Home Made Quotes

“When we claim our neighbors we commit to our communities, and when we feed our neighbors, we serve them. When we consider ourselves bound together in community, the radically civil act of redistributing resources from tables with more to tables with less is our responsibility; it is the social, practical work of justice.”
― Liz Hauck, Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner

“Punishment is not care, and poverty is not a crime. We need to create safe, supportive pathways for reentry into the community for all people and especially young people who are left out and act out. Interventions like decriminalizing youthful indiscretions for juvenile offenders and providing foster children and their families with targeted services and support would require significant investment and deliberate collaboration at the community, state, and federal levels, as well as a concerted commitment to dismantling our carceral state. These interventions happen automatically and privately for young offenders who are not poor, whose families can access treatment and hire help, and who have the privilege of living and making mistakes in neighborhoods that are not over-policed. We need to provide, not punish, and to foster belonging and self-sufficiency for our neighbors’ kids. More, funded YMCAs and community centers and summer jobs, for example, would help do this. These kinds of interventions would benefit all the Carloses, Wesleys, Haydens, Franks, and Leons, and would benefit our collective well-being. Only if we consider ourselves bound together can we reimagine our obligation to each other as community. When we consider ourselves bound together in community, the radically civil act of redistributing resources from tables with more to tables with less is not charity, it is responsibility; it is the beginning of reparation. Here is where I tell you that we can change this story, now. If we seek to repair systemic inequalities, we cannot do it with hope and prayers; we have to build beyond the systems and begin not with rehabilitation but prevention. We must reimagine our communities, redistribute our wealth, and give our neighbors access to what they need to live healthy, sustainable lives, too. This means more generous social benefits. This means access to affordable housing, well-resourced public schools, affordable healthcare, jobs, and a higher minimum wage, and, of course, plenty of good food. People ask me what educational policy reform I would suggest investing time and money in, if I had to pick only one. I am tempted to talk about curriculum and literacy, or teacher preparation and salary, to challenge whether police belong in schools, to push back on standardized testing, or maybe debate vocational education and reiterate that educational policy is housing policy and that we cannot consider one without the other. Instead, as a place to start, I say free breakfast and lunch. A singular reform that would benefit all students is the provision of good, free food at school. (Data show that this practice yields positive results; but do we need data to know this?) Imagine what would happen if, across our communities, people had enough to feel fed.”
― Liz Hauck, Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner

“Grief is the ultimate marinade. You become more of whatever you were already: the lonely, lonelier; the angry, angrier; the restless, more restless. Sometimes the faithful manage to emerge more faithful. It’s hard to describe the infinite loop of loss. The closest sensation might be hunger, if eyes and ears and fingertips could be hungry.”
― Liz Hauck, Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner

“Your life is happening all around you,” he told me. “You have a job. You are surrounded by people who love you. If you think something needs to be changed, change it. That’s up to you, not anyone else. Nobody is going to fix your life. It’s your life. Do something. Or don’t. But don’t talk nonsense.” He was telling me in plain English that I needed a worldview with guidelines for change that were built on epistemological frameworks, not epiphanies. And he was telling me to appreciate that what I already had was enough, and that the idea that my life hadn’t started yet was bullshit.”
― Liz Hauck, Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner

“If the details of the lives of the boys blur together, it is because there is a systemic story here: of the lottery of birth, the cycle of poverty, life in a carceral state, structural racism, and the unequal distribution of economic and educational opportunity—and the fallacy that hard work is enough to dissolve these nearly impermeable inequalities.”
― Liz Hauck, Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner

“I asked a friend who’d lost his father how long it would take for the fog to lift. I thought it must disintegrate eventually; I wanted a time line. The friend hesitated then said the fog never really lifts, but I’d learn to see through it.”
― Liz Hauck, Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner