Recently, a friend and I talked about loss and how it impacts our lives more, or less, depending upon how confident or safe we feel in our lives.

The challenge with homelessness, I shared, is that no matter where you are, you never feel safe in your life or environment. 

Aren’t shelters designed to give people that sense of safety? they asked.

The simple answer is yes. 

The reality is staying in a shelter is preferrable than on the streets. Shelters do everything they can to create a place of safety and caring. But it doesn’t change how the individual feels. It doesn’t change the perception of being unsafe, not because of the environment, but rather, because of this condition called ‘homeless’. 

When I was in my teens, we travelled to Czechoslovakia. It was still behind the Iron Curtain and I remember feeling unsafe, at risk, compromised. My father was unpredictable and did not suffer fools easily. In a communist country, his quick to anger responses left us at risk, or at least, that was my fear. What if he said the wrong thing to the wrong person? Would we be stuck behind the Curtain forever?

We arrived late in the day in Prague and could not find a hotel. We ended up staying in a hostel. My father in ‘the men’s room’ and my mother, two sisters and I in the ‘women’s room’.

Our fellow travellers were nice but problem was, to get to the men’s room, men had to walk through the women’s room.

I remember sleeping with one eye open the entire night. I remember keeping my belongings, what few belongings we’d brought into the hostel with us, underneath my blanket, close to my body. Every little sound stirred me and my mother’s constant query of “who’s there” didn’t help. It also didn’t help that our suitcases were in the VW van we were travelling in and I was worried someone would break into it and steal everything while we slept.

I was angst driven and uncomfortable in my strange surroundings.

We only stayed two days in Prague, one day longer than intended because our VW van broke down and needed repairs. We were lucky. The day after we left the country, they closed the borders to both entry and exit and as my father worked for the government, we weren’t supposed to be there anyway. Then again, my father being my father, we were all travelling on our British passports rather than Canadian just so the government wouldn’t know we were there.

I remember the beauty of the city architecture, but it was overlaid with a pervasive feeling of dark foreboding fear. Everything was run down and shabby. It was a year after the Russians had rolled into the country and taken over control. People walked with their heads down seldom making eye contact. And they definitely didn’t chat with foreigners.  I remember the tanks standing still in the middle of public squares and uniformed men with machines guns at the ready walking along streets.

And I remember feeling uncomfortable, at risk, far from home and unsafe.

We weren’t homeless, but we were definitely on foreign soil, far from our norm and out of our element. A few years later I travelled on my own to Berlin. The wall had not yet come down and crossing over into East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie also gave me that feeling of dark, foreboding fear. Of being at risk, uncomfortable and unsafe.

Like living in an emergency shelter, I wasn’t truly unsafe. But, my environment and the conditions around me evoked a sense of unsettledness that all my thinking in the world could not disperse.

Homelessness by its very nature creates a feeling of unsettledness, despair, discomfort and fear. No matter the intentions of those around you, good or bad, the condition of homelessness is distressing. Like me sleeping with one eye open and all my clothes and belongings grasped beneath my blanket in the hostel that night, the condition of homelessness leaves you with no alternative than to be hyper conscious of your surroundings, holding on for dear life to what few belongings you possess.

In homelessness, your way of life is at risk, your past is swept away and all you have to hold onto is the reality of where you’re at and the fear you may be stuck there forever. And that’s scary.

Image by Arjun Mujay – http://www.naturepictures.co/deserts/water-on-desert-wallpaper/

There is an ancient story of a man lost in the desert who searches and searches for the land beyond the endless sand surrounding him. One day, he stumbles to the top of a sand dune and discovers a river running freely in the valley below.

On the other side of the river, is the land he’s always dreamed of. Beautiful flowers of every colour line its banks. Lush, verdant forest stretches far to the horizon.

Overcome with anticipation, he rushes down the sand dune to the waters edge only to discover, there is no way across.

Inconsolable, he sits at the water’s edge and cries and cries. And the river runs freely and he cries and cries until with nothing else to do, he begins to search along the waters edge for materials to build a raft.

Eventually, he finds some old pieces of wood and builds a raft to carry him across the river.

Eventually, he makes it across.

