If you felt that what I wrote was "blame the victim," then you really don't know what I meant by it and you don't really know me.
I have hit rock bottom a number of times in my life--with finances, with relationships, with health matters, etc. Example: at one point in my early years, we had our first baby. It was the day before payday, and I wanted to get a glass of milk, but I wasn't sure if we would have enough milk left for the baby's cereal the next morning. I checked, and we did not have enough. Between Mrs Media and me, we didn't have enough money in the house, in our checking account, or in a savings account (actually, we didn't even have a savings account because we knew our expenses were making us live paycheck to paycheck.) We couldn't buy a gallon of milk, which at the time was about $1.35, I think. THAT was rock bottom.
Another "rock bottom" moment I had was the day I realized that I was poor and my family was poor. I was about 11 years old and my church had ponied up the money so I could go to a week of "church camp" out in the woods for a week. (I still remember that I stayed in the cabin called Dixie.) All the clothes I wore were hand-me-downs from my brother, who was a grade in front of me. All of HIS clothes were hand-me-downs from my mother's friends in a nearby town who had three boys of their own. They were well-off, to the point that they had name tags sewn into all their clothing. When they outgrew their clothes, we got them. Well, one day at the camp, we were having our afternoon "quiet time" in the cabin. One of the other boys picked up a t-shirt that was on the floor and asked, "Who's Dick Vossler?" I said, "Oh, that's mine. He's my cousin." (I didn't want to explain the whole thing.) He held the t-shirt out at arm's length between his thumb and forefinger and said, "Ewww! EWWW!!! You wear hand-me-down UNDERWEAR???" and all the kids laughed. That was when I really, really knew that we were poor. Dirt poor. So poor that people laughed at how poor we were.
When I say "If you manage a way to hit rock bottom, don't continue to dig," here's how *I* applied that for that moment. I had hit rock bottom. And I had a choice: I could accept my circumstances, know that they were no fault of my own, and try hard not to allow others' opinions and their laughter affect me -- impossible, but I had to grow a thick skin to at least cover up how hurtful it was. Or I could wallow in my own circumstance. I could say, "I'm poor, and that's why.... blah blah blah." I couldn't change my circumstance, but I could work on changing my attitude towards those circumstances.
When I say, "don't continue to dig," I mean that we need to do whatever we can to (a) deal with the situation in which we find ourselves and (b) do everything we can to find a way out of that circumstance. That might mean an attitude change, it might mean seeking medical help, it might mean getting different training, etc., etc. What we CANNOT do is to wallow in our circumstances and say, "Woe is me. I'm helpless" and then wallow in it, not only accepting our conditions but feeling some kind of comfort in them because we've grown used to living with them. Maybe we can't help where we ended up. Maybe we're there through no fault of our own. (It wasn't *my* fault that I was the youngest of three in a single-parent home; it wasn't *my* fault we lived on Social Security and stayed with my grandparents.) Maybe we're there because of a mental or physical condition. If that's the case, we do what we can to change that. Get help. Get medication. Do what you can to make the best of what you have.
I could say, "Woe is me: I can't do anything because my heart is only 10% efficient and I've had 4 heart attacks," etc. Or I could do everything I can to make my physical condition as good as it CAN be given the severe heart problems I have. Take the right meds. See my doctors and follow their advice. Lose some weight. Work out 3-5 times a week.
So NO... i'm not insulting you or anyone else who has hit rock bottom. And I'm certainly not "blaming" anyone.
