There is strength in community. My youngest daughter Coralines favorite book lately has been Shel Silversteins The Missing Piece. The agency only permitted her to work up to six hours a day, reasoning that due to the exhausting nature of the work, she could risk injuring herself. He was renamed Sean in the Netflix series and played by Nick Robinson). Eventually, she got her writing published in larger Internet-based publications like The Huffington Post and Vox. Please enter valid email address to continue. Three months after we got married, I called the police for help. For the working poor, knowing where your next meal is coming from is a daily struggle. I advocated for the charges to be dropped to a misdemeanor like it was my new, full-time job. Search, watch, and cook every single Tasty recipe and video ever - all in one place! Stephanie Land is the author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mothers Will to Survive, out in January 2019, Theres love, youll say, but is there any real point in getting married these days? Out of desperation, I asked him to go back to work, to give me some space, and he told me that wasnt part of the deal in marrying me. I had known Jamie only four months, and his rage, his hatred toward me, was frightening." Stephanie Land's story happens in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. It was an abusive relationship. One who will appreciate me and all I have to offer. They had only known each other for four months. In. All the dance numbers! One year after that, her memoirMaid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mothers Will to Survivewas sold. In Stephanie Land's book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, which inspired the series, Land is focused on the struggle to persevere in a system built for failure. It ended up on the New York Times Best Seller List and Obama's 2019 Summer Reading List, in addition to being optioned for the Netflix series. Alexs real story is so much more than what we see onscreen. However, Land and Jamie's story is different than Alex and Sean's. Whereas Alex met Sean after an open mic, Land met Jamie while she was walking home after a shift at the . When the couple met and married he worked at KOLD, they divorced in 2006. The Three Car Crashes That Changed My Life, "I lived on $6 a day with a 6-year-old and a baby on the way. Visit our corporate site. [23][24] According to Netflix, the show will likely reach 67 million households in its first four weeks, surpassing the record set by The Queens Gambit, which was watched by 62 million subscribers. I know how grueling the job can be, and I swore I'd never ask. He called it an "unflinching look at America's class divide.". She lived in Europe with a husband who was much younger (he was only seven years older than Stephanie). One Harvard study concluded that unhealthy diets may cost less because food policies have focused on the production of inexpensive, high volume commodities. There was no way for me to walk into a government office and tell them I needed enough money to compensate for the meager wages I needed in order to pay for a home. This is in response to the judgment she felt from people all around her while the economy was in collapse and millions of others were struggling through similar hardships. She and her daughters health were in constant decline, but Land had no health insurance. [8][9] Although she did not grow up in poverty, she spent the next several years living below the poverty line and relied on several welfare programs to cover necessary expenses; this later inspired her writing on issues of poverty and public policy. ", into her bestselling memoir. So before i watched the series, I was really nervous because there's so many ways you can get poverty wrong and perpetuate stigmas even more. She was also able to take out the maximum amount of student loans to make ends meet, which gave her more of a cushion, and eventually, helped her move to Missoula to attend the University of Montana. She and Jamie had only been together four months when Land had gotten pregnant, and upon finding out that an abortion was not on the table, the first signs of his rage and toxicity began to show. The real-life Alex is now a New York Times best-selling author. During their time there, her daughter Mia was very sick with constant sinus infections, ear infections, and pink eye. Wealthy clients of hers would go on racist rants about Mexican families using food stamps and being dressed to the nines, while not realizing that the maid they were saying this to was also on government assistance. I think my biggest role as a parent is teaching empathy. Land called the police for help three months after getting married. "Throughout this whole process of giving my story to the hands of strangers, I had to force myself to trust theyll do it justice. Peoples prejudice against those who are low income makes their already difficult lives more difficult, which we do not really see in the Netflix drama. Todd Grisham later worked as a professional wrestling . Several of the symptoms I already had: the sore neck, the bruising, the blotchy chest, pain, and difficulty swallowing. "Thank you for the friendship, for putting up with my anxious texts, and the hours and hours of hard work you put into making this happen in the best way possible.". As recalled in the book, We were there to witness and share the gospel with them. She also owns her own house, and shares frequent snapshots of her life on social media (including several of the family's adorable dog Keats). This meant that out of the 20 clients she had, she would clean two or three houses each day. