From another article about her: > Before long, Monroe was using a food bank. “It had taken me four or five weeks to pluck up the courage to go. The first time,

From another article about her: > Before long, Monroe was using a food bank. “It had taken me four or five weeks to pluck up the courage to go. The first time, one of the women looked at me and I looked at her. She went to church with my mum. She said, ‘Your mum will be devastated.’ And I said, ‘You can’t tell anyone. You haven’t seen me.’ She said, ‘Your parents will help you,’ and I said, ‘They can’t know.’” > That’s what I don’t understand, I say. Why didn’t you tell your parents when they were in a position to help? “Because … ” For once, she slows down. “I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I had had a good job and I’d fucked it. I was embarrassed that I’d ended up not being able to provide for my son, and I was worried that if I told a soul, the walls would come crumbling down. Because my parents had fostered for most of my childhood, I’d grown up with this fear that if I ever had a child, he would be taken into care. That I would be an unfit mother. I’d grown up with almost 100 children revolving through my childhood home. So in my head, nearly every kid went into care because nearly every kid I came across was in the care system. I was terrified that if I told anyone, my son would be taken into care.” So the shame itself was one of the biggest obstacles - compounded by the idea that poverty is evidence of personal inadequacy or moral weakness. There is a problem with lack of community there: the feeling that really struggling means that you don't deserve help, because that's the message you get from your society. (And it certainly doesn't help that lack of money excludes you from all kinds of normal social activities, as she mentions in the article.)