 📍 Your home
• 🔊 Your voice
• 📂 Your emotional reactions
• 🧠 Your trauma responses

What happens to that recording? Who is storing it? Who can access it? How long does it follow you?

The same government that demands deeply personal data online, now pairs it with your visual identity — forever.

If you are:
- disabled
- older
- racialized or Indigenous
- visibly poor
- traumatized
- desperate

…that video becomes evidence against you, not your worth.

This is another reason I refuse. Not because I don’t want help — but because help has become surveillance.

Some of us understand the system too well — and that terrifies them. People like us don’t fall into line. We question. We expose. We survive. Systems built on control don’t know what to do with survivors. So they hope we: 🕳️ disappear, 🧍‍♀️ give up, ⚰️ or die quietly. But we are still here. And we are not silent.

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🔥 We Must Demand Change

• 💥 Raise social assistance rates to meet real costs of living

Surviving the System: Childhood

💔 Surviving the System: Childhood to Parenthood

They always watch you. From your earliest trauma to your hardest decisions, the system waits for weakness. Not to help — but to control.

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👶 Childhood Trauma

I was 11 years old when my father died by suicide. 💔 My mother — devastated and alone — went on social assistance to keep us alive: me, my brother, and sister, ages 11, 13, and 16.

“Get a job or we’ll take your kids.”

That fear bonded itself to my bones — proof that help always comes with a threat.

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🔧 A Working Life, Cut Short

I worked 11 years in a hard, physical job. 💪 Until chronic tendonitis forced me to stop.

I returned to school as a mature student, paying for everything myself. I had a $15,000 credit rating, built on years of hard work. 💳

The program was supposed to be one year, but the college canceled programs repeatedly, turning it into four years. I had to keep reapplying for student loans — a trap designed to put students further in debt.

Then came the dot‑com crash and 9/11. 💥 I lost it all — my savings, my credit — because student loans defaulted.

And then… I found out I was pregnant at 40. 👶 A joy I have never regretted — but the trauma surrounding it was relentless.

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🍼 Pregnancy Under Surveillance

I returned to Canada pregnant. No one would hire me — visibly pregnant women were seen as a “burden.”

So the same system that once threatened my childhood now demanded compliance:

• “Prove over and over again that you’re poor.”
• “Give us your private information or you don’t eat.”
• “Comply or we will punish you.”

Every appointment felt like an interrogation. Every form felt like a confession. Every month felt like a test of worthiness to survive.

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💔 Forced On, Forced Off

They cut me off when my child was only 3. ❌ I scrambled to survive.

Then my mother — my mentor and protector — passed away. 💔 Grief forced me back into that system at 4.5 years old for my child, facing the same harassment my mother had endured.

Caseworkers didn’t see a parent doing everything for their child. They saw a file number, not a person.

Hospitals, offices, forms, checkboxes — all eyes on us. 👀 Even when I was doing everything right, they looked for reasons to punish.

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🧸 Covid, Childcare & Career Barriers

During Covid, no one would hire me as a nanny — even though I had just finished a 2-year contract in 2019. 🕰️ I was in my late fifties, and because of the age difference, I was seen as “too old” to be near a child.

💔 How many relationships, families, and careers were destroyed during this time? We are all living with this trauma, yet the system quietly brings in newcomers, finding them homes and jobs, while long-time residents are blocked at every turn.

One of the reasons I was so late having a child was no affordable childcare, leaving me trapped and waiting.

And because of all this, I had to change my career again. Now I have no tickets, no elder care, no ECE, no first aid, no food safe — all of the certifications and qualifications required to work, even though I laboured and educated myself for years.

Stay tuned for next post

Paid to Be Absent: Why Park Board Stipends Outpace Survival Incomes

 “Paid to Be Absent: Why Park Board Stipends Outpace Survival Incomes”

When I learned that Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Marie-Claire Howard has missed a significant number of meetings yet still collects a stipend of 💰 $18,743.38 per year, I felt disbelief, frustration — and honestly, pain.

That’s more money than many of us survive on. As someone unhoused 🏚️, house-sitting just to have a roof over my head, struggling to find steady work (while my own child can’t find a job either) — the contrast is gut-wrenching.

📊 The Numbers Don’t Lie

• Park Board Commissioners: ~$18,700/year
• Chair: ~$23,400/year
• Plus expenses ✈️🍽️

Meanwhile:

• Income assistance in B.C.: $935/month = ~$11,220/year
• Disability and low-income supports don’t even cover rent, never mind food 🍞, transit 🚍, or basic dignity 💔

🔎 The Questions We Need to Ask

• Why is it okay for elected officials to be paid more than survival incomes while missing meetings ❌?
• Why do poor people get punished for every mistake, while politicians are excused for absence after absence?
• Why isn’t there an automatic system of accountability tied to participation?

✨ My Lived Reality

I don’t begrudge fair pay for public service — but service means showing up. For me, every day is survival: finding safe shelter, stretching groceries 🍲, hoping my kid finds work. The system demands I fight for every dollar, yet hands stipends to absent officials as if accountability doesn’t matter.

It feels like society is saying:
👉 “If you’re poor, you must scrape by with nothing.”
👉 “If you’re elected, you get paid even when you don’t show up.”

💡 What Needs to Change

✅ Public attendance records
✅ Stipends tied to participation
✅ Real accountability — not excuses

Because for thousands of us living in Vancouver on survival mode 🥀, this isn’t just numbers on a page. It’s about fairness ⚖️, dignity ✊, and a city that actually values the people who call it home.