Friends,
I was thinking the other day about the first time I saw someone who was living unsheltered in Listowel. Living in Waterloo and attending university, my life connected with many who were navigating diverse paths and I was grateful for the richness and growth it gave me.
One day, more than 20 years ago, I was out walking with my children in Listowel and I noticed a young woman on the street ahead of us, with the heaviest of backpacks on her shoulders. Nothing stood out about her physically, but her backpack spoke to me – from my time volunteering in the city – of a person who was carrying nearly all they owned. I was intrigued by her, to be truthful. In my years as a Listowel resident thus far, no one had ever spoken of mental illness, food insecurity or those living unsheltered and yet here was this mystical human, navigating it all.
A few weeks later, out again with my kids and having the sort of bad parenting day where I wondered if not brushing their teeth and eating tuna sandwiches for breakfast was somehow going to scar my kids for life, I noticed the woman again. This time she did not have her backpack on and she was in the company of a child. As I watched the woman and kiddo walk along, giggling and with the woman hanging off every word this beautiful child spoke, I felt envious. She was, in my mind at that moment, the type of mother I wished I could’ve been – happy and engaged. I made a note in my mind that if I saw the woman again, I would thank her for giving me the reminder I needed that day, of what actually matters to our kids. And what really doesn’t.
Several days went by and then, as luck would have it, she rode past me as I walked down the street. “Oh! Hey! Wait!” I fumbled. The woman stopped her bike and turned to look back. “Me?” she asked. “Yes. Hi… I uh, I know we don’t know each other, but I wanted to thank you…” My voice trailed off, my mouth now clearly questioning my mind’s decision to flag her down. “It’s just, well, I saw you one day and you were with a child. And you just hung off of every word that kiddo said. It was a day that I felt really crappy about being a mom to my own kids and when I saw you, I thought to myself that I wanted to be more like you. So I just wanted to say thanks.”
Tears began to slide down her face. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me, for you to say that. Honestly?” She continued, “I live in a tent down the path and my kid lives with my parents. I’m trying hard to save up for ‘first and last’ for an apartment, so we can be together, but I struggle with addiction and it’s really hard.”
As I listened to the story she so bravely shared with me, I felt in awe. This woman, I thought to myself, gets up to face each day, in a community she was born into that now looked upon her as somehow lesser and not entitled to live here, with the hope for something better for her and her child. She was without question, a warrior.
After we parted and I eventually went home to my kids, I sat watching them as they played in the yard. My childhood was pretty awful and wrought with abuse. I struggled with postpartum depression when I had my babes. What force decided the resilience and strategies we each depended on to get by, her and I? To me, as I watched my sons drive their Tonka trucks around the dirt, it seemed like one of us could easily have been living the other’s life.
I see her face in my mind so often still, more than two decades later. We were each humbled by life, mothers and we cherished our children.
Unknowingly, she taught me why it is important to support people, living many different paths, to stay in their community and near their families. Why it is necessary to take the shame and stigma away from those who love family members who are struggling. She is a big part of why It Takes A Village was founded.
Because hopefully, today is not how the story ends.
Take good care of each other, friends.
***
Andrea Charest serves as director of It Takes A Village in Listowel.