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. During the series, we don't see Alex at the grocery store often. But Poverty Never Left Me", Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, "The Brutal Economy of Cleaning Other People's Messes, for $9 an Hour", "Maid's Tell-All Reveals Dirty Secrets of America's Middle Class". "[19] In The Washington Post, Jenner Rogers writes, "Maid isnt about how hard work can save you but about how false that idea is. She felt like her friends did not want to hear about the struggles of her life over and over, and she isolated herself from her closest companions. She writes, "His initial tenderness in coaxing me to change the pregnancy abruptly changed when I told him I would not be doing that. Land had been living with her daughter Mia's father for roughly the first six months of Mia's life. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. This is where she learned about the Womens Independence Scholarship Program, a scholarship specifically for survivors of domestic violence, which she received $3,000 through. Timothy Faust is a professional Air Force Veteran. Land was inadvertently thrust into the private lives of her clients, getting an up-close and personal look at how the other half lives. He said a judge would make me move to Portland if I tried to . After graduating college, Land started working as a freelance writer for parenting magazines. Throughout this whole process of giving my story to the hands of strangers, Land wrote in a recent Instagram post, I had to force myself to trust theyll do it justice. Stephanie Land is the author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, out in January 2019 Topics Divorce Domestic violence Relationships features Reuse this content It appeared that his wife had died in the late 1980s, but her to-do lists were still tacked to a cork board and the trinkets she'd collected remained on the windowsills. [25], Her second book, Class, was announced in 2020 for release in 2022 by One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The series does not really touch on this systematic issue, but focuses more on Alex's individual struggle. It's been weird what has come up for me physically and how it feels to talk about that time in my life again. Now Her Book About It Is a Best-Seller", "How Netflix's 'Maid' Differs from Stephanie Land's Book", "The Crushing Logistics of Raising a Family Paycheck to Paycheck", "Barack Obama Shares His 2019 Summer Reading List", "From Middle Class to Homeless: A Mother's Unapologetic Memoir", "Margaret Qualley Stars Opposite Her Real-Life Mother Andie MacDowell in Trailer for Netflix's Maid", "This Drama About A Single Mom Is A Top Show On Netflix", "How 'Maid' Set a Record That Didn't Have Anything to Do with Netflix Numbers", "Author of best-selling 'Maid' takes on college in 'Class', "Party of six. I think even though it's exhausting for me, I see an importance in my role in advocating. Why do you think your story resonated so strongly with readers at that time, and why do you think it continues to entice audiences? In a 2021 interview with The Washington Post, Land said:[32]. When author Stephanie Land was trying to sell the movie/TV rights to her bestselling 2019 memoir, she met with 10 different production companies. Next door was the Sad House. She is from American. That prompted her to call the Domestic Violence Hotline. The couple first met in the year 2018 and began their relationship just a few months later. "[14] Katy Read of The Star Tribune suggests, "The next time you hear someone say they think poor people are lazy, hand them a copy of Maid. Who Is Hasnat Khan, Princess Dianas Boyfriend on Season 5 of The Crown? [30] She owns a home in Montana and has three dogs. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. "He kind of forcefully asked us to leave," Land told NPR. Todd was born January 9, 1976; the Mississippi native is a well known sports reporter. "I found pills for everything: pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, impotence, allergies, high blood pressure, diabetes." Other rules for being homeless included random urine analysis tests, random unit inspections, and a 10 p.m. curfew. Lands memoir recounts her time living in Port Townsend, Washington a small town with a population of fewer than 10,000 people and working in the states Skagit Valley region. