Bridget here for the last time. The final day of the challenge came as a relief to me. I was so sick of eating the same two or three dishes over and over, and I missed restaurant food dearly. I had an egg on a piece of toast for breakfast, and some grape-nuts in yogurt and honey for lunch. I went out to eat tonight because I was out of tuna, out of ground turkey, and had no eggs left (one had frozen in the refrigerator and one had broken in the egg crate somehow). I thought I had budgeted pretty well, but I came up short.

This week tried me physically and mentally in ways I did not think it would. I had to feel the disappointment of not being able to eat out with friends, the monotony of lunch and dinner (rarely did I even eat breakfast), and the sheer hunger in between meals was terrible. SNAP recipients have to prioritize and budget literally down to the cent. I couldn’t even do it, because, like I said, I ate out tonight because I didn’t have enough groceries for a whole meal.

To think SNAP recipients struggle week-in-and-week-out to make their food assistance dollars last is shocking to me.  I have gained so much empathy and respect for those who do use SNAP regularly. They deal with many more challenges than we realize, and even when we feel hungry, we don’t know hunger the way they do.