I remember this day 27 years ago. It was a bright and sunny Thursday. We had been anticipating the birth of our first child and her due date had long since passed. Every second day I would walk the half hour to the hospital, have a natal stress test, meet a friend for lunch and then walk home. On those days when I wasn’t going for a stress test,  my dog Max and I would walk throughout the city, enjoying the late spring sunshine, stopping to chat with strangers or to visit with a dog we’d meet along our route. Inevitably someone we met would ask, “When are you due?” And I would reply, “Last week. The week before last. 3 weeks ago.

In the end, Alexis Marie slipped into the world 23 days past her original due date. As I lay on an operating table and the doctor cut into my abdomen, I heard her cries from within my womb and my heart melted. I could feel it. That instantaneous giving way of the boundaries that held all known feeling in place. A letting go of all restraint, an abandoning of life as I knew it as this tiny, precious, perfect being was lifted from the safety of my womb and exposed to the world.

I wanted to keep her close. To keep her tied to the umbilical safety of my being the vessel that embraced her every breath.

And I had to let her go. I had to allow the cord to be cut to give her wings room to grow.

They have been growing ever since.

Over the past 27 years I have watched in awe and wonder as this tiny being has expanded into becoming the amazing, beautiful woman she is today. From her first cry to her first smile to her first song, I have borne witness to the magic and miracle of her voice growing stronger. With every breath, every word, every movement, she has taught me about life and love and living fearlessly. Through the gift of her life I have learned to claim my own greatness and celebrate the many exquisite facets of our human condition.

My eldest daughter turns 27 today. Over these 27 years she has taught me the truth about Love. She has shown me the meaning of courage. She has given me eyes to see the miracle of life.

Alexis celebrates her 27th birthday today and as I breathe into this space where grace floods my heart and gratitude fills my every breath, I give thanks for the miracle of her life, the wonder of her Love and the gifts of being her mother.

Happy Birthday Alexis. You make my heart smile.

Her text came in at 1am. I heard it’s distinctive ping as I was talking with her older sister. Her text had come in at midnight. A midnight call for help.

I called, we chatted and in the midst of our talk, her younger sister text from Amsterdam to say, ‘we’re here.’

She’s on her way home.

I text back, “My heart is happy. Falling into blissful sleep now,” after her sister and I ended our conversation.

And it’s true. My heart is happy. She is on her way home.

“You’d make a terrible foreign correspondent mother,” my eldest daughter proclaimed.

And she’s right. I would.

And I’m okay with that. Neither of them are foreign correspondents. Neither of them are delving into war torn lands searching for the stories that will awaken our hearts and minds to the need for peace.

But they are, delving in. My eldest daughter delves into matters of the heart and soul every day on her blog, The Wunder Year. Courageously, fearlessly she treds into those vulnerable places where man shies away from. With great heart she opens up her inner world to shine the light for others to see where they need not fear themselves.

It is her fearlessness and honesty that precipitated her midnight text. “Do you regret what you wrote?” I asked. “No,” she replied. “I needed to speak the truth to live without fear.”

In the truth, a door opens, a conversation begins that points towards the light, away from the deeper darkness of the secrets of the heart that kept her apart from someone she loves. In her truth, she is free.

I am proud of my daughters. Proud and oh so grateful for their fearless pursuit of life beyond their comfort zones.

And though I may sometimes worry, my worry is just the stuff of a mother’s heart that would protect her children from scrapes and bruises and falling down upon life’s road.

But that’s not my job. My job is to be here. To stand with open arms and heart, to be that place they can come when they feel the stings of life’s arrows piercing through the delicate fabric of their heart.

My job is to love them, no matter what, in all kinds of weather, in every kind of situation, in every circumstance.

And I do.

I am so blessed.

I am an emotional eater. When I am worried, unsure, confused, I eat. Doesn’t matter if I’m hungry, or not. Doesn’t really matter what I’m eating either. I just want to keep filling myself up to ease the gnawing that emanates from the pit of my being at unrest.

And this weekend was just one of those times.

