what nobody explains about 'getting on your feet'
“my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
It’s a difficult sentence to sit with because it does not flatter us. It doesn’t soothe. It doesn’t offer the comfort of blaming everything outside of us, even when there are systems that deserve critique. It insists on something more exacting: that what we do not know can cost us—time, opportunity, stability, and sometimes the shape of our entire lives.
I thought about that line recently while watching a young woman on TikTok speak about housing programs, about Section 8, about how what is framed as opportunity can become a kind of containment. She wasn’t entirely precise in her language, but she was reaching toward something true. She was trying to articulate a feeling many people recognize but cannot always name: that there are doors we are encouraged to walk through without ever being given a map, and that once inside, it’s not always clear how to leave.
I didn’t need the video to understand the premise. I have lived it.
the door that opened without instruction
I was nineteen when my step sister told me to apply for an apartment in a low-income complex. I was pregnant at the time, young in a way that was not only about age but about exposure. There are certain kinds of knowledge that aren’t taught directly; they’re absorbed through proximity, through observation, through being in environments where information circulates freely. I didn’t grow up with that kind of access. I knew how to follow instructions. I didn’t yet know how to interpret systems.
She gave me the information simply: where to apply, who to call, what to fill out. There was no extended explanation of how these processes work, how long they take, what determines priority, or what it means to be accepted into that kind of housing long-term. It was presented, as it often is, as an opportunity.
And I treated it as such. I completed the application. I submitted what was required. And then I waited.
Life, of course, did not pause while I waited. Pregnancy progressed. Circumstances shifted. Responsibilities accumulated. The application receded into the background of my mind, one more thing I had done in an effort to secure stability.
Two years later, everything changed.
My sister died of cancer.
Her death wasn’t connected to housing systems or public policy. It was a personal, devastating loss that reorganized our family in an instant. Her children needed care. My mother and step father stepped in, as they had to. And I, now a young mother myself, was suddenly confronted with a different kind of urgency: not just how to survive, but where. My mother told me I was grown with a child, these children had to come and live with them, I needed to figure something out for myself and my son.
It was in that moment—pressed by circumstance, with very little guidance—that I returned to the application I had almost forgotten.
when survival requires improvisation
I went to the apartment complex in person. I didn’t have a strategy. I didn’t have language for what I was asking. What I had was necessity and a willingness to be direct.
I told them I had applied two years prior. I asked if there was anything they could do, anything they could check, any possibility at all. I was not operating from entitlement; I was operating from the understanding that I needed an answer, even if the answer was no.
What happened next has stayed with me for years.
They gave me keys that day.
There are moments in life that feel almost improbable in their timing. This was one of them. It would be easy to interpret it as luck, or coincidence, or even exceptionalism. I do not. I understand it as a convergence of factors: timing, yes, but also presence, willingness, and something deeper that I can only describe as grace.
But access is not the same as understanding.
Being given a place to live solved an immediate problem. It did not equip me with the knowledge of how to navigate what came next.
the quiet architecture of a trap
The woman who lived beneath me had been in that complex for over a decade. Her name was Kiwi. She had multiple children—six, if I remember correctly—and at the time I met her, she was pregnant again, this time with triplets. There was a man who came and went, arriving in nice cars, playing music, present in bursts but not anchored to the space in the way she was.
From the outside, it might have looked like stability. Rent that was subsidized. A consistent address. A known environment. But proximity reveals what distance obscures.
There’s a particular rhythm to places like that. A way time moves. A way ambition is deferred, not always by lack of desire, but by the accumulation of small constraints. Policies that are difficult to interpret. Income thresholds that discourage upward movement. A lack of clear pathways out.
It’s not that people don’t want more. It’s that the structure around them doesn’t make “more” easily accessible.
What I began to understand, slowly, was that opportunity without education can become a holding pattern. Not a dramatic fall, not an immediate crisis, but a gradual narrowing of options.
You’re housed, but not necessarily advancing. You’re supported, but not necessarily equipped.
And if no one has explained to you how to transition out, how to leverage the opportunity rather than be absorbed by it, you can remain there indefinitely. Waitlist for housing is decades long, because people are trapped by the facade of it all.
Not because you lack intelligence. Not because you lack effort.
Because you lack information.
knowledge as a form of protection
The idea that “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” is often interpreted narrowly, as if it applies only to formal education or religious understanding. But knowledge, in this context, is broader. It’s procedural. It’s environmental. It’s knowing how systems function, what they require, what they reward, and where they limit you.
At nineteen, I didn’t have a comprehensive understanding of any of this. What I had was instinct, a willingness to ask questions, and an increasing awareness that I did not want to become fixed in that environment.
This is where resourcefulness becomes more than a personality trait. It becomes a survival mechanism.
I paid attention. I observed patterns. I listened. I asked. I noticed what people did not say as much as what they did. And I began to form a quiet, internal assessment: this could hold me here if I’m not careful.
There’s a difference between being provided for and being positioned for growth. The distinction is subtle, but it matters.
Provision addresses immediate need. Positioning determines long-term trajectory.
Without knowledge, it’s easy to confuse the two.
the reluctant bridge back to home
At a certain point, I knew I didn’t want to stay. Knowing, however, is not the same as having a clear exit strategy. I did what many people resist doing, especially if their relationships are complex: I went back to my mother.
