Homelessness Awareness plus Super Saturday Sale.... A Day Early!

The next 2 days are very busy days for me so lucky for you I am holding my Super Saturday Sale a day early! Today and tomorrow you can receive FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING with coupon code JUNE13 in my Etsy shop. The first 3 sales will receive a free gifts worth up to $10! Plus the 25% donated to the Oklahoma disaster relief fund will be from the normal retail price not the sale price!

Since I like to keep my blog personal and I share my life with all of you, I wanted to blog a little bit about what I am doing tonight. My church organized a Box City to be held tonight in the park across the street from the church to bring awareness to homelessness in our area. For those of you who don't know what a Box City is, Box City is a group of people that are homeless and living in boxes. People have the stereotypical picture in their mind of what a homeless person looks like, a dirty old man drinking a bottle of liquor or a lady pushing around a shopping cart filled with any belongings she can find. Now close your eyes and picture this in your mind, a little girl holding her favorite blankie holding her mommy's hand standing in the park trying to figure out where they are going to sleep tonight. That was Lily and I last summer. 

As the economy continues to go into a downward spiral, the rate of families with children becoming homeless  increases at high rate. Homeless people are not the stereotypical people that media has embedded into our brains.  Each homeless person is a human being and yes there are the ones looking to get drunk or high and take people's money but there is also families out there losing their homes to foreclosure or eviction due to lost jobs, injuries or other circumstances.

My story is a very personal one that I am not going to share at the moment except to say that we became homeless due to circumstances that were out of my control. I was left with almost no money and no where to live. With no place to go, we stayed with a family friend for a couple of weeks but that was just a temporary solution so that we weren't sleeping in my car. I fought with the county's social services to try and get help but all they saw was that the previous month I had made over $336 which is the max amount you can make in our county for a 2 person household to receive assistance. It did not matter to them that circumstances left me with almost no money, no inventory to continue my business and no place to live. Everything to the government is what is on paper only. I called every charity agency in the area but was told I could only be helped if I was on county assistance. It finally took me calling every agency I possible could to get the attention of social services. Finally I was put into contact with a homeless shelter in my area called Family Promise of Warren County. 

Family Promise of Warren County is a shelter for families with children. Once Lily and I were accepted into the shelter (there is an application process to be sure that you are able to follow the shelter's rules), we were able to have a place to sleep every night, food to eat and people to assist me in getting my life in order and finding a permanent place for Lily and I to live. At Family Promise, the families sleep at churches that volunteer their space and food for dinners every night. During the day the parents and young children go back to the center to work on their exit plan while the school age children go to school. The goal for the children is to keep them safe and give them a normal routine. We were blessed to meet many wonderful people through this program.

Lily and I were in the shelter for 5 months before we were able to get our own apartment. During that time, I continued to fight with the county government to help us. I know that when you look at me, speak to me and know my job/educational background the perceived notion is that I can take care of myself and my family. People don't see the whole story and with government workers don't want to hear the whole story. No one wants to be in the situation I was in but I was in it. I was going to fight tooth and nail to get the help I could for my daughter and I. 

Lily at Easter

We were able to get help temporarily which during that time I worked for the social service department as part of the program to help people get on their feet. The program is called Work First where you either enter a school program to learn a trade or work for a local agency while looking for a job. Well I wasn't given the choice of schooling or working for them, I was told that I was working for them or they were going to drop my aid. So I went to work for them but after about a month I found out that the painful stomach attacks I was having was gallstones and I needed to have my gallbladder removed. So I stopped working for them and had my surgery while trying to get my business started again
. During that time, the agency moved from one location to another and my Work First worker quit or got fired. Guess who got the brunt of that result? Me! The new worker said there was no paperwork of why I hadn't been there since January so I was being cut off which meant they were no longer paying my rent for the apartment Lily and I lived in. So I was on my own to make my money but starting a business over from scratch takes a lot of work and adding other life circumstances like my mom having a stroke and heart attack into the mix and you realize that you never know what each day has in store for you. 

So as I struggle to make sure Lily and I don't end up where we were last summer, I am shouting from the roof tops that homelessness can happen to anyone, at anytime, at any place! Seeing devastation from a tornado, the economy continuing to get worse and many other circumstances needs to be on the minds of everyone that we all need to be aware of what is going on in our country, to our own people!

Well that is my plans for tonight, we are sleeping in the park so that everyone in town (which is located across the street from the county courthouse and most government agencies) can understand that homelessness is taking place right where they live and these people are real. Have a great weekend everyone!