A 38-year-old single mother in Jackson shares her struggles with poverty, systemic barriers and the daily sacrifices she makes to create a better future for her children—and why real change begins with investing in Black women like her.
A groundbreaking Ms. series, Front & Center first began as first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income from Springboard to Opportunities’ Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT). Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, the aim is to expand our focus beyond a single policy intervention to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women experiencing poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face—including navigating the existing safety net; healthcare, childcare and elder care; and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
My name is Candel, and I’m a 38-year-old single mother living in a subsidized housing complex in Jackson. I have two wonderful children: my daughter who is 14, and my son who just turned 10 last month.
Life as a single parent isn’t easy. We don’t really have any extended family—I’m single, and the only family my kids have are their father’s siblings.
We don’t have a system in this state or country that’s set up to help us. You have to go out there and you have to get help yourself because you can’t wait on nobody else.
I’m currently looking for work and doing interviews and filling out a lot of applications, but finding a job that fits around my children’s schedules is challenging. Childcare is a major obstacle: My kids are too old for daycare, and I can’t leave them alone for long periods because someone needs to be there to make sure food is cooked and their homework is done. I always put my children’s needs before my own, which often means going without things I want or need. You get used to living that way after a while, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Despite the struggles, I have dreams. I’ve always wanted to work in social services, especially with children and adults. My ultimate goal is to open an adult daycare for senior citizens, providing care for elderly loved ones while their families are at work, doing things like taking them to their doctor’s appointments and what not, which I know is a major challenge for people who are caregivers but like me are also trying to earn a living.
Financially, it’s a constant struggle. The little income I receive isn’t enough to cover our monthly expenses. Like I said, I’ve had to adapt to not getting what I want — sacrificing for my kids’ needs. To make ends meet, I sometimes babysit, braid hair, or run errands for extra cash. I think maybe one time in my life I earned a little more than minimum wage, which in Mississippi is $7.25 an hour. Realistically, I would need at least $16 an hour to consider myself financially stable. The cost of everything has just gone up so much, I mean you go to the Dollar Tree and nothing is actually a dollar anymore. So you really have to be earning so much more to keep up with this cost of living that seems to never stop rising.
The summer months are really difficult when my kids are home from school which means the food budget has to go up. In past years, I’ve had to rely on food pantries and churches just to get meals together for the day. The summer cash disbursement from Springboard helped, but it was still barely enough to cover the basics. I believe Mississippi should implement programs like the Summer EBT to ensure children don’t go hungry when school’s out. So many moms where I live don’t have reliable transportation, so having some kind of access to fresh fruit and vegetables to make a full meal would be really helpful for moms who don’t have a ride to the store.
Childcare is a major obstacle: My kids are too old for daycare, and I can’t leave them alone for long periods because someone needs to be there to make sure food is cooked and their homework is done.
Healthcare is another challenge. We have Medicaid, but it only covers so much. They won’t see you at the urgent care if you don’t have the money for your copayments. Same with prescriptions—if I don’t have that copay money, I’ve had to let prescriptions just sit there. So Medicaid is better than nothing, but it only works to a certain extent.
I really want to see our politicians doing more for the people. I voted for Kamala Harris, because our country needs new leadership. When I saw a Black woman standing up there, it gave me hope. It showed me anything is possible. Anything is possible. It gave me hope for the future and it made me want to do better for myself. Unfortunately we already know how Donald Trump is going to run things. We should be moving forward as a country, not backward.
Most days, I feel lost, behind and left out. It’s so easy to get stuck—you get a job for a couple months, your rent goes up. If you’re not working, then maybe you get a check for utilities, but that doesn’t even cover the whole bill. You’re set up to fail when you should be set up to win. We don’t have a system in this state or country that’s set up to help us. You have to go out there and you have to get help yourself because you can’t wait on nobody else. We don’t have that type of opportunity. So you have to go out there and get it for yourself, and not everyone has the mindset to do that given everything they’ve been through.
Life isn’t easy, but I am able to find joy and hope in my children’s smiles. Seeing them happy and not having to worry gives me the strength to keep pushing forward to the future I want for us—I don’t need all the money in the world, I only want to get up and go to work and come back home and not hear gunshots, nobody arguing outside; a peaceful house and good environment for my kids. It’s not a lot I want, just being financially stable and knowing that my kids are in school, getting the right education so they can be successful and don’t have to go through the things that their mama went through. That’s joy for me.