Our relationship was not uncomplicated. There was hesitation on her part, reluctance even. She told me I would disturb her peace if I were to come back. Support wasn’t offered freely or enthusiastically. But it was offered. And I was desperate.
And that mattered.
It’s important to be precise here. Survival is often narrated as an individual achievement, a testament to personal strength or determination. That narrative is incomplete. Most people who transition out of constrained environments do so with some form of assistance—emotional, financial, informational, or structural.
Even reluctant support is still support.
I accepted it. I used it. And I continued to move.
Eventually, that movement led me to Texas. The relocation happened during the pandemic, which adds its own layer of complexity to the story, but the significance remains the same: I left.
Not because I was fundamentally different from anyone else in that complex. Not because I was more deserving. But because, at key moments, I had access to information, to support, and to an internal conviction that staying was not the end of my story.
systems, silence, and the illusion of equal access
It’s easy to discuss programs like Section 8 in abstract terms—policy, funding, eligibility. It’s more difficult to examine the lived experience of navigating them.
What becomes clear, when you do, is that access is not evenly distributed, even within systems designed to increase access. Information is uneven. Guidance is inconsistent. Expectations are often implicit rather than explicit.
The result is a kind of stratification within already marginalized communities. Some people learn how to move through these systems strategically. Others remain within them without ever being shown how to transition out.
This isn’t solely a matter of personal responsibility. It’s a structural issue. But acknowledging structural limitations doesn’t remove the necessity of individual awareness. If anything, it intensifies it.
Because until systems are redesigned to be more transparent, more educational, more oriented toward mobility rather than maintenance, knowledge will continue to function as a dividing line.
Those who have it move differently.
Those who do not are more likely to remain where they are.
spiritual grounding as orientation, not escape
There’s a tendency, when discussing topics like this, to separate the practical from the spiritual, as if they operate in different domains. In my experience, they’re intertwined.
What sustained me during that period was not just resourcefulness, but orientation. A sense that my life was not random, that my decisions mattered, that I was accountable not only to circumstance but to something higher.
I don’t approach this in a performative way. I’m not interested in presenting faith as a formula or a guarantee of outcomes. What I can say, with clarity, is that believing in something beyond my immediate environment altered how I interpreted my options.
It allowed me to see the apartment not as a destination, but as a temporary provision.
It allowed me to seek movement, even when movement was not obvious.
It allowed me to hold both gratitude and discernment at the same time.
That combination—gratitude for what is given, discernment about what is sustainable—is critical.
Without it, you risk either rejecting help prematurely or accepting conditions that were never meant to be permanent.
what it means to know
This in’t about Section 8 housing. It’s about knowledge.
Knowledge, in the context of this story, isn’t abstract. It’s specific.
It’s knowing that waitlists exist and how they function.
It’s understanding income thresholds and how they affect your options.
It’s recognizing the difference between stability and stagnation.
It’s being aware of timelines, requirements, and alternatives.
It’s asking questions, even when you’re unsure how to frame them.
It’s also knowing yourself—your limits, your desires, your tolerance for certain environments.
All of this constitutes knowledge.
And all of it can be learned.
The tragedy is not that people don’t know. The tragedy is that they’re often not taught, and that the environments they inhabit do not prioritize the transmission of that knowledge.
a different kind of responsibility
To say that lack of knowledge can be destructive is not to assign blame. It is to name reality.
The responsibility, then, is twofold.
Individually, there is a responsibility to seek, to ask, to remain curious, even when it’s uncomfortable. To resist the urge to settle into what’s familiar if that familiarity is limiting.
Collectively, there’s a responsibility to share. To make information accessible. To demystify systems. To ensure that what one person learns doesn’t remain isolated, but becomes part of a broader network of understanding.
This is particularly urgent for Black women, who are often expected to navigate complexity without instruction, to perform resilience without support, to create stability in environments that do not easily yield it.
Knowledge, in this context, is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.
the shape of a life, reconsidered
When I look back on that period now, I don’t see it as a singular turning point. I see it as a series of small decisions, each one informed—however imperfectly—by an increasing awareness of what I didn’t want to remain true.
My stepsister’s life, and her death, sit within that memory not as a symbol, but as a person. Someone who offered me an opportunity without necessarily having the language to explain its full implications. Someone who did the best she could with what she knew.
That is, in many ways, the most honest description of all of us.
We move with what we know.
And where knowledge is limited, so too are our options.
Opportunity is often presented as a doorway, but doors don’t guarantee direction. Without maps, without instruction, without a clear understanding of what lies beyond and how to move through it, what appears open can quietly become enclosing.
The difference is not always visible at first. It reveals itself over time—in the narrowing of options, in the difficulty of transition, in the quiet realization that staying has become easier than leaving.
Knowledge interrupts that pattern. It restores movement. It reframes what is possible and what is provisional.
Some doors are meant to be walked through. Others are meant to be walked beyond.
Gratitude vs discernment ❤️❤️❤️brilliant
This is so thoughtful, wise, and, for me, eye-opening. This especially: “There are certain kinds of knowledge that aren’t taught directly; they’re absorbed through proximity, through observation, through being in environments where information circulates freely.” You explain so well the many parts of life we must navigate. And you inspire me to be more aware, to observe more intentionally. Thank you for that. I’m so sorry you lost your sister so young. I know you said, “stepsister,” but a sister’s a sister, and sibling loss is agonizing. Thanks again for writing this.