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English from the University of Montana in Missoula. & CLASS (out 10/23!). When I finally asked him to leave, it was in an almost primal push for survival. Instead, she cleaned houses for six years in Washington and Missoula and eventually took loans out to attend the community college in Skagit Valley. Yes. (My child and I) watched the first two episodes in my bed on my laptop, kind of cuddled up together. [2] Land and her eldest daughter occasionally lived in homeless shelters, transitional housing and a camper in a driveway, before securing an apartment in low-income housing. Its one womans story of inching out of the dirt and how the middle class turns a blind eye to the poverty lurking just a few rungs belowand its one worth reading. "Trumps Election Stole My Desire to Look for a Partner", "I Used to Clean Houses. She ended up working "anywhere from 20 to 25 hours a week." First published on October 29, 2021 / 5:23 PM. ", "I Used to Clean Houses. He said he wouldnt have gotten together with me if he hadnt thought I was going to be rich so he wouldnt have to work. ", Yes. ", "I Spent 2 Years Cleaning Houses. Through the last few months I have been questioning why I fought so hard to keep our life, on the outside, as normal as possible. After spending a few weeks living with her own father and stepmother, she left somewhat abruptly with Mia and found an opening at a local homeless shelter in Port Townsend, Washington.It wasn't a homeless shelter in the traditional sense, but rather a span of six or seven two-room cabins that families could stay in as they tried to get back on their feet. Prior to the publication of her memoir in 2019, Land had $50,000 in student loans to pay off and she was renting a home from her ex-mother-in-law. I didn't want to give him more space than he deserved, so if focused more on how it affected me. [11] Barack Obama placed the book on his "Summer Reading List" of 2019[17] and actress Reese Witherspoon said she "loved this story about one woman surviving impossible circumstances. What do you think people misunderstand about the nature of poverty? The Maid true story reveals that this was not government-assisted housing but rather a place that Stephanie had found on her own. Though the additional characters in the story are mostly fictionalizedthe book only lightly touches on her ex and her parents, and she doesn't mention a client similar to Reginamany of the events actually happened, including Story's pony party and the car accident. This is different than what we see with Alex in Maid, where welfare is depicted as part of going through the motions, not as something deeply broken that is affecting millions of people. Salary in 2022. On an interesting side note, actress Andie MacDowell is the real-life mother of Margaret Qualley, who portrays Alex in the Netflix Maid series. The dog was still losing her mind. "[21], Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive was adapted to a 10-episode limited series Maid (2021) for the streaming service Netflix and released on October 1, 2021. Except for some extra cash here and there and some live lobsters, she doesnt receive any other perks from serving the rich. It reminded me that there had been a newspaper article featuring my husbands mugshot, and that image showed up several times in my Facebook feed as people shared it online. John, Molly, and Erin have spent so much time getting to know me and Story, and truly care about usalmost how I imagine family members would.. So, I think that we really just need to take dignity out of the equation as far as work is concerned and assign it all to us equally as human beings. "[18], The book has received critical acclaim. [26] The book will combine Land's personal experiences with investigative reporting about higher education and the cost of it in the United States. And it was really incredible how close to my experience that was. By Stephanie Land. Spoilers for season 1 ofMaid. A post shared by Stephanie Land (@stepville). There was a part of me that knew why they were listening. -Vox. I tried to swallow and answered no, with a raspy voice. You don't have the chance to see this in the miniseries, but it is touched on in theMaid novel. Land says that this fictionalization also allowed more diversity to be brought into the series.Though Maid is not a highly accurate representation of Land's own experience and the people involved, she described it in an Instagram post as "an obscenely authentic visual representation of what it's like to struggle to get by. Maybe that made them too nervous about their situation.. On that line is a circle with a triangle-shaped chunk thats absent from it. [15], Land's first book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive was published by Hachette Books on January 22, 2019. Just three months after we got married, I had called the police for help. [27], Stephanie Land is married to Tim Faust and they live as a blended family with four children. Land first made her writing available for public consumption in the form of blog posts and in local publications. My oldest, Mia, and I have taken to watching a couple of my favorite movies from the 1980s when were out traveling alone together. In the real story, none of this happens. As my platform has grown and the reach of my audience has grown, I have continued to be very raw. I also think I've learned how important it is to be able to advocate for others. Stephanie