Due to a precarious economy and stagnant wages, working-class mom Tina Wilson is forced to have it all – a husband, two kids, three jobs, an aggressive Adderall habit to cope with everything, and a fourth job to pay for all the Adderall. Living this close to the poverty line, she isn’t trying to keep up with the Joneses, she’s just trying to keep up with having it all!
Wilson became the sole breadwinner of her family five years ago, when her husband Dan lost his job to pursue his passion of online poker. After becoming pregnant in the only industrialized country without paid parental leave, they made the best of things, with her taking on more work, and him becoming lethargically depressed.
Her co-worker, Helen, recalls seeing Wilson at work just hours after giving birth. “She put the rest of us to shame, strolling in straight from the hospital. We were like ‘Wow, get it girl!’”
Fast-forward five years later, she has not one, but four jobs with no benefits or opportunities for advancement. If only we could be left with no choice but to have it all like Tina!
“Tina has been an inspiration to us all,” says Raphael Westman, manager of the Wal-Mart where she is a part-time greeter. “You could tell she had decades of experience prioritizing other people’s needs over her own.”
Wilson is forced to push herself even farther by spending her nights gravedigging at the cemetery. “I like the reminder that someday I will feel the sweet relief of death,” she says. She is truly blessed!
Wilson’s long hours are worth it for the five minutes and twenty-one seconds per day she gets to bond with her kids. “When I’m home for tuck-in, I really feel like I guess this is what I’m doing this all for.”
To put off the chronic exhaustion, she now keeps prescription-grade smelling salts in her purse. What a self-care rockstar!
Tina Wilson is living proof to women everywhere that you can have it all, as long as society cares so little about you that you have no other choice!
