Reflections on 4 years of Shelter

4 reflections... one for each year.  

Today, November 1, 2018 marks 4 consecutive years of shelter at the Interfaith Works Emergency Overnight Shelter at First Christian Church. That's 1,460 consecutive nights of sheltering, that's 61,320 bed nights provided, that's roughly 29,200 support staff hours worked, that's close to 200 people who have moved into permanent housing, that's thousands of phone calls, answering questions, changing beds, loads of laundry, hundreds of volunteers and community members building relationships... there is so much to reflect on. ​I tend to be long winded and lots of emotions come up when I take a moment to reflect on all the work that has happened, so I tried to keep it brief this time... but it didn't work. Indulge me! 4 reflections in 4 years. Here goes:

Welcome cards from the first night of shelter, 4 years ago, made by loving community members.

• Vulnerability is transformative.

I think it's safe to say that people who have fought for resilience through serious hardship have been transformed by their experiences. The most resilient people I know have survived unimaginable hardships. Part of their stories include moments of being stripped down, broken open, being physically alone or maybe in a crowded place feeling a profoundly lonely void that can't be filled. There's generally at least one other person (or furry being) that was a key support beam during the crisis that kept us alive. There tends to be a moment where the truth smacked us so hard in the face that we had a life or death choice to make... Turn towards it or run the hell away and lose people we love. Turning towards hardship and choosing to see the daily transformations in our guests and in ourselves due to the relationships we have formed through this work, has been dramatically transformative in both tiny and gigantic ways. I am forever changed.

A guest sharing conflict mediation skill building with the shelter community.

• Hold on tight to the small wins. 

​I'm reading a book right now called The Age Of Overwhelm: Strategies For The Long Haul by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. It's a great book, and it points out just how very overwhelming our world is today. News, media, the environment, politics, poverty, violence, social media, raising children, grief... it seems that no matter what your profession, daily work or life routine entails most of us are struggling to keep our head's above water. We talk a lot about celebrating the small wins at IW. Part of that is because we believe that shining a light on daily successes helps us subvert the overarching narrative in our society about what "success" means. It helps us remember each others humanity and gives us daily reminders that every life is sacred and worth celebrating, regardless of circumstance. The other part about holding tight to the small wins is that they stay with us, they help us metabolize trauma, and they build our collective armor over time. This slowly cultivated armor builds resiliency so that when things get hard -- like really hard -- we have have the resources we need to bounce back and re-ground as quickly as possible. 

• Our work reverberates.​

We always aim to hire people who reflect the demographics of the guests we have at the Nightly Shelter and the Community Care Center. This means hiring marginalized people. People who have experienced homelessness, people of color, people over 50 years old, people with physical, mental health, and substance use related challenges, trauma survivors, people with permanent disabilities, people who are LGBTQQIATS+, etc. ​We try to give ​​opportunities to our staff to gain meaningful work experience, build vital life skills, and we do our darnedest to pay people a living wage (this is getting harder everyday with extreme cost of living increases/cuts in social service funding--a post for another day). Of our original staff team, 5 of us 

The IW Emergency Overnight Shelter original staff team. Five of the 11 are still employed with IW Homeless Services at the Shelter or the CCC.

(Jeanne, Dave, Tarryn, Brittany and myself) are still employed at IW. That's 45%! That's a really big deal for such high stress and emotionally demanding work with an dramatically high turnover rate nationwide. What I love though, is that of the staff who have moved on; Jack and Max are in nursing school, Cassie completed certification as an EMT and is working towards becoming a paramedic, Krista and Tarryn (Tarryn is still with us, but still...) are in MSW school, Jeff is a school social worker for homeless youth in a rural, underserved county, Sadie is a radical, body positive esthetician, Rebecca is an artist and activist who is part of an Indigenous artist collective and recently performed at the SAM as part of the Double Exposure Exhibit, Kai is in school to become a doctor of eastern medicine with a focus in acupuncture, Denver started grad school in community organizing, economic development and city planning, Dan is the veteran's case manager at Drexel II, Kipp is involved with a long standing syringe exchange program in Philadelphia, Olive is a core staff member at the Thurston County Food Bank, Eva is a parent and director at Together working to advance opportunities for marginalized kids, Colin works at Rosie's Place and has been with CYS for years, Jenny Lee is a Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC) Supervisor to case managers at the cutting edge Seattle Navigation Center, Simon is supporting at risk youth through a wilderness survival program in Pennsylvania, Aaron works for a youth shelter in NYC, and Ella is the primary caregiver to a family member who suffered a major medical event. The amazing thing is that this list isn't even inclusive of all the amazing things that our staff have gone on to do, and influence in the world beyond the walls of the IW EOS. Thank you for letting us be a step along your way to greatness.

• We can and must do better. 

Thurston County is growing at an enormous rate. We are currently seeing the push and pull of what it means to be a small, under resourced town, with big city issues playing out on our streets and in our neighborhoods everyday. While Interfaith Works does our best to carve out spaces for people who are on the streets to just be, to be included as part of the broader community, to reduce isolation, to hold up a mirror to our community about the realities of how many people are suffering right in our own backyards, to get access to what they need on their terms, to see everyone as human and worthy of love, we often fall short. We are not perfect. We have a long way to go in our understanding of how racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism and all the intersections of oppression cloud our judgement and the way we see people in our community. We don't always treat our guests or each other with the unconditional respect that is so core to our values as a program because this work is emotionally draining, we're human, and we all bring our baggage to the table at some point. Our work is messy and has impacts on other sectors in the community. We are operating within an oppressive system that creates more problems than it solves, and requires the under resourced "solutions" to eternally push beyond our means, yet never get ahead of the issues we are dedicating our lives to solving. Admitting that this work is dichotomous with both light and shadow sides, with tides that rise and fall, with complex outcomes... Doesn't mean that we have failed, or our work isn't important, or that none of our efforts have brought us closer to understanding what a solution for each person experiencing homelessness could look like. It means that we are willing to walk into a consciousness that doesn't have a linear pathway in or out. It doesn't have a playbook yet because we haven't evolved enough as a society to write it. It means that we are turning toward the truth which is scary, and requires strong, beautifully cultivated armor. Thank you to everyone who has supported us and challenged us along the way. We could not have gotten here without you. <3

A note from a shelter guest on the appreciation board that we call the Shout Out wall.