My youngest daughter has been in Turkey for two weeks. When first she left the unrest seemed to have quieted down. “We’re not going to go to where the demonstrators are, mum,” she told me confidently. “And anyway, the first week we’ll be in Izmir by the sea. We’ll be fine.” She and a girlfriend had met a couple of friends while at university in the Netherlands who hailed from Turkey. One was flying in from Berlin where he now works and the other was in Izmir. “They’ll make sure we’re safe,” she said.

And for the first week and a half, all was well. I’d check the headlines, not hear any word of demonstrations in Turkey and my heart would be at ease.

And then last week, the headline story on CBC was about more demonstrations in Istanbul. “We’re in Istanbul now,” she text to C.C., her sister, step-sister and myself. “It’s beautiful.”

And it was. Her pictures showed sun and mosques and golden filigree screens and the 101 scarves she seems to have felt compelled to buy. She was having fun.

And then, on Saturday she mentioned  getting caught in tear gas on Friday night. What????  I missed the beginning of the circle of texts as I was in the garden puttering, enjoying the morning sunshine, revelling in the birds tweeting and the flowers coming into full bloom. Tear gas?

I text back. Tell me what happened.

I’m fine she said. Washed my eyes out when we made it back to the hotel. I’m fine.

She text a video of the event. It was creepy. They’re in a restaurant having dinner and a white billowy cloud drifts by the window. Suddenly, they’re running about, coughing, yelling. Clothes to mouths. Eyes wide and tearing. Shaky camera phone. And one man sits stoically in front of his meal and continues to eat while the others retreat as far back into the restaurant as they can.

We’re fine now, she texts back. Fine, once she’d gotten through the paroxysms of coughing and her eyes burning.

And then the texts went silent. My phone tells me my last text was undelivered. At 3am her response to my text before the last text comes in. And then it comes in again. I text back. “Did you just resend this one?”

“My text have been acting kind of weird,” she writes.

“They’re probably blocking wifi,” I respond.

Blocking wifi does not give a mother’s heart peace. Nor do stories of clearing out Geza Park with tear gas and water canons and rubber bullets.

They went out for a bit on Saturday but turned back when they smelled tear gas. On Sunday morning, we text and then that was it. I didn’t hear from her again.

Be still my beating heart.

Where is she?

Is she okay.

I stay up to watch the late news.

Go for the late late news just in case.

It doesn’t look good.

I’d sent her a news clipping the day before and she replied, Don’t watch the news. It only makes you worry.

I think of her words as I’m watching all the events in the Middle East. It is a cauldron of unrest spilling over into mayhem everywhere.

I am not reassured.

C.C. calls me from the road as he drives to Saskatoon. I tell him of my worry. He doesn’t tell me to stop worrying. I am grateful. I need this worry. The bread and cheese and chocolate I just ate hasn’t impacted it one iota but at least his words help. Worry is natural, he says, with where she’s at in the world. But she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She will keep herself out of trouble.

She was 40 minutes from Taksim Square when the tear gas found her the other night. She wasn’t looking for trouble, I remind him.

She’ll be fine and you will keep worrying because she’s your daughter. It’s okay. And he’s right. There is no easy way to ease a mother’s worry when her child is in a corner of the world thousand of miles away that is writhing in discord.

You have the number of her hotel, why don’t you call? C.C. asks.

I wait. Until almost midnight. Istanbul is 9 hours ahead. I think it’s only 8 but it’s actually 9 I discover when the lovely woman at the Pensionne tells me my daughter is sleeping. “She’s okay,” she says in her delightfully accented English. “No need to worry. We take good care of her.”

I thank her and hang up and gradually fall asleep. One more day and she’ll be home. May peace surround her.

I know my daughter may kill me for calling — and doubting — her safety. But seriously… I don’t want to eat any more bread and chocolate. This trip could cost me 20 lbs!

As in Friday’s past, I am choosing to share things of wonder, things of humour, things that simply make me smile or go, Ah Ha! simply because I find them fascinating.

Fascination 1:

The lovely Fi Biederman over at Inspiration to Dream, shared a delightful story on her blog yesterday – she also shared a photo of her ‘dream home’ a la Hobbit style. Not my style but it sure is cute!

