When the Card Doesn’t Refill

October 31, 2025 · 5 min read

To every parent holding their family together when the system lets go.

I was a single mother of three for most of my parenting life. It wasn’t noble, it wasn’t romantic. It was financially debilitating. It was humiliation. It was survival mode day in and day out. And for some of those years, I depended on the EBT card to feed my children. I would only eat their leftovers. This is the way it was for years.

“Mom, why aren’t you hungry again?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I already ate a big meal! I’m just fine. Maybe I’ll snack on what you don’t eat.”

At one point in my life, I reviewed local restaurants (this was before Yelp) for local magazines and for a blog I created. Little did anyone know that some of those nights were the only meal I got that week.

I’ll never forget this one night about 10 years ago…

It was just me and my three — 16, 11, and 9, at the time. The cabinets and fridge were empty, and so were we. But I knew that at midnight, the card would refill. Somehow or another, I rallied my little team into making the absolute best of the shituation. We stayed up late. We turned up the music. We sang. We laughed. We waited.

At 11:30 pm, we all piled into the car with just enough gas to make it across town to the most reasonably priced grocery store. I knew just how much we would be receiving, so as we filled the cart to the brim, I was busy calculating every product in my head to ensure the humiliation at the checkout stand didn’t occur. You know… Where your card gets declined, but then you have to make up an excuse to ensure you don’t look like the loser you are?

That’s the dark demon bitch that lives in my head. It’s not the truth, though.

I did my best to put the anxiety aside as we went aisle to aisle. I swallowed it. It became a part of me. It grabbed a hold of my heart and still hasn’t let go.

At 12:01, the system updated, and the four of us filled the bags with food that “we” were going to devour as soon as we were in the car. I cried as I swiped that little piece of plastic out of sheer, exhausted relief - APPROVED.

My kids still remember that night with fond feelings. I have to believe it’s because I taught them what survival looks like when their mother refused to let despair be the only thing they’d inherit. And that there was a happy ending…

But tonight — there will be no refill. For too many families, the clock will strike twelve, and nothing will change. They will not get that sigh of relief.

I can’t stop thinking about all the parents sitting in dark kitchens, counting crackers, opening cabinets like maybe, just maybe, something new will appear.
I can’t stop thinking about all the kids who’ve learned the difference between “snack hungry” and “meal hungry.”
I can’t stop thinking about the mothers who’ll skip dinner so their kids can have seconds — or even firsts at this point.

Because I’ve been her.
The woman holding it together with spare change from the car floor.
The one debating between gas and groceries. Forget everything else.
The one who can’t take a job that covers childcare, because childcare costs more than the job pays.
The one who wants to parent — not just feed — but is too busy calculating survival.

This world wasn’t built for single parents.
It wasn’t built for anyone trying to raise children without a safety net.
It was built on the assumption that someone else — a family, a man, a paycheck, a system — would show up and save us.

But no one’s coming.

And that’s what breaks me about these times — the quiet cruelty of it all. Because they’re not just taking away money.
They’re taking away the midnight.

That tiny flicker of hope that maybe tomorrow would be different.
That ritual of staying awake just to feel a little less powerless.
That moment when a mother could breathe again — even if just for a night.

I don’t write this for pity. I write this because people need to understand — when you cut off assistance, you’re not just cutting off food.
You’re cutting off stability. Dignity. A child’s sense of safety. A parent’s ability to exhale.

And when the world tells you to “just work harder,” but there’s no gas in your car, no sitter for your baby, no food in your fridge, and no refill in sight — that’s not motivation. That’s psychological warfare.

If you’re reading this and you’re there right now — hungry, scared, and pretending you’re not — I see you.
I wish I could feed you.
I wish I could show up at your door with bags of groceries, pay off your bills, and tell you the system we were born into will save you.

But since I can’t, I’ll tell you this:

You are not lazy.
You are not a failure.
You are not invisible.

You are a mother (parent) doing the impossible in a country that keeps moving the finish line.
You are teaching your children resilience the hard way — and they will never forget how you kept going.

There is no midnight this time.
But there will be a morning.

And when the morning comes… not with a miracle deposit or a truckload of groceries, but with the same empty fridge and the same ache in your chest — remember this: you are still here.

You are breathing. You are trying. You are proof of what survival really looks like when the system gives up on you, but your soul refuses to quit.

There may be no refill coming.
No help on the horizon.
No safety net left to catch you.
But what you still have… what no one can cut off… is the will to create something out of nothing.

So feed your children with love, with laughter, with the stories of what you will build when this passes. Feed them your courage. Let them see that strength isn’t in having enough — it’s in doing what you can with what’s left.

Because someday, this too will be a memory.
Not one of pity, but of power.

The memory of a night when you kept showing up for life after it stopped showing up for you.
The memory of how you looked into the void and chose to keep going anyway.

There is no refill this time.
But there is still you.
And that, against all odds, is enough to start again.

Use these resources to find food in your area:

I’ll update this list as I find more resources.

Plentiful — An app that lets you locate food programs near you, see accurate hours and offerings, even reserve visits.
FoodFinder — A free app to find the nearest food pantries and free food resources across the U.S.
Feeding America — Their “Need Help” tool lets you enter your ZIP code and discover nearby partner food banks and distributions.
Dial 2-1-1 — A free, confidential directory service across the U.S. that will refer you to local food pantries, help programs and other resources.