Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. Mattie and I were in the child life playroom at the Hospital and the room was all a flutter. Georgetown students came by dressed up for Halloween and also helped the kids in the units decorate for Halloween. The pumpkin behind Mattie in this photo was a Mattie creation. Naturally Mattie took it one step further and requested black material for a cape because his pumpkin was supposed to be a HEAD. Therefore the head needed a body! Linda, Mattie's child life specialist, appreciated Mattie's creativity right from day one and Mattie had a special way about him that helped him get his needs effectively met.
Quote of the day: Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend. ~ Wallace Stegner
Today was a sobering and humbling day. I visited a friend who I have known for years. She is bright, very compassionate, and has cared for others professionally most of her life. Yet her situation illustrates the fragility and tenuous nature of life. Since this is her story and not mine, I am not going into details about how this happened, but she landed up homeless and living in a women's shelter. I think we all have perceptions of who lives on the streets or in shelters. We make assumptions that this has to be people without a formal education, jobs, and families. These are all misconceptions. Which is why I told my friend she must write a book. As I was listening to her stories, it saddened me greatly because in reality depending upon the cards we are dealt in life, this could happen to any one of us.
Living in a shelter is a traumatizing experience in an of itself. You have to share a room with several people of your own gender, people you don't know and have (as I learned) many issues of their own. There are rules, curfews, and nightly bed checks to make sure you are in your own bed (with flashlights shone in your eyes to verify it is you). You have to eat when they tell you to and you can't bring food to your room. There are no TVs or computers! It seems not that far removed from living in a prison. But what was so upsetting to me, besides of course that my friend was in this situation, is that there is NO mental health support for the residents of the shelter. There are "counselors" per se, but in essence their job is to enforce the rules. Which means they are more like wardens than therapists. Many of the residents within this facility, as my friend described, have serious mental health issues! Some are addicted to drugs, others have schizophrenia, or personality disorders. All of which are conditions that need monitoring, medication, and/or therapy. I am simply perplexed how these folks can even have a fair chance at being productive members of society without the necessary help they need.
The shelter gives people access to food, physical shelter, and coupons to get their hair cut and to buy clothes. Though these are all necessities in our human hierarchy of needs, these are merely band aids on a gushing artery. Why do I say that? Well you can give someone all these things, but if you don't help stabilize a person, help them get the medications and trainings they need, then in my opinion nothing will change. I have no idea why I thought more mental health support was offered in shelters, but after hearing one story after another today, I felt truly dismayed. I do not care for systems that are put in place that only breed further dysfunction and dependency.
I think people enter shelters with their own stories, stories which may have left them broken for various reasons. Yet within the shelters they are exposed to others who may want to steal from them and in my friend's case one of her fellow residents overdosed on drugs and died. Adding more trauma to people who are already traumatized also seems counter intuitive.
I am in no way equating homelessness to helping someone battle cancer. These are two very different, challenging, and heartbreaking issues. Nonetheless, I feel that having lived in a hospital, which is an institutional environment to same extent, I could relate on some (small as it is) level to my friend as she talked about living in fear and under someone else's rules. As tonight's quote so aptly points out, we need to appreciate the homes that we have because so many tonight and the next night after that aren't as fortunate.
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