Now I know why I went broke and homeless…and why and how I came back from it
By: Lori Kirstein
Tags: Recovery, Compassionate Leadership, Poverty, Social Justice, Homelessness

This is not a rags-to-riches story. Not in the traditional sense, at least. I fell into homelessness at 56 and managed to exit that life, but what is important about that is not some glittering and meteoric rise to financially orgasmic realms of wealth. Instead, the kind of wealth I accrued has to do with the fact that my life has been impacted by that traumatizing experience in ways that are tremendously and unexpectedly positive.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that she is struggling during this Covid-laced holiday season because the government has fouled up her unemployment case, leaving her without any assistance since April 2020. She is terrified and depressed.

I know intimately how it feels to suddenly be penniless: the shame, the breaking down of one’s sense of self and one’s identity in the social world, the depression and the sense of deep despair — will one’s fortunes ever change, or is this sad existence now the definition of who you are until you die? And then there is the added problem of not being 25 when it happens; being over 50 or 60 years old and penniless seems to me, quite frankly, to be on the same level as being diagnosed with cancer. The same lack of mooring, the same rudderless existence as one is disconnected from “the norm” — that recklessly named state which simply defines a set of expectations that more people agree on than not.

That’s why we love rags-to-riches stories. They give us happy endings and a reward for our suffering; they give us hope. But what about when we don’t have the hope, or we don’t dare to embrace it? What about the happy things we can find in the middle of the rags part of our existence?

I was able to help my friend in very tangible and caring ways, because I have been there. And I thought to myself, “Now I know why I went through that.” I thought that it was so I could help her know that this is not the end, and that there are ways to get what you need. But I wasn’t entirely correct. Not by a long shot.

Where I was wrong was in thinking that it was all about service and paying it forward. It was also about changing my perspective on poverty, self-worth, personal strengths, and the deep preciousness of people, no matter who they are. It was both the internal and external.

All of my consciousness and behavioral shifts —the internal — and my ability to reach out and help and educate and rabble-rouse — the internal — which is covered by my being a writer and a speaker and someone who shares very vulnerably. So the internal and the external make kind of a Moebius strip in that what I learned is also what got me out of it, and is also what I can help others with. Here is my list of what I learned, what I know, and why poverty is not any single person’s fault nor problem to solve:

(1) It takes killer perseverance — the ability to keep getting up, no matter how many days you hid under your damn bed before that, depressed and lacking in anything but shame. You have to persevere. You have to. If you want to get out of it.

(2) It takes even the very beginnings of understanding that your financial status does not define you; it is a situation, not a description of your worth as a human being.

(3) It takes a willingness to jettison your pride in order to get the help you need.

(4) It takes an ability, or a willingness, or a desperate drive to figure out how to even look for help, or even imagine that it might be out there. Now you have to break the rules to get what you need. Now you have to break the rules to go looking for what you need! The rules you are breaking are inside your own being: “Don’t air your dirty laundry!” “Don’t ask for help — do it your damn self!” “Don’t you dare expect good things! You’re poor! You’re not worth even a penny!” Break those rules and you’re starting to cook with gas.

(5) It requires that you stop and face yourself, take stock, and make new decisions, and that you do so when you least feel loving toward yourself. When you do so, understand that that is courage of an insane amount and you should not be underestimate nor undervalue it.

(6) It takes a particular kind of slowing down that makes you feel like you have stepped outside the human race, because suddenly you’re dealing with food stamps and government assistance and your day is hard to do because your energy is now all about what you don’t have, and it is all about the energy that is being sucked into your emotional whiplash. It’s. Not. Easy.

(7) The entire social and governmental system in the U.S. is complete garbage around this. Utter blindness and waste of human potential. And I think we are going to find, coming through Covid, that as a country we are going to have to provide a minimum living wage for people so that we are not struggling just to survive. The gulf between those at the top and those at the bottom is now so vast that there is no way to just survive. Don’t agree? I understand. I didn’t either. I do now. Fortunately for you, you might not have to walk through poverty to get it, but you can watch this Ted talk and get your mind ready to be blown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydKcaIE6O1k

(8) The amount of energy and intention and fortitude and persistence it takes to stop yourself from dropping to your knees and begging your friends to save you — it’s enormous. You go to sleep every night completely exhausted, and you don’t wake rested, because your mind is worried, and your emotions have hijacked you, and sleep has not helped you.

(9) Spirituality and religion can help, and they can hurt. Use with care. Before any spiritual or religious -ism, use lovingkindness toward yourself and be a damn warrior for yourself, because now it’s just you and you. No social niceties to observe. So, any belief that no longer helps your forward movement will have to be at the very least put up on the shelf. At the very best, using this time to figure out what is real and True-with-a-capital-T for you is a great use of your time.

(10) People are fascinating and sacred as well as scary and confusing. I had to ride the bus to and from work instead of driving because I didn’t have the money for gas or parking. So I made it my custom to look around and appreciate the uniqueness and soul beauty of the people I saw. It became my practice to look at them and see where they might be on their journey, and how I shouldn’t judge them because God knew I didn’t want to be judged myself. The bus ride became my spiritual practice, so much so that I ended up on a morning bus one day where the driver would welcome people onto the bus with a cheery welcome and a personal comment — “Wonderful hat, my friend! Oh, that smile! Wonderful smile! It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? Welcome aboard the 19 bus to downtown!” — and then when he was ready to pull away from the curb he would call out, “Okay, family, here we go!”

(11) Look for the good. You will find it. It helps to know that your world has not become 100% opaque with darkness.

(12) Get goddamned determined to retain your sense of self. And if you can, find something that helps you visualize or look forward into an imagined or expected better future, somewhere, sometime. Because positive energy, even that of imagination, carries you forward. If instead you stop in the Land of Depression or drop yourself into the Sea of Hopelessness and choose to stay there, you can’t come out of it. Or if you do, it will have been an even more hellish experience than it needed to be.

No, this is not a rags-to-riches story in the traditional way. But then again it is. The riches are those of understanding: how blameless the poor are, how deserving of compassion and assistance and a base living wage we all are, how alleviating the pain of all the poor alleviates the pain of all*, how precious and how screwed up we all are, how brainwashed we are into thinking that worth is all about money, how much help there really is out in the world, how much help comes to us when we reach out and get vulnerable and honest and response-able.

Especially during the holidays, I feel for those who are struggling. I am trying to practice lovingkindness to myself as I keep working on making my businesses work. I still push too hard, as I always did, and now I push too hard because I want to avoid going back to homelessness. But the fact is that I won’t. I don’t need to. I am no longer who I was when I invited that experience into my life.

Keep walking forward. This is what I want to say to anyone struggling. Keep walking forward, because every step strengthens you. Ask for help, because people and organizations love to help if you tell them specifically what you need. Use whatever you can to keep yourself compassionate to yourself. And know that there are ways out of this. And that you can find them.

You are not “A Poor Person”. You are a pilgrim on a journey of growth. And the pilgrim always makes it to her destination.

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*Why? Because if you’re not poor, you don’t need to alleviate your pain by stealing, doing drugs, getting emotionally fucked up and inappropriately taking it all out on someone, etc., etc., etc.