oh, I dunno… seems most people who adopt “new age" thought have the privilege to do so as well as a lack of anything deeper to connect to (indigenous thought, etc). again, i refrain from a lot of eye-roll action so as to not offend friendly members of my community whose white and purple clothing I find silly (I AM regardless of my clothes) — and positive thinking, sure it has benefits, of course it does… but if you are one of many folks trapped in a vicious cycle of minimum wage or no employment, lack of healthcare, housing crisis, etc. — positive thinking is perhaps something you can arrive at after your very basic needs are met, if they ever are. depression, whether clinical or circumstantial, can make positive thinking difficult to impossible . I understand her frustration, especially after reading Nickled and Dimed. I’ve been there — it can take immense amounts of effort to think positively when you are stuck in a Nickled and Dimed scenario. Not everyone gets bootstraps.

Not denying positive thinking hasn’t bailed ME out of some depths, though, but I am also white and somewhat educated and thus, backed by some privilege in that regard.