My journey to homelessness taught me the value of compassion

It’s been almost three years now since I packed up my home and started on this scary, unknown journey into homelessness.

After years of raising a family and working to provide for them, my health took a turn for the worse. I have permanent nerve damage in my right leg from spine surgery. My upper spine also has fractures and bulging discs. My right leg collapses randomly and I’ve taken some nasty falls — one tore three of the four tendons in my rotator cuff in my left shoulder. I now have a steel brace that I wear when my leg gives out. My right hip has been replaced, and my left hip is going.

With my ex remarrying and the last child off to college in South Korea, I had few options left open to me. Disability is notoriously slow. I’ve been fighting with them for the better part of six years. I had no income and little saved. Options? Come to think of it, I really only had one.

I packed up the house, put my things in storage, and walked to the nearest shelter.

I thought I knew all about the homeless community, as I’d always volunteered in soup kitchens and the like. How naive I was.

You cannot truly know a thing until you’ve lived it.

I’ve learned so much about the community, and how it’s not what we assume it to be. What it isn’t, is a group of people trying to avoid the responsibility of living a “normal” life. It’s not nomadic-minded people living that hobo lifestyle. It’s not those who don’t want to work. It’s not them that suffer from addiction, refusing any earnest assistance.

I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m saying you’d be shocked at the percentages. How little these scenarios represent the body of the community.

What encompasses the whole? Senior citizens. Mental and physically handicapped. Children aging out of foster care. Women leaving bad relationships, with their children in tow. High school students who’ve come out as gay, who are dropped off by parents who can’t or won’t accept them. Recovering addicts who can’t seem to find stable employment or housing. Prison parolees who just want another chance at life, and a road forward to make up for mistakes of the past. An influx of survivors who work minimum wage jobs and are priced out of housing. People who are literally dying of disease.

We need to do better.

I would never have known, had I not been thrust into this unfortunate set of circumstances. A journey I was most certainly meant to take, if only to introduce these facts to a mind that was admittedly biased at times.

Since finding stable housing one month ago, I’ve relived memories. Not only of the life I once had, but also a deep reflection of what I’d been through. What I had seen. What I had learned. What I had accomplished on behalf of the invisible people who make up homeless communities across the country.

We are our lived experiences. If we can’t glean from them a knowledge that enables us a way forward, a way to help others, then the insight is lost on us completely.

I could look back on these three years and feel sorry for myself or even embarrassment, but then what was the lesson for? What was this whole homeless experience for, if not to learn a better way of advocating for those who have no voice.

I now have a roof over my head. A roof that comes with a different set of issues, but one that allows me solace, comfort and the modern conveniences we all take for granted.

I am grateful for and will always remember Brian and Paul, two people who provided protection, conversation and laughter in those early months where all three were in short supply. It was only those few months that separated me from their deaths, and ever knowing them at all.

I’ll also remember and be grateful for those who supported me, helped me, pushed me and never gave up on me or left me to go it alone. They helped me navigate the stacks and stacks of paperwork my disability called for, gave me a platform to tell the stories of the homeless, let me vent when I needed, and enabled me to hang on to the memories and artifacts of my children’s early lives.

They are the people who quietly do the things that others do not. They have hard conversations and advocate unselfishly. They move through this world, unacknowledged and uncelebrated, silently making the world a better place. One person, one circumstance at a time. Changing lives — changing mine.

I finally feel a part of the human race once again. I hold my chin a little higher. I speak a little softer. My compassion is real. My determination, rock solid. My green eyes glisten with tears, not yet spilled as I reflect on this hard-won experience.

I move quietly through the world, listening and retelling. One person, one story at a time. I know their pain because I’ve lived it. My empathy is sincere. My assumptions, laid waste. I’ve done my time.

I’ve walked in their shoes. For only the wearer knows where the blisters form.

Gerri-Lynn Graves lives in Boise, Idaho. She wrote this for the Idaho Statesman.