For The Love Of WISE Place
| Category: Flatmates Sharing | July 27th, 2010Yesterday I gave a talk about my experience being homeless. It was fun. The event was called “For The Love OF Wise Place“. It was held at the home of Claire who owns the non-profit called Divine Choices. It was up in the hills of Tustin in a beautiful home that reminded me of Woodland Hills.
I wasn’t really even nervous. The speech went like this;
I never expected that I would end up homeless. I grew up in an upper-middle class family in a beautiful home. But, there was domestic violence, abuse and alcoholism that would continue to affect me well into my adult years, without me really realizing it.
As a young woman, I married and moved to Sacramento. Shortly after buying a house, my marriage totally unraveled and I divorced. Years later I let go of my precious little house and moved back to Orange County. This was when my life got much more difficult because the cost of living was twice that of Sacramento, and my skill-set was lacking. I knew nothing about computers so I decided to enroll in college, while living in a very small apartment. College was a lifelong dream of mine.
In college, I picked up basic p.c. skills and landed a good job at UPS. I thought my troubles were over, but I was wrong. In 2004 I was laid off and I moved in with roommates to save money. That landlord raised my rent 3 times in 1 year, so I moved again. There my life completely fell apart. I didn’t realize that I had fallen into a deep depression, going up to 3 days and nights without sleep. I’d found a job at a library, but that didn’t work out, and I was fired. They told me that I didn’t “fit in.” At this same time, my mother sold her home and moved away to the other side of the country. My parents had finally divorced and I did not have a support system to lean on during this very difficult time. Within a week of losing the library job I was homeless.
I walked out of the room I was renting and into the abyss of homelessness, not even knowing where to look for a shelter. I didn’t know where to go. Where does one go when they are homeless, their car, under a tree or freeway overpass? I had no idea that there were shelters that women could go to. I didn’t even know that there were women’s shelters. I ended up in an unspeakable place. And because of the depression, I stayed there for 9 months, living in a nightmare. Throughout all of this time, I stayed in college. It was the one thing I still had. My grades even improved, never dropping below a B. I started working several temp assignments, one of them paying $16 an hour at Kaiser Hospital. I went to work every day, and nobody there knew that I was homeless. I went to college and worked the entire time that I was homeless.
By the end of the semester I needed real shelter. I had been living with no heat and it was freezing in December. I was very determined to find a real shelter and get help. I found WISE Place and moved in the day before Christmas. One night after I moved in, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the heater come on and somehow I knew at that point that I was finally safe. I was finally no longer cold. I began looking for a new job soon after arriving at WISE Place. I had found a part-time job at Disneyland but it did not pay enough. So I found a decent job right away, a miracle at the time. Later, that job allowed me to rent an apartment.
The isolating feeling of being homeless was completely the opposite feeling of living at WISE Place. At WISE Place I found support and sanity. There were staff, meetings, and better than anything else, there was a super support group, who are still there for me. One would not think that a group of women could be so supportive of each other, but we were. The meeting were the best for me – even now 4 years later. WISEPlace also requires that you save money. I saved more almost than I’d ever saved before. I remember literally falling asleep at night, with a smile on my face when I lived at WISE Place.
Recently I received my Social Security statement in the mail. During the time that I lived at WISE Place and Bethany, when I was “homeless”, I earned more money in the year than any other year in my working lifetime thanks to the focus on working and saving. Today, I live in an apartment, have 2 bunnies and a kitty that I love (I brought pictures), and I have a support system in place to help me weather the difficult times in life. In September, I will take my final class to earn TWO AA degrees – meeting that life long dream.
The best part of finding out about and living at WISE Place is the network of supportive caring people that I have now, and didn’t even have in my own family.
Thank you.
I wore the cotton calico super long sundress that my mother made for me. The same dress that I wore to a Bethany fashion show recently. And I wore my black boots. I curled my hair and put in contacts. I took the contacts out before the time I had to go up on the stage, because they itched. And I just put my glasses on.
We all had a super nice catered lunch too, before I gave my talk. And Blanca also talked about her experience and her drug addicted lifestyle before finding WISE Place. But Ana’s speech was totally unexpected for me at least. Ana who works at WISE Place went first. And her story was so surprising. Because I didn’t know that she had been abused and made homeless by her own family. Nevertheless, she has persisted and now has her BS degree and works for a shelter.
Sister Louise came also, along with Grace. And I was so happy to see so many of the women who are the philanthropic people who care and give to non-profits, come up to me and hug me afterward. But I couldn’t help but think about the irony of the day yesterday, as I was there. Today I have no money except for the $200 that my mother has just sent me through Paypal. And I again have rent to pay in 10 days. Again I am unemployed and looking to keep my roof over my head. But the good part is that I am not frightened or depressed and I have people around me now who are very positive. And a few of them actually help with money for our rent. Yes, us previously homeless women who were so rejected by our own families manage to find a way in our lives. And I will.