The story goes…

You Gotta Love Kids

An atheist was seated next to a little girl on an airplane and he turned to her and said, “Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”

The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger, “What would you want to talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the atheist. “How about why there is no God, or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?” as he smiled smugly.

“Okay,” she said. “Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?”

Because I’m feeling playful, and also because I just feel like sharing, yesterday’s blog post and your comments reminded me of a poem I’d originally written over at my Recover Your Joy blog.

Now before I post my poem, I have a question for everyone. I wrote on Recover Your Joy for 4 and a half years before I started writing here — and I’m curious. Where do old blogs go  when they become unwritten? How do you let an old blog die?

RYJ is built on the Blogger platform. When I started A Year… I moved over to WordPress as my website is constructed on this platform and it just made sense (somehow — I’m no techie but having my blog and website on the same platform pleased me). At first, I wrote on both blogs each day — and not the same post. RYJ has evolved to be broader than its original theme of ‘making a difference every day’, and so, I’ve let RYJ lay dormant.

But, what happens to all those thoughts and ideas and words? What happens to my creative output if I do nothing with it? Is it just filling up space, taking up room like wrecked cars in a junkyard, rusting away, growing rot, decomposing to become fodder for the grist of the muses wheels at another time, or… does it serve another purpose in the universe? Does it have an after-life, after I’ve stopped filling its space with the muses outpouring?

What would you do with an old blog? Do I euthanize it? Do I blow it up? Do I simply delete and forget? Or, do I leave it as it is, a memorial to my past thinking, a marker for future voyageurs who wander into its halls to decipher the mind and ramblings of a blogger from the past? Do I become a blogging archetype in its slipping into the mists of time?

As I ponder these oh so serious questions, I share with you my tribute to Twitter and FB and SM that I originally wrote on Recover Your Joy inspired by a poetry prompt shared by my friend, Glynn Young at Faith. Fiction. Friends.

And, a note to self — you haven’t posted on your poetry blog for awhile Louise. Maybe it’s time to get to it!

Namaste. May your day be filled with wonder, joy and Love. May you experience your most amazing day yet!

Tweeting Juliet

©2011 Louise Gallagher

Romeo, Romeo
come thee hither
I’ve got news that’ll drive you all a twitter
Desdemona, the tart, has run off with a Moor
Now she’s banned from entering her father’s door.

Oh Romeo, Romeo
come here my sweet
I’ve got something I just gotta tweet
’bout a mid-summer’s dream of love gone astray
and a donkey-headed man with a real foul bray.

Romeo, Romeo
Quick! Come here now
I’ve got some juicy gossip for your RSS feed crowd
Ophelia’s been told to get off to a nunnery
and Hamlet is spouting mad-minded comment’ry.

Romeo, Romeo
come and look
This story deserves a big Like in my Book
It’s a comedy of errors about two lost sons
and the search to reunite them by their father Egeon.

Oh Romeo, Romeo
What a mess
I must post the news in 140 characters or less
but all this twittering has put my mind in such a fog
These characters deserve a full post on my blog.

Social Media Confessions:

Confession No. 1 — I don’t spend a lot of time going through my FB page and when I do, I am always conscious of the fact I can get sucked into spending a great deal of time browsing the messages — so I skip lots and keep one part of my consciousness separate so that I don’t get lost in browsing. Which means — I’m not particularly good at responding to people on FB.

Confession No. 2 — I have a twitter account that I sometimes remember to post things to other than my blog and Alexis’ blog. Which means — I’m not particularly good at responding to people on Twitter.

Confession No. 3 — I have a Pinterest, Linked In, Vimeo, YouTube and other SM accounts — but I’m not particularly active or focused on keeping up with the happenings.

There. Now I feel better.

I’ve been feeling a bit inadequate lately around Social Media. I mean, seriously, there are so many options, so many ways it can lift my profile, that I am exhausted just thinking about them.  And still, there are those who seem to be adept at keeping it all on track. Who seem to be able to update their status and tweet their location and link into their latest feats with ease. I know it’s all about focus and ‘putting your attention on it’ but man, where do I find the time to get attentive in the world of SM?

