homelessness-Oct.20fieldwork

We began the morning with an hour of //Where God Left His Shoes// - this is a fine dramatization of a family's descent into homelessness. We should have been completing the movie, but when I loaded in the disc last week during flex, it didn't work.

We went to the Coalition for the Homeless offices downtown, and this was just a great experience. We listened to three women tell their life stories, filled with some of the most heart rending details. The kids were enthralled. One of the things these women insisted on was their mission, the mission of CCH - to put a face on homelessness. One of them talked about a Coalition program that encourages homeless people to write their stories - she talked about how empowering it is to create a life story, to feel your voice come alive. Leana, a woman in her early sixties, talked about a life that began with physical abuse - her mother hit her regularly. She spoke eloquently of her descent into prostitution and homelessness - she had two children by the time she was 14, and her boyfriend regularly abused her. Then she met a man who treated her well - treated her respectfully - and she married him. Turned out, he was a pimp, and soon he was selling her on the streets. Leana said that through all the years, she confused lust with love. It wasn't until she was in her mid-fifties that went through detox, and now she's been sober for seven years. She connected her search for love to what it is that homeless people may want from even the most casual passerby. She told about sitting on the el, and a ragged man with tattered clothes and ratty hair was panhandling. He came up to her, and she told him she had no money to give him. He sat down a couple of seats away, and she got up and sat beside him. She told him she had no money, but she could pay him some attention. She put her arm around him, and gave him a hug. She looked up and noticed how put off her fellow passengers were - you're actually hugging this guy? But as she got up, Leana looked back and noticed the beggar - smiling!