Hope Street: Navigating My Way Through Homelessness (Part 3) ~
My family, including my mother, didn’t talk with me much while I was homeless. At times, I felt she was pulling away just when I needed her strength. Some days, my heart would ache. In retrospect, I now see that talking with me often was more than her sanity could bear. Her heart was aching just as deeply as my own.
Loving someone who is homeless is indeed one of the ultimate exercises in detaching with love, especially when he or she refuses to receive help or make changes, or you’re not in a position to assist in a tangible way. However, I’ve found that often life does a clever turnaround. It takes time. Years, months, or even just days later, you’ll find yourself 180 degrees – in the exact opposite position from where you viewed life not so long before. A lesson in humility.
After thankfully having a home again for about three years now, today, I’m in the position my Mom was back in 2013. A person I love deeply is homeless, living outdoors. I give him as much encouragement as I can. Yes, my heart aches. On one of our recent phone calls, I asked him to reflect on how he stays sane. Here’s what he wrote to me from a library computer last week, including appropriately a sailing analogy, as he had served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Adrift On a Sea of Hopelessness
“One of the topics seldom touched on in a discussion on homelessness are the options available should one find oneself adrift on a sea of hopelessness with no shoreline in sight. Having stood at this impasse on several occasions and therefore having a couple of tried and proven solutions, I offer what has worked for me…
What passes for insanity, in the context of homelessness, is often little more than the inability to find a familiar correlation to the position one finds oneself in. The best antidote to this fuzzy thinking is to simply accept that you have never been in this situation before and it is quite understandable that you not know exactly how to proceed. My advice in this situation is not to proceed at all. Find something simple and non earth-shattering to do: wash dishes, read, gather firewood, change clothes – and then observe your feelings for a clue as to how this is different from what has come before.
Find someone to talk with; it really doesn’t matter if they are the richest or poorest individual on the planet, or are intelligent or rather dull. Just find someone who can listen attentively. If they can give meaningful feedback that is certainly a bonus, but it isn’t necessary. Simply laying out your feelings and listening to what you are saying can go a long way toward defining the problem, from which point a solution will usually present itself.
In looking back over what I’ve written, it occurs to me that it’s not much different than what could be said for any situation in life, albeit those insanity gremlins do seem to pop up more often when one finds oneself “on the street.” The only thing germane I have to offer here is to watch your playmates. I lack the research to say conclusively that hopelessness or negativity is more prevalent among the homeless though that has long been my impression. What I do know, without a doubt, is that insanity is contagious and that putting distance between myself and the source usually makes it a quick and simple matter to recover.”
Thank you, my dear friend.
(Update: Since this article was originally published in Spring 2017, my friend has transitioned from this planet. R.I.P., dear James.)
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