I have the kind of husband who doesn’t ask questions — not even when six giant cans of infant formula show up at our house on Halloween even though we don’t have a baby. Without raising an eyebrow, he carried the bags in and went back to making sourdough pretzels.
If he had asked, I would have stated that I was done waiting for “someone” to do “something” about the government shutdown and the millions of people who were at risk of not receiving the SNAP benefits they need in November because of it.
Elphaba Mode activated.
The school that our children attend has a high population of food-insecure families. The local food bank sets up tables in the school’s parking lot once a month. When two federal judges ordered Trump to continue food assistance programs last Friday, I breathed a sigh of relief for our neighborhood.
Until I read further. Appeals? Disruptions? Oh. This is not the good news we’re waiting for. Bureaucracy is fun like that.
The school resource officer immediately sent out an email assuring families that the school would continue to provide breakfast and lunch every day for every student. All I could think was, But what about the babies?
So I bought half a dozen giant cans of formula and posted in all of my local Facebook groups that whoever needed them could find them on my front porch. Since food scarcity can be embarrassing, I even gave them an alibi: “Come trick or treating on my street, the cans will be at this house number.”
Two days later, the formula was still there. I checked Facebook for comments on my posts and looked through my DMs — anything to indicate that someone in need was reaching out. They weren’t. I checked the news every hour to see if the SNAP snafu had been resolved. It hadn’t been.
I was determined to find the family that needed this formula for their baby. I Googled “free infant formula” and found a website that paired families who had extra formula with families who needed it. The closest match for the formula I bought was in Georgia. I’m in California. The shipping alone would take three days and cost more than the formula. I Googled food banks where I might donate the formula. They preferred to take monetary donations. Why was this so hard?
Then I remembered that I had broken the first rule of helping: I had decided what people needed instead of asking what they needed.
The worst part was, I knew better.
In 2006, on a disaster relief assignment following Hurricane Katrina, my team’s job was to sort through a warehouse packed floor to ceiling with boxes of donated items that were mostly useless. In one particularly thoughtless black garbage bag, I found a single shoe and a moth-eaten sweater that had food dried on it. Six months after the hurricane struck land, these donations were still sitting there, helping no one. Ironically, dealing with all this junk was taking resources away from assisting the survivors.
Ernesto Sirolli, who gave the famous TED talk “Want to Help Someone? Shut Up and Listen!” once said, “When we show up and tell people what they need, that’s not philanthropy. It’s imperialism.”
Embarrassingly, the only people who responded to my Facebook posts were other neighbors who didn’t need formula, saying, “God bless you! You’re so good!” In trying to be Elphaba, I had accidentally pulled a Glinda — even though I knew better. Why do we do this?
I think it goes like this. When many Americans see a problem, they spring into action. We want to help. But without enough context for how to help, we end up reverting to the etiquette for the next closest thing — gifting. In gifting etiquette, you are expected to predict what the recipient wants. In return, the recipient is expected to be thankful regardless of whether you got it right because it’s the thought that counts.
Unfortunately, that’s why you sometimes hear people get huffy when a homeless person turns down their generous offer of a food item or meal they don’t like. “If they were really hungry, they’d be grateful for anything. Furthermore, no one acknowledged my thoughtfulness. Zero stars.”
Helping is not like gifting. When babies are hungry, it’s not the thought that counts.
After I finished thunking my own forehead six times (one for each can of Parent’s Choice Advanced I’d bought), I returned the formula and sent the money to the local food bank like I should have done in the first place. They already serve families who experience food insecurity and therefore know what items those families are asking for — AND the money goes further due to nonprofit discounts and matching grants.
When I returned the formula, the person at customer service asked, “Was there anything wrong with it?”
No, I’m just bad at helping. I’m getting better.
My husband still hasn’t asked what that was all about.
Emma Fulenwider is a writer and self-proclaimed book junkie. As such, she is a literary agent, contest judge for Writer’s Digest, reader for the Black Fork Review and founded the Birren Center anthology series. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University and in 2024 released a satirical children’s book, “The Very Busy Writer,” which Kirkus called “a relatable read for writers.” Emma lives in California.
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