Overjoyed by having discovered the land he’s always dreamt of, he climbs off his raft and begins to explore. He doesn’t go very far when he realizes his mistake.

“What if I come upon another river and need to cross it?” he wonders.

And he goes back to where he left his raft on the shore, picks it up and puts it on his back.

He continues on his exploration, holding tightly to the raft, just in case.

The raft becomes heavier and heavier, but he cannot let go. It served him well when he needed it before. He might need it again.

And the raft becomes heavier and heavier until the man can no longer walk. He crumbles to the ground and begins to crawl, dragging his raft with him until he can no longer move beneath the weight of all he carries.

And he lies still.

Too often, we are like that man. We search and search for someplace better to be, someone else to love us more, something else to bring us joy, happiness, contentment. As we search, we carry with us the things that have brought us here, no matter how heavy those things become, or how useless they are in our search today.
In our fear we may need those things from the past again, we do not lighten our load and begin to bend beneath the weight of all we carry.

There are things from my childhood and past I hope I never lose. My sense of wonder in the world around me. My curiosity. My joyful passion for love and light and life and living.

There are other things I hope to let go of. My fear of the dark, of feeling unwanted, stupid, unloved. My fear of making mistakes, of never getting it right, of being the cause of all the darkness in the world. These things I have no need of. They do not serve me well.

Yet still, vestiges of their presence cling to me and slip, unbidden, into my journey when I am not paying attention. They irritate my passage through life like a pebble in my shoe.  If I do not stop to take it out, pain will be my constant companion in every step I take.

There are many ways to let go of self-defeating behaviours and burdens that hinder our passage through life. For me, one of the greatest ways to let it go is to write it out.

There is power in writing it out. In naming the things I carry and do not need, they become visible, and can no longer hide behind their cloak of invisibility. In seeing them on the page, I see them for what they are: disruptive, somewhat ridiculous, and oh so contrary to what I want more of in my life.

In writing it out I get to stand in my power and overcome their insidious nature simply by turning the light on them, and not the darkness they would have me believe keeps me safe.

In writing it out I find my way through the desert and across the river without needing to build a raft to carry me across. I do not need wood, or words, to swim. I need the power of my belief I deserve to be on the other side. I can do it.

Writing it out lightens my load. Writing it out means I’m not lying still beneath the burden of the past. I am jettisoning the things I do not need and swimming freely in the waters of life.

Writing it out sets me free.

What do you do to lighten your load? what do you do to set yourself free?

Namaste.

Wanderer, there is no way. The path is made by walking. Antonia Machado

We are a world of contradictions. We fight for peace. We fight for the right to bear arms to protect ourselves against an enemy we cannot see but fear is out there lurking, waiting to take what is ours. We fight for the right to vote, and then, do not vote.

ON October 19, Canada will hold a federal election. 

In the homeless sector, voting in an election is not a common practice. 

This year, a group of individuals with lived experience of homelessness want to change that. They are planning a ‘mock election’ in late September complete with ballot boxes, screening officers and candidates vying for the votes of those who do not believe their vote counts.

It is the challenge of homelessness.

You must lose everything to carry the label. And in your loss, you lose dignity, self-respect, and a belief in the power of your voice to make a difference.

At a meeting the other day to discuss plans for the upcoming mock election, a co-worker talked about one young man who has decided this year he will exercise his perogative. In his early 30s, he has been homeless off and on most of his life. 

This year, he will vote for the first time.

But first, he needs to get identification that will let him vote.

It is another challenge of homelessness. Voting requires identification. Many people living the experience of homelessness do not have that which the majority of us take for granted; a piece of paper that legally confirms we are who we say we are in the world.

At the mock election, there will be people who can support those without identification obtain it. 

“Is a month enough time to get ID?”, someone at the meeting asked.

None of us knew for sure.

None of us had ever been faced with the task of getting something so seemingly simple.

At the shelter where I used to work there is a room filled with belongings clients have left behind. When giving tours of the facility, people would ask, “Why do they leave these things behind? Don’t they want them? Don’t they care?”

It is not so simple. 

Sometimes, someone won’t return to their locker because in the process of going about their daily life, they have been arrested for outstanding warrants. With no ability to pay for jay walking tickets, vagrancy tickets, and a host of other tickets a homeless individual can acquire in daily life, they opt for jail. They have no choice.

