Voices in the journey home: My mother; The First African American I ever met.

We are fortunate in that because of our technology we have a built in way to have conversations with a diverse group of clients that is working on rebuilding their lives. Through these conversations we have met some incredible individuals and found some amazing stories that we have been able to share.  We are proud to be able to highlight another voice that has an ability to write and a willingness to share their journey.  You first met Samuel when we shared part of his story in a video on our home page www.cvm.org and now he will be a regular guest blog writer in our feature we like to call “Voices in the journey home”.

My mother; The First African American I ever met.

"I broke her heart. I broke my mother’s heart in two and smashed it with the heel of my ungrateful boot. I kicked her with my pride when she was down while holding my hands over my ears to muffle her cry's for understanding. That sounds terrible doesn't it?

Although that didn't physically happen, it figuratively occurred and I have spent the last three years of my life struggling with piercing guilt. I have gone back and forth from forgiving myself to torturing myself for sins against my own mother.

As that old Frank Sinatra song goes “Regrets, I have a few but then again too few to mention.” This is not the case with me. I was a troubled child with a troubled mother. I felt rejected by her so I lashed out. I didn't realize how much she must have loved me until years after she had passed. Truth is when I left home without saying goodbye to her I broke her heart - she died 9 years later.

During her life this classy lady would never leave the house with her hair undone even if she had to hide it under a wig. They did that in those days. Boy, could she walk with dignity. Her head would be up so high in public you would hope that it wouldn't rain. One would have never known that she was a survivor of the brutal south and unspeakable crimes against her body and her mind.

I wish someone had given me that information, even as a little boy I would have understood.

She was an amazing African American woman. She carried herself with dignity and masked the pain of her past in public exceptionally. No one ever told me about her past until after she had died. I didn't know that she was extremely terrified of white people. I only knew she came to Washington from Tennessee for a change before I was born and that she could be cold and insensitive at times. I was a selfish teenager focused on my own pain. 

In private when she thought she was alone Mama would talk to herself out loud. It was tough for me to listen too. At that time I had to gather the reasons for her mental illness out of thin air.

If only I had known.

Why am I writing about this? I want to encourage you to cherish the people in your life no matter what. Separate each person from their behavior. Try to look behind the reasons they are behaving the way they are. Contemplate understanding.

I forgive myself. 

You may have to distance yourself but try not to lash out or strike back. Forgive the hurtful person and then for God’s sake forgive yourself." - Samuel

Recovered and Reclaimed

Last week I saw a clip of a documentary that featured pelicans from the Gulf of Mexico that were rescued from the BP oil spill. The clip I saw showed the releasing of the pelicans back into their natural habitat, after the area was deemed safe. When one particular pelican was released from its cage, it stood still in place for a good five minutes. Although it was back where it belonged, the pelican felt lost.

 I realized that I was like that pelican when I first left the shelter, and moved into the hotel where I stay now. I was back on my own and back into independent living, but I didn't know what to do intuitively anymore. That is, I knew what to do in order to live on my own mentally, but it honestly took me a good month or so to get used to living in a space alone. I had to get re-acquainted with preparing my own meals, washing dishes, having to schedule laundry around a work schedule, and having to catch the bus to buy groceries. Even now, when I hear certain noises, I have to remind myself that a security guard isn't going to put keys into my door and come into my room anytime they felt like it, invading my privacy.

I share this because I am in the midst of beginning another step of my personal recovery back "home". Through some very heartbreaking yet serendipitous circumstances, I find myself with a one-way plane ticket that is good for another eight months. That plane ticket is my literal ticket out of the city that I live in now, and it is my ticket to a brand new life. It will lead me to a life of my choice, and hopefully that life will include new friends, and new love. It will certainly lead me to a much needed change of scenery. And yet, although all of these aspects will be new to me, part of the completion of my homecoming is moving towards this new life that will reflect my deepest hopes and dreams.

My next series of blog posts will discuss how a formerly homeless single woman dares to muster the strength and the courage to move from surviving, to living and thriving. Thinking about life in general, I've come to realize that people (myself included) can become so stuck in the process of recovery that we forget that the end goal isn't simply being in recovery, but the end goal is to come to a place of being recovered and re-claimed. I'm still on my journey. I've been in this hotel for a year and some change. I wish I could have left sooner, but part of me understands that it took a year and some change to get to this place that I'm at now mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Now, I have to give myself permission stop dragging my feet in the past with all of its horrible memories and trauma, and run towards my future with arms wide open.

The documentary ended with the pelican eventually figuring out what to do. It decided to join the other pelicans that were released back into the marshes of the Gulf. The pelicans then reclaimed their innate lifestyles. They formed a pattern in the sky, and they flew off into the sunset. It all turned out well for them at the end of the day, even after all the trauma that they were exposed to from the oil spill. They lost their home for a time, but they were able to literally and figuratively reclaim their home. I'm hoping for the same outcome.

My name is Terrah, and I will be sharing with you ways that my Community Voice Mail phone number has helped me, and I will be sharing tips on how it could help you as well. It might seem like a small thing, but having a phone number gives hope, and that hope can be the seed for so much growth in your life recovery. I hope you continue to read my post, and I wish you well in your journey. These lilies represent the fact that within the seeds of one form of life, rises the beauty of a new form of life.

The Road To The Beginning

I looked around the apartment to make sure that I got all of the last belongings out. I needed to make sure that everything was cleared out, because once I turned in the keys, that was it. There would be no turning back. There would be no way to retrieve any of my stuff. I had a heck of a journey on the bus to get back to the Salvation Army downtown. I had already been there a day or two, and the last thing that I was looking forward to, was walking down the block to get to my bunk bed. I didn't want to go back to the cramped feeling of laying on top of all of the other women, and their kids. I especially didn't want to get back to that filthy bathroom. I wanted to feel and smell a clean environment one more time. I laid down on my clean carpet in the apartment.

All of a sudden, the weight of my situation hit me like a ton of bricks. The sound of my crying came up from the pit of my stomach. I let out a huge wail, and the tears burst forth from a crack in my spiritual dam. I lay on my stomach, wailing, flailing, and beating the floor. Why was this happening to me? And, how in the world could I possibly manage what I knew I had no choice but to live through? After about 20 minutes, I picked myself up, and then I locked the front door. I walked across the street to the manager's office. I took my house keys off of my keyring, and turned them into the night drop box. For the first time that I could remember, I had no house keys on my keyring. It was finished. I was officially homeless. - November 2008

This is a recollection of the beginning of my 18 month journey in which I was displaced on a hard-core level. I had always had people to let me stay with them, and to otherwise help me out. But this time, I was on my own. You know, it's amazing the things that you take for granted as being part of your everyday life, until you lose them. Your house keys really become precious metal. You realize that you don't have a phone number to call your own. You find yourself in a Catch-22 situation: You have no way to be reached to obtain services to better yourself, and you can't better yourself without a method of contact. But more than this, you have no idea what it feels like to not even have the dignity of having something so basic as a phone number, but you do know the shame of feeling utterly helpless. This is why it was so meaningful to me to obtain a phone number from a local charitable organization that worked with Community Voice Mail. I first received my Community Voice Mail number two years ago. I still have it, and it has been the one constant in my journey back to independent living.

My name is Terrah, and I will be sharing with you ways that my Community Voice Mail phone number has helped me, and I will be sharing tips on how it could help you as well. It might seem like a small thing, but having a phone number gives hope, and that hope can be the seed for so much growth in your life recovery. I hope you continue to read my post, and I wish you well in your journey. These lilies represent the fact that within the seeds of one form of life, rises the beauty of a new form of life.