So…. here’s the BIG Confession No. 4 — I don’t care. I don’t care that I’m not a SM guru or that my latest status was automatically posted to FB by my WordPress account. I don’t care.

With or without SM, my life is mighty fine.

With or without SM, I have people I love whom I spend time with, friends who I connect with on a regular basis, and acquaintances who I keep up with as best I can.

I read the news when I feel like it, I watch tv news if I happen to be awake and the TV is on and… if I miss it, I’m ok.

There was a time when being up to the minute in the happenings of the world was a priority. When knowing the direction of the Dow Jones average and the dips of the TSE were all important. There was even a time when knowing where our Prime Minister was at, what he was doing, who he was talking to — and what he was saying — were top of mind. Heck, how would the world revolve if I wasn’t keeping track of what was happening in every corner of the planet?

The times they are a ‘changin’.

And I’m good with the change.

Sure, being conscious of wars in far off places, and tsunamis sweeping distant shores is important, but I no longer let them consume my consciousness. I can’t. My consciousness is far too consumed with being here, in the here and now, right now. My consciousness is far too aware of being present to be distracted by far off happenings that I cannot affect unless I am creating the change I want to be in the world, right here, right now.

There are seven billion ways to make a difference in the world and we the people are each and every one of them.

I’m not a Social Media guru. Heck, I’m not even a Social Media infant, I’m just a gal looking to make a difference by being the light she wants to create in the world.

I’m good with that!

And now, I feel better. I have confessed (those Catholic roots run deep) and told the truth. I don’t do SM well, and I don’t care. I do being me the best of everything I do — and about that I truly care because me being me and you being you is what makes the greatest difference in our world!  :)

I love how every adversity, and treasure, have the capacity to teach me something new.

Yesterday I wrote about my experience of confronting conflict and coming to the realization — my best is good enough.

It’s true. It is. but, here’s the kicker. If I don’t look for the lessons learned, if I don’t explore what happened for opportunities for growth, my ‘best’ will stay stuck in that place and not inform me.

There are opportunities to grow in every situation — the thing is, those opportunities aren’t always apparent in situ. Sometimes, it takes a bit of reflection, a bit of self-examination to see where I can learn, and grow.

This morning I had one of those ‘realizations’. Those ‘ah ha’ moments that hit me on the inside of the head awakening me to possibility. The realization came through a comment a lovely woman made on yesterday’s blog. Joanne is one of those grounded, here I am and I’m okay just the way I am, kind of people I admire. Her blog, Joanne Rambling, is always filled with every day moments that sparkle in the light of love and joy and honesty and truth with dashes of humour sprinkled throughout. And yesterday, in replying to her, I realized, that my gratitude for my good dad far outweighs the fears I had as a child.

I’ve learned so much from my fears.

I’ve learned to not cower in the face of anger. I’ve learned to use my words wisely, to be conscious of how I respond in every situation, because I have the capacity to give-away my power, or to empower myself to be the peace I want to be in the world.  I’ve learned that anger is just another way of expressing deep emotion.  That anger held in eats away at peace of mind. That anger, when expressed appropriately, can be healthy.

And I’ve learned that anger isn’t what I fear. What I fear is what happens within me when I feel my own anger or confront someone else’s. And in learning that, I have learned to stand true to my feelings and emotions in all kinds of weather. To not allow the winds swirling around me to pull me from my centre. I can change direction, but never change my destination when my destination is always love.

This morning, I embraced the knowing that Sunday wasn’t about replaying what happened in my mind, and improving what I said and did so that I looked and felt less frightened or alone at the time. What Sunday is all about is the opportunity to grow and learn and to embrace my power and my capacity to create change in the world.

Our human tendency after moments of high stress is to go back and recreate the events in a way that we either look better, or, as often happens in the case of a ‘near miss’ accident, we play the ‘What if’ game.

What if I’d been standing right where I’d been 2 minutes ago exactly in that spot where the tree fell? What if I’d still been driving beside the truck when it blew its tire. What if…

And in our recreation, we don’t focus on the gift of life we received by not being in that place where the tree fell or the tire blew. Instead, we focus on the fear of what might have happened if…

My realization this morning was the gift of knowing that in every moment I have the capacity to see the teachings and embrace the learning. Good and bad.

