Shelter from the Storm

I just got off the phone with my coworker. It is my day off but I am happy to support her, we talked for about half an hour. A woman has left. We don't know why, or where she has gone, or if we will ever see her again. She was there one day and then the next day we knocked on her bedroom door but go no answer, worried and anxious we realized something was wrong. Some of the women come in with such difficult stories. When we realize we haven't seen a woman in more than twelve hours we knock on her door to check if she is alright. Each time, for a split second I am afraid - is she ill, has she overdosed, and worst of all, has she taken her life? I sigh with relief every time, to find out it is not the case.

This time it seems she has just decided to pack her things and leave. Hopefully she is well somewhere else. Hopefully she will call, let us know where she is and how she is doing but often this is not the case. It happens often that we lose women. Lose them to abuse, to mental health, to addictions, to poverty. Sometimes they reappear, they come back to the service, to the support, when they again find they need it most. At other times we never now what happens to them and we only hope for the best. Other times we hear the worst.

With infrequent staff meetings, no crossover and little built in staff supports we rely a lot on the support the staff gives each other on our own time. With confidentiality being so strict there is often no one else to talk to and the women's stories can be a lot to carry home with you, but luckily we all care about each other a lot and always make the effort. We run the house with bare minimum funding. It would make such a difference in the work to have the money to soften the corners, create a little more room for extra child and youth hours, extra support services, outreach hours and staff support. But we don't come to work for the money, so we just keep working with what we have.

In a seventy two hour period I have tackled issues of sexual abuse, physical abuse, child abuse, mental health, homelessness, animal abuse, self mutilation, addiction, rape, anorexia and bulimia and post traumatic stress disorder. Without the Transition House where would women turn to find what they need in order to survive each day while coping with these issues. I am reminded of how essential it is that we are here.

The house is full of laughter, cooking, and baking but I know that were it not for the service, there are three women in the house right now who might not be alive. The mental health issues they struggle with are overwhelming. And for one of the women the trauma she has suffered speaks of a lifetime of horror stories none of us would want to know. I worked the evening last night and stayed an hour late. I needed to process a few things with my coworker. Again we create support for one another through our own time. The last call of the night was a crisis call. It took everything out of me but it also left me with a sense of the incredible hope and opportunity for wisdom and growth that can arise out of the darkest places.

Early in the night, sitting around the coffee table, we shared stories of resistance. The conversations that occur while the TV prattles on in the background can be profound and this is what carries me through. Where such earnest struggle is found there must be hope.