James' World 2

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Every week, an estimated 15 million used garments from North America, Europe, and Australia arrive in Ghana’s capital city of Accra. These are the unwanted clothes that well-meaning Westerners have donated to be reused or resold, bombarding countries such as Ghana with clothing waste.

The small country of 30 million is expected to receive, disseminate, and dispose of billions of garments a year that aren’t theirs to begin with. Items in poor condition that arrive in Accra are immediately thrown into landfills, while the rest are left for resellers to hawk in hopes of turning a profit. But as the quality of clothes has declined thanks to fast fashion, so too have resellers’ ability to earn a living. Accra has “become the dumping ground for textile waste,” the city’s waste manager told ABC News in August 2021. Local water systems have been polluted; landfills have become fuel for catastrophic fires.

Yet, no corporation or country has been keen to take responsibility for Ghana’s waste crisis. It exists seemingly out of sight and out of mind. In n Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism, fashion journalist and activist Aja Barber urges Western fashion companies and sustainability advocates to consider the workers and people of the Global South, who produce our clothes and contend with our waste. The pace of how fashion is produced, sold, and bought in the West has a direct impact in developing nations, Barber argues in the book: “This [fast fashion] cycle doesn’t just harm everyone within the supply chain, it harms those at the end of the supply chain as well.”

Consumed isn’t just a sustainability guidebook. It’s a much-needed history lesson and warning about how forces like colonialism and capitalism bleed into our consumer society, right down to the clothing we choose to wear and keep.

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An employee sorts through mounds of used clothing at one of China’s secondhand clothing facilities. Most of the garments are to be sold overseas. Photo by Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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It was the third Saturday of the month, which meant that Shala Waines was up early. In a few hours, she had to set up for the Soul Swapmeet, a monthly open-air market she founded in 2018 for Black entrepreneurs. To get to the swap meet that morning, Shala had to transport herself, her 17-year-old daughter, Damiyah, and Damiyah’s two friends, plus a large, A-frame plastic sign advertising the event, and a tent for her DJs. Shala drives a silver 2015 Hyundai Elantra, and fitting the kids and supplies in a compact four-door requires some creativity. She made it work by asking the teens to hold the tent in their laps.

To look at Shala’s car is to get a sense of the woman who drives it: a small business owner, a single mom, and the type of person who volunteers to bring all of the food for a friend’s lakeside birthday bash. There are the empty cups her teenager and friends left in the back seat right after she cleaned it; boxes and bags rolling around in the trunk. There’s a “minding my Black-owned business” sticker, and some scrapes and dents on the driver’s side doors and bumper that Shala hates but can’t afford to fix right now.

The Elantra has meant a lot to her. It’s how she’s built her business, driving around San Diego to meet with potential vendors and city officials, scouting locations for the swap meet, loading it up with supplies. It’s how she makes UberEats and DoorDash deliveries to supplement her income, making food deliveries and supermarket runs for other people. It’s how she transports her daughter to school, gets her groceries, and makes it to doctor’s appointments. It’s her constant companion as she hustles, creates opportunities for herself and her clients, and cares for her daughter. In other words, her car is her ticket to participating in American life. “It’s everything,” Shala says. It feels almost too obvious to say that for most people living in the United States, owning a car or having access to one is a necessity. Even after the pandemic tripled the number of Americans who primarily work from home, the vast majority of American workers — 68 percent — still drive to their jobs. Eighty-eight percent of households use cars to shop for food, according to one survey, and having a car or a ride can factor significantly into whether someone is able to get health care.

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Shala Waines uses her 2015 Hyundai Elantra to run her small business, to supplement her income making UberEats and DoorDash deliveries, and to get herself and her daughter to school, the store, and appointments. “It’s everything,” she says.

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We’ve all felt financial stress in our lives at one time or another. Dealing with that financial stress can feel like a daunting task when you’re not sure where to begin. 

If you’re looking for ways to manage a financially stressful situation, here are some suggestions for taking charge of your money and feeling better about your circumstances.

1. Figure out where the money stress is coming from

Start by identifying the main sources of money stress. Some common sources of financial stress include:

• Not being able to pay your bills, or not being able to pay your bills on time.
• High levels of debt.
• You don’t have money for emergency expenses, like if your car breaks down.
• You’ve lost your job, or you’re worried that you might be laid off.
• You’re worried that you won’t be able to pay for an upcoming expense.