For me, not going back in my head to re-write the script of what I did or didn’t say means I get to focus on my ‘behaviour’ as opposed to my being. There are things I can learn to do better in those situations, and that is all about my behaviour, not about who I am.

Sunday wasn’t about what I did. It’s about what I do now. It’s about embracing the experience to allow it to inform and teach me.

So often, my fear of looking imperfect leaves me stranded in an island of regret and self-doubt. In my heart, I know — I am perfectly human in all my human imperfections — but I’d sure like it if you saw me as perfect as I go about pretending I have no imperfections.

Striving to achieve perfection is simply a self-defeating game that doesn’t get me more of what I want in my life.

But, I’ll play it anyway sometimes because…. striving for perfection keeps me from accepting myself exactly the way I am and loving myself in all my human condition, beauty and the beast.

And that was my big realization this morning. (and I am smiling as I write this). I wanted everyone in that room to see me as perfect — and quite possibly, there were a whole bunch of people in that room who wanted to be seen as perfect too. Truth is, I was perfectly me and that is good enough. I am ok.

It’s not about me ‘being better’. It’s about creating the possibility for ‘more’. There is always room for growth. Always room to learn and evolve and embrace new information. To look deeper into ‘what happened’ to allow myself to expand into the possibility — I can create better.

I have a story I want to tell on myself — and that story is about a woman who faced her fears and learned to love herself in every light.

My father was mercurial. A gentle soul who wrote poetry and read me stories and called me, “Little one” sitting in his lap, reading a book with him was where I felt safe when I was a child.

Unless it was those other times. Those times when the angry man my father could be would erupt and I would be catapulted from feeling safe to feeling exposed, unsafe, insecure, unsure of what the future held.

Because, while his nature was to be a gentle soul, my father was also an angry man. Within him ran an ocean of anger that could sweep across his being as quickly as a river flooding its banks when the damn breaks. One minute we’d be playing a game of scrabble, the next a battle of words would have erupted, its origins lost in the flood of angry words bursting through whatever ill-thought-out notion or comment had set him off.

In his unpredictability, I learned. To fear. Anger. Saying the wrong thing. Causing a disturbance. I learned to distrust. The present. Happiness. Contentment. I learned. To smile through pain. Pretend through fear. Stand still in every storm. I learned my lessons well.

It has taken me years to identify the impact of my learning. Years to dig out the roots of my distrust to find inner peace so that I could be present in the world around me with my heart full of Love and joy and peace.

And sometimes. I still get triggered. Into fear. Into retreat. Into silence or feeling helpless in the face of anger.

Yesterday afternoon I stood in front of a crowd of mostly angry, fearful people and I wanted to cry. I wanted to run. To hide. To pretend everything was all okay. I had been invited to attend the AGM for the community association where the Foundation I work for owns a building which houses formerly homeless individuals. The agenda said we’d discuss the community’s concerns in the final 15 minutes of the meeting.

I was unprepared for the change in the agenda when I arrived at the meeting in time for the discussion. I had been coaching at Choices all weekend. I told my team I had to attend this meeting and would be gone at most, an hour. I didn’t get back until the session was over. The, ‘at most an hour’ turned into 3. The discussion began with my being asked to give a presentation I wasn’t prepared to give. It didn’t matter. Within minutes of beginning one man jumped up to inform me that he’d heard enough and began to yell the truth as he knew it.

I am grateful for the moderator who did his best to keep the discussion respectful and calm. People really did do their best to contain their angry outbursts, but, in emotionally charged situations, people seek to be heard however they can. And sometimes, anger is the path of least resistance.

That’s the challenge of deep-seated learning. We all have it, and we all react in our own unique and adapted ways.

For me, the deep seated learning around anger that I still contain and that can still sometimes be triggered, interferes with my being present in those moments when being present is vital. It interrupts my sense of well-being, My knowing of my own competency. My confidence.

My deep-seated learning around anger leaves me feeling helpless.

