Editor’s note: This commentary is by Adriel Jubilee McGill, who is a property manager for the Addison County Community Trust, a nonprofit affordable housing organization, and a member of Rights & Democracy. She lives in Bridport with her husband and three children.
[E]very day I work with those who would directly benefit from access to a family and medical leave insurance program and an increase in their pay to a livable wage.
I also have my own personal experience with earning low wages and lacking family and medical leave insurance, and the huge challenges that come with both.
Six years ago, my husband and I found out that we were expecting. A few weeks later we discovered not only were we expecting, but we had twins on the way. I had several medical issues from the start, so continuing to work was not an option.
To make up for the loss of my income, my husband began to work six days a week quite regularly, and eight-hour days often stretched into nine or 10 hours. It was impossible to build up any sort of savings, so the day after we came home from the hospital, my husband returned to work. We could only afford for him to miss three days of work for the birth of our children.
I was catapulted into a new life with our older daughter and two helpless infants. I was largely alone while my husband continued working long hours. The baby blues soon took a darker and deeper tone, I became so entrenched in guilt, exhaustion, sadness and anxiety that it consumed me. I had postpartum depression and anxiety.
I lost so much of myself that I became convinced that my husband and children would be better off without me and even planned for how I would end my life. I held off only because due to the anxiety, I was excessively fearful of SIDS. I knew no one else would set alarms to wake up every 15 or 20 minutes to make sure their babies were still breathing.
Thankfully, before my plan came to pass, my husband got a new job with a better wage, a livable wage. He was able to return to a 40-hour workweek and spend more time at home. He was no longer the stranger who left before our children woke up and returned after they went to bed. He was finally given the opportunity to fully bond with his children. Laughter and joy returned to our home. The difference between earning the minimum wage versus a livable wage was monumental for my family.
Working so hard to barely meet your basic needs causes an extreme amount of stress. There are no good outcomes when one endures this type of stress long term. It can cause some people to experience complete mental anguish like I did, some are tempted to commit crimes to survive, others seek solace or refuge — even if only fleeting — in life-destroying substances. It takes a remarkable toll on the body: memory problems, heart disease, it literally changes the brain structure and can cause damage and a reduced ability to connect with one’s world.
We have this narrative in our society that people need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but I can tell you it is impossible to enact positive change in your life unless you have hope. By passing a $15 minimum wage and creating a statewide family and medical leave insurance program, our legislators have an amazing opportunity to give hope to tens of thousands of working people like me, many of us well into adulthood and caring for families.
It is my hope, and the hope of many Vermonters just like me, that we can help bring Vermont’s minimum wage up to a livable wage, as well as helping Vermont become a better place for working families by passing family and medical leave insurance.
I hope that our senators and representatives hold the many struggling workers and their families in their hearts as they consider these two important pieces of legislation and help us break the chains that have bound far too many generations of Vermonters to poverty.