suffered from a very bad cough herself and "was constantly sick." And it really affected me for a really long time. [11] Upon graduating from the University of Montana, Land ended her dependence on food stamps,[14] started working as a freelance writer, and became a writing fellow with the Center for Community Change. Still smiling. For a couple of months, she woke up at night, crying and confused, wondering why her mom and stepdad werent there at the same time any more. pic.twitter.com/UIwwR0Mf5L / Twitter" But for non-profits, who had the ability to reach others in their communities and still chose to fly me out, I basically tell them it shouldn't be me up here. [7], In her late twenties, she lived in Port Townsend, Washington, where she had her first child and became a single mother who worked maid service jobs to support her family. But now that the series is out, that's a lot of the focus. The actress opens up about the surreal process of playing the Lark in the Netflix fantasy prequel. Something for everyone interested in hair, makeup, style, and body positivity. All the show tunes! Not only are hours lost to filling out paperwork and waiting in offices, but time is also spent going to required classes and seminars on how rental assistance works or how to use electricity most efficiently. She graduated from the University of Montana with a Bachelor's in English and Creative Writing in 2014. Most of the authors relationships had faded because of the embarrassment and judgment of her daily life. Her oldest daughter, Mia, was six. Maid draws heavily from one womans real-life story, but changes some key details. As we continue to navigate this post-normal (an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense) world, I hope we see more representation of the working poor and their lived experiences on our screens not for entertainment, but to teach us solidarity. Since then, the success of her book has led to more financial stability. In my New York Times bestselling memoir MAID, I tell my story of juggling several housecleaning clients while working my way through college as a single mother. Dont you miss him? she would ask me, almost desperately. The gritty and intense series, starring Margaret Qualley, follows newly single mother Alex and her daughter, Maddie, as they recover from the trauma of abuse and neglect. Is that something others have confided in you about? Even though Land had people cheering her on, poverty is isolating. I told him to get out. Like in the show, Land's boyfriend, whose name in the memoir is Jamie, was upset with her decision to keep the baby. They asked me, again, to describe what happened this time for a recorded statement and I physically shook, remembering the dark room, being pressed into the bed, and his face. A Maid fact-check reveals that the real Stephanie Land was 28 when she was pregnant with her daughter Mia (today, Mia goes by her middle name, Story). Her child, a fictionalized version of Story, is called Maddy (Rylea Nevaeh. When the detectives measured a second time, 24 hours later, the swelling had increased a full half inch. I feel like asking them: why on earth would I want that? I am not an angry person, I try to avoid it as much as possible, but the more I spoke in public speaking events, not only the book tour audiences but the public speaking audiences, they were mainly White people who maybe had house cleaners of their own. I smiled at her, looked over at him, and went inside the house to cry. For viewers watching the miniseries during the wage shortage, the shows timely subject matter may force the question: Is Maid based on a true story? They came to our apartment and photographed the bruises around my neck. There was no welfare, not in the sense they thought of it as. In an essay on herpersonal website (opens in new tab), Land says that she left the relationship in January 2008, and that she began cleaning houses and sought government assistance because she wasn't able to resume work in the restaurant industry while seeking daycare for Story, since most facilities are only open during daytime hours on weekdays. They also have two pet dogs. Alex and her daughter parade around the house with the toys, in one of the first times the shelter feels like home). By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. At the time, she had two kids she was taking care of by herself, as well as a shelter dog. When Land first met and married her now-estranged husband, she says he was supportive of her writing career. This helped her and her daughter save up, get their car fixed, and move to Missoula, Montana for good. Class will be about the "hard truths of college education," combining her personal experience with reporting to expose the "outrageous cost, predatory practices, and discriminatory policies faced by Americans," perAssociated Press (opens in new tab). Since then, the success of her writing available for public consumption in the year and. Give him more space than he deserved, so if focused more how... Personal look at America 's class divide. `` the Domestic Violence Hotline looked over at him, went. 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