Yesterday, in that moment, I felt helpless. I didn’t have their answers. I didn’t have their solutions. I had come to listen and learn and to seek common ground so that together we could find a way to create peace and harmony in their community. I had come not to be heard, but to understand and in the flood of their angry words flying at me, I found myself building a wall of self-defence. I found myself retreating behind silence.

Good fences build good neighbours.

A wall of self-defence builds resistance.

Building a wall wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t creating more of what I wanted in my life, and in that moment. I had to open up to what is possible when I let go of past learning to step into the moment fully conscious of the power I hold to be present and create change.

Yesterday, I stood in front of a crowd of angry people and breathed deeply into my knowing. I breathed deeply into my heart and invited each breath to open me up to expansion. And, in spite of the fact I wanted to cry, and almost did, I kept breathing. And listening. And acknowledging their pain and fear, their anger and desperation. I kept doing as I have been taught to do in coaching at Choices, to love the people when they walk in the room.

I stood in front of an angry crowd yesterday and was reminded of the fragility and grace of our human condition. I was reminded of our capacity to love and to harm one another. I was reminded of our greatness and our darkness. I was reminded, we are all connected. And when I can love the angry man and the screaming woman, I can love all of me.

I stood in front of an angry crowd yesterday and took down my wall. It wasn’t all graceful. It wasn’t all ease. But I did my best. And my best is good  enough.

The facts are sobering. Statistics Canada reports that 1 in 10 Canadians live with an addiction. A 2012 Salvation Army report, Canada Speaks 2012: Mental Health, Addictions and the Roots of Poverty, states that Canadians surveyed indicated 25% of Canadians live with an addiction. That’s 1 in 4 or 8 million people.

Sobering.

Disturbing.

And, when put in context of homelessness, startling. The visibly homeless population in our city make up 4% of those suffering from an addiction. In a city of 1.2 million, they would normally be lost in the numbers, but, because they are more marginalized, and more ‘visible’ which also could mean, look different, we perceive the impact of their addiction to be greater than the impact of others.

Yes, an addict who is homeless is a frequent user of social and emergency services, particularly if they are living on the streets. When you’re living the life of homelessness, survival is a day-to-day event. And sometimes, survival isn’t pretty.

Homelessness sucks. Homelessness saps you of energy. It tears away the fabric of your life, exposing your underbelly to the grit and grime of an existence no one would wish upon even their worst enemy.

Homelessness kills.

Spirit. Health. Will.

End it?

Yes please. Pass me the needle. Give me the hit that will end the futility of all of this.

Olympic athlete, Dan O’Brien said, “The only way to overcome is to hang in.”

For people experiencing homelessness, hanging in, hanging out, hanging on, is often all they can do.

Direction is a place called oblivion. Purpose an upside down world of despair. They don’t know what they’re going to do to fix the mess their lives are in, but wait, ‘Hey buddy, Gotta fix?’ And someone answers. Someone always does when you’re livin’ on the dark side of the street.

“You gotta find a new direction. Get a job.” society tells them. Frightened, they run away. Can’t they see? This is the only direction they’ve ever known. Their lives have led them to this. How can they find a ‘new’ direction when they don’t know how to change the direction they’ve always gone. Down. Down to the street. To street level. To outside looking in. To never havin’, always takin’. It. Us. Them. They don’t know if there’s a place they can go where despair will let them off the hook of desperation. They don’t know.

And so they hang in, hang out, hang on.

We tell them, you don’t belong here, and then we call them drains on society, as if we could wash ourselves clean of the stink and filth of homelessness in one simple statement.

It doesn’t work that way. Homelessness is an outcome. It is an indicator of what isn’t working. In someone’s life. In our community. In our cities and society. Homelessness isn’t the problem. We are.

We talk about ending homelessness but we don’t talk about ending the financial drive that underlies the tearing down of existing low-income housing stock, or the gentrification of our inner cities that is pushing the very people we say we want to help out to the edges of our communities.

Outside looking in.

It is the plight of those who lack the economic, political and physical will to fight for themselves. Whose resources have been drained and whose energy has been expended fighting for that next fix, that next trick, that next inch of ground where they can make a stand if only for a moment, to catch their breath, sell a trick, buy a toke. Maybe, once upon a time, they made a choice that brought them down to street level. Too long looking at the dirt, the choice to get back up is too far gone on the road to desperation. Up is too far away. Up is an unknown direction. Up is that place you’re just too tired to reach for.

