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I rarely scroll through reels online, but when I do, I can easily become consumed. The algorithm, like magic, serves reels with similar content and themes and I can get lost in a time warp.

Recently, one reel caught my attention. It featured a soulful song expressing deep pain and resilience. The lyrics echo what my clients have shared with me for over three decades: mothers—mostly single mothers—who survived child abuse and are now mothering their own children, striving to give them what they did not get as children while fiercely attempting to protect them from the trauma they once endured.

Single motherhood is often synonymous with financial insecurity. Researcher Norman Garmezy found that among all the potential risk factors that mothers with abuse histories encounter, economic burden poses the severest risk because it impacts so many other facets of her life. Particularly, poverty impacts her ability to secure basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, food, clothing, and shelter are the foundations of the pyramid. These must be stable before an individual can accomplish the higher-level needs of safety, security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and, ultimately, the achievement of self-actualization. If a mother struggles with food insecurity or inadequate housing or clothing, it makes it difficult to experience safety, belonging, and self-esteem. The higher-level needs are........

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