Lighthouse near San-Tropez, France (2018) photo by author Laelia Watt- taken while on a ferry boat with my beloved French-American aunt, on a trip that my friend generously invited me to join her when I couldn’t have otherwise afforded to go.
Reggie* sauntered by the homeless shelter window wearing a McDonald’s bag on his head. Even though no one was in the office to hear me, I stifled a laugh. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, but I knew Reggie was a regular at the men’s homeless shelter on the north side of St. Louis where I worked as a receptionist. I learned from the shelter’s chef that Reggie once had a regular job and life, but after he was hit by a car and sustained severe head trauma, part of his brain had to be removed. When he wasn’t wearing a McDonalds’s bag as a hat, I could see the sunken part of Reggie’s skull. From his pension, settlement from the injury, and his family who still looked after him, Reggie had his own housing. The trouble was, in his current mental state, he was the most affable fellow, truly a jolly soul, who was also kind and generous, but not quite able to look after himself properly with part of his brain missing. The other men on the streets were aware of this and when it was Reggie’s payday, they knew they could ask him for help and he would give it to them, leaving himself without enough to pay rent on the place he lived. Partially because of this, and partially because he enjoyed the company at the homeless shelter, he often stayed the night there. After a few days, his grown children would come looking for him and take him back home. I waited at the bus stop with him on my way home one night and he was rather kind, and we had a pleasant chat, but I could see that he was confused and lost the thread of conversation or repeated himself a lot.
Throughout my life, I spent my summers doing mission trips to low-income areas of the country. In college, I joined a few group trips working with homeless organizations in Chicago and Seattle. My own family were like nomads- we moved dozens of times and were relatively low-income until we reached lower to mid-middle class by the time I was graduating high school. Homeless populations and poverty in general have been the greatest burden on my heart for as long as I can remember. As a single adult, I struggled for many years on the US poverty line. Through my work, volunteering, and my personal experience, I can tell you two things with absolute certainty-
1. People experience homelessness and poverty for a million different reasons and
2. Being poor or homeless SUCKS.
Thanks to the fact that I have a wide safety net of caring family, friends, and churches who kept me afloat during my hardest times, I have never been homeless, but I do know what it is like to struggle to pay for food or wonder if I am going to lose my housing. I know how it feels to be rootless and disconnected or outside of a community of connection due to my financial status or excessive moves. When I worked with organizations who served people experiencing homelessness or poverty, I learned that there is a fine line between being stable in life and everything being ripped from you in a moment. Some people struggle to get a leg up in life due to the insurmountable odds life throws at people, such as generational poverty, systemic racism, or natural disasters like tornadoes or hurricanes. I met a family who were homeless because their house burned down. They lost everything and since they were living paycheck to paycheck before the fire, they didn’t have enough money for temporary housing or hotels and had to rely on shelters. I met many people who struggled with mental illness. In Arizona, there was a flood of homeless people on the streets of the big cities after a large mental health institution closed down in the state. The US has abysmal healthcare options even with the improvement of adding the Affordable Healthcare Act (It was the first time in my adult life I myself had access to health insurance.) Many people on the streets are Veterans or general populations with mental health issues left untreated, or like Reggie, experienced a severe injury which changed their life forever. Some people were left financially gutted by the economy crashing. I met one homeless man younger than me outside of an ice-cream shop in Philadelphia who struggled to find full-time work and had no family to support him through it. There are many homeless youths in Seattle, Washington who were fleeing abusive homes. The sudden loss of one family provider, or a medical emergency or cancer diagnosis, can plunge people into poverty in the blink of an eye.
At the St. Louis homeless shelter, when I was on food stamps and my old car was totaled, I had to wait in the dark at the bus stop in North St. Louis alone. My “Christian” boss, making over $100,000 salary, forbade me from getting rides from my male coworkers to the train station a mile away (she told me it would not look good if any donors saw me getting into the car with the male coworkers- they’d think I was having an affair and pull their funding) and this boss insisted I would be fine catching the bus there in North St. Louis instead. One of our regular shelter visitors, Fred* saw me standing at the bus stop at night and stopped in his tracks. He said, “This is a dangerous area! You should not be here alone. I will stand with you until your bus comes.” Fred was a Black man, in his early 50s at the time, and readily admitted he was homeless due to a struggle with drug addiction in the past, but he joined the shelter program to try and get his life back. He was like my guardian angel and stood with me every night during the winter. When he noticed I didn’t have a winter hat, he took the bus to the nearest Wal-Mart and spent what little money he had to buy me one. I saw him months after I left that job. Fred was downtown wearing crisp clean clothes and smiled so big to be able to tell me he had a job and a place to live. I was able to tell him how much his care for me made such a huge difference in my life.
Empathy matters to me, because I have seen how much better life is when it exists and how inhumanely people act towards their fellow humans without it. Empathy allows us to see the shared humanity in others, to feel their pain and connect with their experiences, and ACT on their behalf. When we feel empathy, instead of judging or “othering” someone, we choose to connect to them instead of avoiding out of fear. Empathy inspires generosity. Empathy moves us to fight injustice, to respect and honor, to weep with those who weep, and celebrate with each other. The opposite of empathy is apathy, coldness or indifference. People who are apathetic towards the stories of their fellow humans might as well be hateful, because neither path leads to love.
This is the final part in my series “Why Mental Health and Empathy Matter to Me”. I focused on poverty and homeless populations in particular, because that is one area that is burdened with many stereotypes, biases, and systemic tragedies across time and place. I wanted to take some time to share parts of the path that led me to creating FRAGILE HUMAN. It was born out of a lifetime of seeing that when we recognize the humanity in ourselves and other people, even if it means facing the reality of weaknesses or brokenness, we can learn to marvel at our own resilience and cherish our fellow fragile humans more. I chose a photo of a lighthouse for the cover of this essay, because telling our stories can be like a lighthouse to people who are still out at sea being thrashed by the storms of life. Empathetic connection is the start of taking action to make the world a better place.
FRAGILE HUMAN 