Michelle S. - Caregiver
Michelle has always believed in the power of community. “It takes a village to raise a child,” she says. And she’s lived by that. Years ago, neighbors thought she ran a daycare because of the steady stream of children playing in her yard. There were always 8 or 10 kids, all around the same age as her own children, laughing and running around outside.
But Michelle wasn’t running a business. She was just doing what she felt was right: making sure children had a safe place to grow up, to feel rooted. “Especially in a single-parent household, you want your kids to feel like they belong. I didn’t want to move them around. I wanted them to have community.”
Her children, now in their 30s, still keep in touch with the friends they made in that neighborhood. Back then, Michelle poured herself into keeping them grounded by attending church every week, early morning prayer, Wednesday night youth services, children’s academy, and YMCA activities. She wanted them to stay active and feel loved.
Now, decades later, she’s doing it all over again—this time for her grandchildren. One of her grandsons came to live with her during COVID. Remote learning had become too much, and as a former teacher, Michelle stepped in to homeschool him. She’s fiercely protective. “I want to be able to see him. That’s how I know he’s safe.” She takes him to libraries, keeps him engaged, and nurtures his growth every day.
But the financial toll is real.
Michelle is near retirement but can’t afford to retire yet. She explains that if she takes Social Security now, she’ll get less than half of what she should be getting. And with rent and the cost of living constantly rising, the pressure is crushing. She needs just six more months of teaching to qualify for full retirement, but finding the right job is a challenge. Public service or nonprofit work would help her qualify for loan forgiveness, too, but many jobs come through contracting agencies that offer wages barely higher than fast food. “They want to pay me $25 an hour with a master’s degree and multiple certifications. That’s what you’d make at McDonald’s these days.”
The local school her grandson attends doesn’t have an extended after-school program. He’s thriving there, but juggling his care with the demands of a job search is overwhelming. “Kids need to be the priority,” she says, “but their needs become secondary when bills, survival, and logistics come first.”
Even planning to take a new job brings disruption. “You have to be at work an hour early, so who’s going to watch the child while you get there? Everything in the household changes. It’s an adjustment for the whole family.”
Still, Michelle is determined. She plans to use her lunch hour to pick up her grandson and bring him to after-school programs at the YMCA, so he can stay on a stable routine while she finishes her workday. “Stability is the most important thing for kids,” she says. “A lot of the problems we see in children come from instability, from feeling insecure. I want to protect him from that.”