When you understand the main sources of your financial stress, you’ll be able to better tackle the problem. List out your main stressors so you can brainstorm ways to start addressing those items.

Set aside time two or three times a year to review and revise your list. As you consciously tackle your biggest money stressors, you’re more likely to make positive progress.

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Our evaluations and opinions are not influenced by our advertising relationships, but we may earn a commission from our partners’ links. This content is created independently from TIME’s editorial staff.

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You don’t want to, but sometimes you get angry. The reason? Pick one. You don’t feel heard or respected. You’re seeing bad decisions, i.e., not how you would do things, be made. You’re really tired. It might be more honest to cry or say that you’re scared, but you go with yelling, because that comes off as strong. But it’s rarely a winning move, and it’s never what anyone aspires to.

“Who wants to deal with an angry person?,” says Lesli Doares, licensed marriage and family therapist and author of Hero Husband: Building a Super Marriage with Truth, Confidence, and Authentic Leadership. “We don’t get angry for the fun of it,” she says.

The problem is often what comes next: shutting down. Instead of talking, you sigh, stare, pace around, thinking that people will just…get that something is wrong. You may shut down because you’re overwhelmed and feeling incapable of dealing with the issue. It may also be a defense mechanism you’ve acquired over the years.

Or it may be because you’ve found that “stonewalling” or the silent treatment has worked in the past. But that’s another of those not-winning moves, and it hinges on having empathetic people around you who are patient enough to bring you back. You realize that’s unfair. Ultimately, you don’t want to retreat and go into isolation. But it’s a difficult habit to break.

“We’re not tigers out wandering the terrain by ourselves,” Doares says. “We need others to survive.”

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It’s a hard habit to fight, especially if it’s one you’ve had for a long time. Here’s where to start.

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Last summer, my husband and I drove with our 4-year-old and 2-year-old to his hometown on the east coast of Canada. We were there to bury his parents, a memorial that had been a long time in the making because of the pandemic. It was a heavy, sometimes magical time that, after a few weeks, took its toll.

On the four-day-long drive back home to Toronto, we pulled a U-Haul full of memories and keepsakes behind our aging Honda, praying nothing would fall off or out or something worse we hadn’t even considered. Our first stop along the way was a small town in Nova Scotia, where we pulled into a restaurant for lunch. We were all sticky from the hot car and tired, emotionally fried from the last three weeks, but the kids were faring surprisingly well.

It was one of those casual, pub-food-type places, where nachos and fried foods littered every table and tinny Top 40 blared from the speakers above the bar. We sat down and ordered quickly, but between the lunch rush and understaffing, our chicken fingers and fries took over an hour to arrive. While we waited, the kids joked around with each other at the table, looked out the window next to our booth, danced in their seats to the music playing over the speaker, and generally entertained themselves during the excruciating wait. Just as we were finishing up, an older couple who had been sitting behind us got up to leave. As they did, the wife got close to me and, in a tone anyone would recognize, told me my kids had ruined their lunch.

I admit: I lost it. I looked up at her, heat spreading across my face, and told her we’d just buried my husband’s parents and maybe she could show a bit of compassion. I regretted saying it immediately. What difference should his grief make to this stranger? And how dare I use it to try to win some hypothetical argument? The woman seemed unfazed. I apologized to my husband, and, thankfully, the kids seemed not to notice that this outburst had anything to do with them. We managed to laugh about it afterward, but that feeling, that itchy mixture of anger, guilt, shame, and resentment, sat like a heavy ball in my stomach the rest of the way home.

I’ve since thought about that interaction more than I want to admit. At any moment, like a shitty magic trick, I can conjure up those exact same emotions. Those maybe ten seconds impacted me, probably forever. And now, as school winds down for the year and parents prepare to scramble to entertain their brood for the next few months, that woman has been on my mind even more. Who has a right to exist, to take up space without judgment or reproach? And if it’s not our kids, some of our most vulnerable, then how can we call ourselves a loving society?

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Photo-Illustration: the Cut; Photos Getty Images

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