My kid's child care director reached out before Christmas to ask what size clothes my kids wear because they wanted to include them in some holiday gift thing. I told him, but also assured him that they were provided for.

I guess I didn't really conceptualize that we'd been chosen as a needy family and it was a charity thing (the kids' basic info went anonymously on their giving tree and people brought in gifts). It was, in a word, absolutely humiliating. Besides that, my kids got piles and piles of crap from their grandparents, and we really didn't have room for more toys, more clothes, more mess.

I hate rejecting gifts because I think it's gutting when my gifts are rejected, and I hate feeling ungrateful and bitchy, but my kids don't need more clothes, they need a mother with more time, energy, and motivation to do laundry and clean the clothes they own. They need me to sit and play with them with the toys they have, they need me to read the books they already have.

I just feel like my struggle is completely unseen, misunderstood, and dismissed.