Hi folks - I don't know if you got a chance to meet Anita Connelly-Nicholson, PhD in Houston, but she is a remarkble person.  She explained to me that she had been homeless recently and I asked her to wirte a short narrative of how it felt to go from "one of us" to "one of them".  She sent me an incredible story that she has agreed to share with our group.  I am including it below.  -Jim

I worked very hard to get to where I am academically. I will be an Assistant Professor in fall 2008. It is my dream job. However, I am homeless and so it seems arrogant for me to say I have the highest academic training that one can get. It seems pompous to state that I have never taken illegal drugs and am not an alcoholic. I have never smoked because I am allergic to cigarette smoke. I am homeless and being homeless has given me the education of my life. But it stunned me that I was living in my storage unit.. It took a good amount of time to wrap my mind around the fact that I was homeless I have been close, but never had to live on the streets.. In fact for the last six months I lived in my storage unit..I had a lot of very singular and uni-focused quiet time to meditate. My internal and external environment became vivid. I had all the time in the world to examine my life and during that time, I made a new “map” of my life. My time of being homeless became a “mountain top” experience ….out in the world….exposed. Currently, I am living with a friend who took me in. I stay on alert never knowing when my friend may no longer want me in his house. There are times I would like to be back to that storage unit because there, I became powerful and I controlled my world. The intensity of where I was, became a comfort.

Homeless Me

I worked very hard to get to where I am academically. I will be an Assistant Professor in fall 2008. It is my dream job. However, I am homeless and so it seems arrogant for me to say I have the highest academic training that one can get. It seems pompous to state that I have never taken illegal drugs and am not an alcoholic. I have never smoked because I am allergic to cigarette smoke. I am homeless and being homeless has given me the education of my life. But it stunned me that I was living in my storage unit.. It took a good amount of time to wrap my mind around the fact that I was homeless I have been close, but never had to live on the streets.. In fact for the last six months I lived in my storage unit..I had a lot of very singular and uni-focused quiet time to meditate. My internal and external environment became vivid. I had all the time in the world to examine my life and during that time, I made a new “map” of my life. My time of being homeless became a “mountain top” experience ….out in the world….exposed. Currently, I am living with a friend who took me in. I stay on alert never knowing when my friend may no longer want me in his house. There are times I would like to be back to that storage unit because there, I became powerful and I controlled my world. The intensity of where I was, became a comfort.

What I was experiencing was primal survival instincts. Homeless humans have to deal with life close to the hip. What should I do with body fluids? Where do I take a bath? How do I keep cool or warm? How do I keep healthy enough to live on. How do I keep my teeth and how do I keep my vision. What if something happens to me and I need medical care. I have no insurance. Where do I go and what do I do to keep some modicum of continuance of life? Life…that basic tug and flow; that should be a smooth transition from childhood to teenage years to adulthood and onward without any interrupts.. Where I am at this homeless point in my life is not where I thought I would be. And that hurt emotionally. At one point I thought I would die in my storage unit But I never gave up and from this experience I have become very strong. I know that I can take care of myself and that is something big for a single woman .However, I know down deep that the human psyche can be so overwhelmed that a point can be reached where it is just easier to sit down and give up. I knew that I had to keep walking because if I gave up there was no one who would reached down to pick me up. I never reached the point where I just finally gave up. I suspect that humans that have been out in the streets for a long period of time have gone past that point. Sort of a point of no return. My homelessness has caused my senses to became very acute. My eyes can see a penny on the concrete at dusk. I can hear nature. I can smell nature. I know danger. I learned to pilfer food at the local food store. And I have learned to stay mentally on alert. I was living in a building that was not suitable for human habitat. I was acutely aware that this was not a safe nor healthy place to live. To keep physically cool, I had to keep the bay door open, which was very dangerous. However, every night, I laid on my couch and watched the night sky. I became aware of a higher greater power working in my life. I became very clear thinking; working on a clear path in my mind about my relationship with God.. But, I had lost trust in people. I became very silent. Humans frightened me and to some point still do. I knew that they could do me harm. They could hurt me. At any point someone could “rat” me out and let it be known that I was living in a storage unit which is against the law. I had an eerie kind of real peace and felt kept by God.

During those six months I learned that society is totally clueless of the plight of homeless people, churches are not doing the work of Christ and many of the agencies are not focusing on the issues of homeless people. I learned that people are not poor or homeless because they want to be and people are not poor or homeless because they do not know how to work.

I learned that poverty and homelessness is driven by an event, an illness that one can not come back from or financial problems that sap a person of their very essence. A drug problem or alcoholism. Society points an accusing finger at the poor or homeless people. Society acts disgustedly unchristian toward homeless humans. Society does not know what to do with, nor how to handle the growing problem of homelessness so they hide themselves from it. I will never forget that I am not alone in my homelessness. I will not forget that there are multitudes of homeless humans who do not have what I have and who are much worse off than I am. I never forgot that I had a car and a residual but very small bank account. My experience only intensifies my longing to lend a hand and support the homeless. I learned that I could not have made it had there not been one or two other humans and a cat who helped me along. I was homeless and my life was in great peril but I knew that there were others who did not have what I had.

I have been inherently changed and challenged by my homeless experience. I can never go back to who I was.. Now I don't ask, but demand respect from others. I demand my rights. I have become brutally honest about bias and prejudice. I have become more compassionate about human misery. There is nothing but arrogant ignorance for one human to look down on another human. No, I am not an alcoholic, nor addicted to drugs but it should not make any difference. I am a human and there is nothing different about me from the next person except that I had an event in my life and currently am homeless. Of all the water droplets in the world I am the one that glistens and I will rise to the top. I am homeless but I will survive..