Sometimes, they wind up in hospital with no means to let anyone know where they are.

Sometimes, a job offer comes up and they grab it, even if it means leaving right now to travel to the oil fields or some other distant place. They do not dare hesitate. Jobs don’t come along often in the world of homelessness.

Sometimes, the burden of the past is too great to keep carrying, and they leave it behind.

Sometimes, in constantly leaving things behind, the things they carried are simply that – things.

There are many, many reasons people leave things behind. Things like clothing. Family photo albums. Bibles and and other books. Certificates, like the certificate of merit from a Scout troupe one person left in their locker. Staff could not throw it out, just as they could not discard or repurpose things like Bibles and family photos and other personal items. For staff, clearing out an abandoned locker was one of the most difficult tasks. The choice to keep it, just in case the person returned, or let it go. It is not easy. 

Homelessness fosters a sense of disconnection. Of not being part of ‘your life’ because the fact that this, this place called homeless could be ‘your life’ is hard to grasp. Hard to understand. Hard to believe.

In the disbelief, in the tiredness of having to keep jettisoning the things that once made up your life which you can no longer carry, or bring into a shelter because there is no room for all your stuff, only one suitcase that will fit into a small locker, you let go of holding onto everything.

It’s easier that way.

Just let it go and don’t hold on, to anything.

Especially the belief, you can make a difference.

It’s too hard to hold, that belief. Because if I can make a difference, if for example, my vote might count, then why am I in this place called homeless?

A group of individuals with lived experience of homelessness are holding a mock election in September to encourage those with the lived experience of homelessness to exercise their right to vote. 

It is an important thing they are doing, this group of concerned citizens. 

They are building the path, walking their talk, creating space for their voice to be heard. And in that space, they will hold space for others to rise up and cast their vote too.

They cannot predict the outcome. But they do know, that if they do not walk this path. If they do not take these steps, the way will not magically appear. 

There are lessons to be learned from these individuals who are walking this path. They are creating a new direction with every step they take.

I have been writing a poem a day about Peace on my Poetry Affair blog.

It is hard, this commitment to write a poem a day. I’ve already missed one day!

Sort of. Almost. 

I wrote yesterday’s and forgot to post it. 

Actually, I wrote it in my head while walking with Beaumont and forgot to write it down.

This morning, there it still was, waiting for me to uncover it. To set the words free. To make them visible.

Like so many things in life. Ideas live in our heads, we carry dreams and wishes and hopes and schemes and wonder why they never appear in our lives.

As Mark said in his comment on yesterday’s post, it takes action.

Someone asked me the other day what they should do about a situation in their life they wanted to change.

“What do you think?” they asked. “Should I do A or B?”

“I don’t have your answers,” I replied. “You hold the answer you seek. Both are directions you can take. There is no wrong choice. There is only the choice you make.”

“But I want to do the right thing,” they said.

“Then do it,” I replied.

This morning, as I pondered missing yesterday’s poem posting, I considered posting it and changing the date to yesterday so my chronology would be correct.

I can do either. Change it or leave it as is.

I can still post another poem today. Or not.

What is the write thing for me to do?

What eases my mind and brings my heart peace?

An interesting question. 

What eases my mind and brings my heart peace?

My heart does not feel restful when I consciously choose to ‘cheat’, even if I am the only one I’m really affecting.

My heart does not feel restful.

And as I write the answer comes to me.

I am building a new habit. When building a new habit, patience, persistence, passion and compassion are necessary.

Patience with my clumsiness in learning new things.

Persistence in the face of my critter mind’s chatter to forget about it and fall back into old ways.

Passion to honour my higher good’s desire to express itself.

And compassion for my forgetfulness, and the confusion it instills in my mind and heart.

Begin again. Always begin again.

Searching for peace of mind and a peaceful heart, I realize the answer is simple.

I will write a poem later today on creating peace of the heart, and post it. I will have two poems posted on the same day, but they’ll be numbered so my count will still be accurate.

Whew! Another bullet dodged in my wish to do that which creates more of what I want in my life, and my desire to keep my commitments with myself.

And so, I begin again.