I am engrossed in conversation with another woman when I walk into the ‘Timmie’s’ around the corner from the office where I’ve been consulting. I don’t see the woman sitting by herself at a corner table until I get to the front of the line. As I stand beside her she looks up and I smile.

“Louise!” she says, standing up to greet me.

“Hello Sharon*,” I say as she wraps her arms around me in a big hug.

She is a substantial woman. Solid. Long salt and pepper hair streaming down her back.

“You look good!” she says. “You must be in love!”

I laugh and reply. “Of course! Does it show?”

“Yup.”

“How are you?” I ask. “Where are you living now?”

Sharon was a client at the shelter where I used to work. She used to come up to the art studio to draw and create ‘art objects’ or to simply sit in the quiet and journal. She lived on her own, off and on, but mental health issues often tripped her up, bringing her back to the shelter when she could no longer sustain her independence. I was hoping the news would be good when I asked my question. I was hoping she would be thriving.

“I don’t have a place right now,” she told me. A shrug of one shoulder. A wry, lopsided smile punctuating her words.

“Are you back at the shelter?”

She shook her head. Looked down. “No. I’m sleeping rough right now,” she mumbled. She paused. Looked back up at me. “I should be hearing about a place today. I’m hoping I get it.”

“I hope so too,” I tell her. “Are you working with someone to help you?”

“Oh yeah. I got it all under control.”  And she smiles, big. She shows me the cigarette between her fingers. “Gotta go feed my vice!” And she laughs, grabs her purse and heads towards the door. “It was nice to see you Louise. You always make me smile,” she calls back before heading outside. In an instant she is gone.

I get a phone message from a woman who has battled her way out of homelessness. She’s just been diagnosed with her second round of cancer and is undergoing chemo. “I’m okay,” she says in her message. “I just want to tell you how blessed I am to have my parents and my special friends.” And she hangs up without leaving her number, which is blocked on my caller ID.

I want to connect with her, with Sharon, with other women like Julie whom I met earlier in the afternoon when I interviewed her for an annual report I’m writing for an agency that provides affordable housing here. I want to connect and tell them how it doesn’t seem fair to me. It doesn’t seem right that life should hand them such tough causes. That the world can be so blind to their struggles.

I want to tell them, Sawbonna. I see your soul.

I learned Sawbonna from my beautiful friend, Margot Van Sluytman whom I am meeting for coffee this afternoon. Sawbonna is an African word and the name of her latest book. Sawbonna: I See You. Dialogue of Hope.  Sawbonna is a beautiful, poignant and inspiring journey through grief and anger and pain and depression towards the healing Margot finds in forgiveness after meeting the man who murdered her father when she was 16.

Sawbonna is what I want to tell these women on my path.

I cannot change their journey. I cannot give them answers. I cannot take away their pain, or sorrow, or fear or whatever they are feeling.

I can stand with them. Be present.

I can bear witness to their struggles and be present to their stories. And in my presence, I can be part of the circle of hope that in telling our stories, we create new stories of possibility, of life beyond the pain, of life lived joyfully in the promise of what can be when we are, as Julie described it earlier in the afternoon when talking about her home, safe.

I cannot change the world. But, to make a difference, I can be present. I can say, Sawbonna. I see your soul.