Two women

summer view from springhill road

Everyday, I go to work to work with people who can't, aren't, don't know how, and sometimes really don't want to...........work that is. Most can't.....for one reason or another, they can't find work, or simply can't because of their life circumstances. Consequently, they have to live well below the poverty line in a world where money is minimal, opportunities are abysmal, and hope is sometimes mixed with despair. They live on social assistance. I honestly don't know how they manage to keep hope alive let alone live and pay their bills. And yet they do. Their strength in the face of daily adversity touches me deeply. They are my teachers when it comes to keeping hope alive.

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Today, I met with a woman who has 505 dollars to live on for the month. She is considered "low employable" so receives the HIGHER amount of social assistance. Yes, there are others who live on LESS than that in this wealthy country. Her rent is 300 dollars and that doesn't include anything except electricity, which luckily covers her heat expenses. She lives in a rooming house which consists of one room of her own, and shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. She has no access to the thermostat. The heat is set for her room somewhere else. She tells me that in the summer, it's like an oven because there is no cross ventilation. In the winter, it's like freezer because the building has very little insulation, so the landlord keeps the thermostat on low because the heat escapes through the cracks and misshapen doors and windows and it costs too much to heat the place.


The rest of her money goes to everything else........food, personal necessity items like shampoo and soap, phone, busfare, over the counter medications which she is required to take due to her health issues, and anything else that arises. Cable is a luxury even though she is basically house bound..............or room bound due to her multiple health issues. She has an old radio, and little TV that receives one channel, a kettle and a hot plate. The room is big enough to fit a bed, a dresser and a little table.



She can't work. Her health is too precarious, but not enough to be certified disabled which would mean she would receive a few more dollars a month, but more importantly would be considered a "priority." This doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot because budgets for anything except the REAL emergencies have been cut to nothing. However, she would become a priority for subsidized housing..........where her rent would be less than half of what she is paying now. Then, maybe she could afford cable. For now and for the unforseeable future, her days will feel like she's just putting in time.





Empty time, in chronic pain. Alone.
I wonder when she last heard the words, "I love you?"
I wonder how long her nights feel.
I wonder if she has the ability to look in the mirror on top of her paint chipped dresser and see her own beauty?
I wonder where she continues to find hope despite her circumstances?
I wonder if I could find hope if I found myself in similar circumstances?

This woman exuded hope sitting in my office talking with me, so much so that we laughed out loud together. At one point, we were able to brush aside our perceived roles to chat like two women meeting for coffee swapping funny life stories, not "client and counsellor" getting the paperwork done.

She has no money, never has. She has lived a financially poor life, one fraught with bone aching hunger, violent angry relationships........one with more falls and scrapes and concussions imaginable. What she does have is strength in her spirit, something that has pulled others into her life. She has friends.......other women who live in the same rooming house who look after her when she is in too much pain to get out of bed. She is needed and they are needed and that's the ingredient for hope. Life is meaningful if we know we are needed. No doubt money would HELP make life a whole lot easier. Whoever says otherwise is lying. But, money is can never buy reality of being needed.


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Last week, I met with a young single mom who is getting gouged by her own family who are making her pay $700.00 a month rent for a two bedroom basement apartment for her daughter, her infant son and herself. She receives a little more than her rent. Her story of how she ended up in the basement of a family member's home touched me deeply. She left a abuse behind, and wonders if her daughter will ever trust again. She doesn't know how deep the scars are inside her spirit and hopes that her safer home has a door which opens to healing for her little one.




Passive healing as opposed to healthy intervention? Such a big wish to throw out into the randomness of incomplete prayer. Potentially extensive wounds relying on the air to scab it over? How does the air reach a cut on a 10 year old's broken soul? She needs more than that. Air can't validate like a listening human being. Air can't rock a little one who needs to crawl up onto the lap of trust, to be held in warming recognition. Air can't speak a song of love. Not on it's own.


However.........her momma has the same wounds and many more which have accumulated over her life of cuts and bruises, of loud nastiness which has rung in her ears since she was a little one. Her own childhood needs were never met.

Now? She is struggling to overcome a prescription addiction through the methadone program and has in fact been on methadone three times longer than she was taking her addictive pain medication which was prescribed to her by a doctor who is known for handing out Dilaudid like candy. And, there is no end in sight. In dire need of consistent counselling and guidance with a competent counsellor she can learn to trust, she has found herself on a waiting list in limbo for months. She can't work. She can't cope. She can't pay her bills. And she has yet to meet with a legal aid lawyer to help her deal with pending custody issues. She's over her head and she's drowning.




I wish I could honestly state that these stories are unique. They aren't. Poverty cuts to the core, past financial need, beyond the superficial one dimensional view we often have of what it means to be without money.



Once I knew some of her story, I filled in the gaps from my own knowledge gathered working in the frontlines. My conversation with this young Mom then focused on validating her own childhood needs which were never met. Surprised that I went there instead of focusing on the here and now...........she lifted her head, and let the tears which were hidden just below the surface of her skin, flow freely. I could hear her intake as she quickly gathered her thoughts.......her complicated convoluted memories which were flooding her.

Spilling out the grief, the anger, the pain
And I wondered if this would help her find some strength to address her daughter's needs.
I wondered if under the flood of life, seeds of hope were waiting to open up on top of the water like a summer waterlily.
Pouring it out........brought her to a bit of calm, like she had grabbed onto a lifesaver.....a branch travelling downstream. A tentative smile shone through the tears. Strength and resolution was starting to form again.

Being needed, feeling needed, needing others........a circle which nutures itself no matter what the circumstances are because it is the key ingredient for sharing and recognizing our brokenness as the source of our strength. It makes me wonder if brokenness is where our hope stirs waiting to be gathered.