And there they lie, until one day, someone reaches out a hand, it may be the one hundredth or the one thousandth hand, but it is that hand they reach for. It is that hand that has found them where they are just too tired to resist reaching back. And in that one hand, they find the strength to get up. It’s not easy. But they do it. And even when they fall, they know, that hand, which is part of many hands connected, will be there to catch them. Again and again. Because to end the homelessness that has sucked their life away, they need to feel part of those hands connected.

Homelessness sucks. but then, so does poverty. So does disease. So does abuse and divorce and mental illness and intolerance and judgement and a host of other social ills that drain our communities of the spirit to work together to be the change we want to see in the world.

We can end homelessness. But first, like an addict choosing to put down that drink, push away that needle, we must believe we can.

I walked the streets yesterday. Oh, not like in the past where I posed as a prostitute to experience going eyeball to eyeball with a john. This street walking didn’t put me feeling at risk on the seedier side of life — even though I had two undercover police officers watching over me. This street walking wasn’t for research. It wasn’t to get deeper into what happens to a young girl’s psyche when selling her body for sex. This street walking was to get close to neighbours, to gain understanding of their concerns about a ‘Housing First’ apartment building in their neighbourhood which is part of our City’s 10 year plan to end homelessness.

Like my night on the street years ago, however, this street walking moved me to tears.

When working at the homeless shelter, I was often surprised by how many people came in with their workplace to volunteer, who when given a tour of the facility would say, “But aren’t you enabling people?”

My response was always the same. “Yes we are. We’re enabling them to stay alive.”

Housing people experiencing homelessness saves lives.

It doesn’t really matter what we think about the condition of their lives, they have the same right as you and me to be alive. And staying alive keeps hope alive that one day they will be able to make different choices.

In the almost six years that I worked at the shelter, I never once met someone who said, “I love being an addict.” or, “I dreamt my whole life about being homeless. I’m so grateful for finally achieving my goal.”

Being homeless, or being an addict is not a dream come true. It’s a nightmare.

Challenge is, it’s a nightmare that scares most of us and when we see it on our streets, we want to hide from its impact, avoid eye contact with its reality. We want it to go away. To disappear. To leave us alone.

It is our human nature. To avoid confronting things that make us uncomfortable.

I didn’t want to walk the streets yesterday. I didn’t want to knock on doors and introduce myself and explain why I was there.

I was afraid of how people would respond. Afraid of what they would say.

In the end, I didn’t need to fear. People are human beings. And, in highly charged emotional spaces, we humans tend to respond in highly charged, emotional ways.

It is in these spaces that deep listening is essential. It is in these spaces that listening with the intent to learn, to understand, to connect really makes a difference.

I walked the streets yesterday and knocked on doors and heard people’s fears, anger, confusion. I listened with an open mind and heart. I accepted the truth of their perceptions and stayed out of defensive rebuttals designed to prove them wrong. They are not wrong to feel the way they do. Based on their experience, on their observations of changes they see in their neighbourhood, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to see what’s going on.

There is only their truth in what they perceive and always, there is truth in everything.

In their words, in their fear and concerns, there is truth. There also may be misconceptions, wrong impressions, misinformation, but allowing room for their truth to be heard is the first step to understanding what has happened, where things went sideways, where misinformation got spread, where wrong impressions got exposed.

I went street walking yesterday and, as happened years ago when I spent a night going eyeball to eyeball with johns, I came away moved by our human condition. I came away with a deeper empathy for the fragility of our human need to seek comfort, community, a sense of belonging. I came away with a deep appreciation of our human need to connect.

We are not wrong to fear what we don’t understand.  It is our human condition.

And in our human condition there is only the truth of what we know, what we have experienced, what we have shared. In our human condition, no matter the past, however, there is always room to grow because in being human, there is no us and them. There is only us. We are all connected. All one humanity experiencing this thing called life. and in this experience, there is truth in everything and the truth will always shine light on darkness.

I found truth walking the streets yesterday and in its light, I was moved to tears.