Working with Homelessness

I found this a moving blog post about one woman's personal encounter with homelessness in Glendale. It sums up much of what I wish I could say about my job but am often unable to articulate and put into words.

http://www.helpamotherout.org/2010/01/18/equal-opportunity-homelessness

Working with the homeless community is hard. It is draining. I imagine that most kinds of work with people experiencing crisis is exhausting. When I go home at the end of the day, I too often want to just be with people I love and who love me, to relax, to escape into TV or music or a good book, to remember the things that are beautiful in life.

But the good thing about working with people who are homeless is that it keeps me attentive to the pulse of what is actually happening with those who are most vulnerable in this country. It forces me to know the bad as well as the good, to see firsthand the positive and negative impacts of federal and local policies on those who are struggling to get back on their feet.

Moreover, my job has forced me to grow as a person, to learn how to set and keep boundaries, to be deeply compassionate and patient while maintaining enough emotional separation to keep my own well-being intact. And as I have improved these skills over time, I have found myself better able to engage poverty and need in the whole of my life, outside of work. I have more energy for the at-risk teenage girls I mentor than I did when I first started working in social services. In the evenings I can still get lit-up and passionate when talking about the issues facing the kids and families in my neighborhood.

I confess that I still generally avoid much interaction with people that are homeless when I am not on the job. I am not sure if this represents a lack of compassion or if it is simply the boundary that I need to have enough energy for the people I interact with through my job. My friend Mark who also works in homelessness spends his off duty hours interviewing people that are homeless for their life stories, but as for myself, I have found that working with different kinds of need outside of work keeps me more sane!