She Left Her Child in Car to Gamble

Alicia Brown's choice was hers. Based upon lower energy levels she thinks, doesn't think, but reacts to stimuli in her private world. Probably driven by private fears she may not share, and survival concerns she left her child where she thought the child was safe: in her car! In a casino with a child she probably was ill-equipped to deal with the silent judgement of others. Barely holding onto life she might have been functionally unable to work a job and feed her child. She needed to focus on winning something for gas and food. We don't know. If she left her child in a car, or apartment room while she sold herself for money this would not be a different story; it would have different parameters to gauge, and judge her, and some would feel a different kind of rope to hang her from was in order.

 It is hard for many to think like women and men at the bottom of the social spectrum. Looking down upon them and their choices one runs the risk of feeling aloof and better than the subject beneath them. Looking down upon them is nothing like finding a place to 'see' the world they see, and discern. Judging the Alicia Browns is not asking where to fit in their lives with a mind, and spirit to help alleviate their pain, stresses, fears. What drives us, and them are the stories we hear in our heads. Poverty and being alone and poor with children is no easy role to play without a community to give a sense of belonging to people who will help feed your soul and body!

I don't know, or have the woman's answers, but punishing her will settle the feeling of self-righteous outrage, appease the law, and give vent to the rage against her ass-backwards thinking. There are hundreds of thousands of people like this living around us without a social structure that informs the better parts of who they are, or could be. When I see this mother I see myself in her. Not seeing another person is its own kind of hell, and divorces us from the process of sharing the art of living with other people's lives. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 1.12.14


her sad Story