🌧️ The Work That Still Lives in My Bones | Homeless in Seattle

From 2000 to 2003, I worked at New Beginnings, a confidential emergency domestic violence shelter.

These were not public buildings.

No one outside staff and clients knew the location.

Safety depended on secrecy.

I worked graveyard shifts where the crisis line transferred directly to the shelter at 11 PM. I took whispered calls from women hiding in bathrooms. I listened to fear through tears and shaking voices. I helped intake families who walked through our doors with nothing but what they could carry.

On top of that, I:

conducted curfew room checks monitored security screens made sure everyone was safe and accounted for watched for anything or anyone that didn’t belong held space for people escaping the unthinkable

Then from 2002 to 2004, I also worked with Broadview / Solid Ground, continuing that same confidential DV shelter work — more case management, more safety protocols, more trauma, more rebuilding, more standing strong for families trying to survive something they didn’t choose.

Those years shaped my eyes, my instincts, and my understanding of human pain in ways I still carry today.

🌧️ And Then Came the Youth

After closing Flava, life led me into another chapter of social services —

this time with Friends of Youth (2009–2012), working in transitional housing with at-risk homeless youth.

Whole different energy.

Same level of heartbreak.

I lived on-site Friday through Sunday.

Slept there.

Was their steady adult all weekend long.

I opened the office on Saturdays just so the kids had a safe place to be —

we did movie nights, open mic nights, whatever created connection and a sense of normalcy.

These were kids carrying trauma older than their age.

Stories that still sit in my chest if I think long enough.

Stories that should never belong to children.

Some made it.

Some didn’t.

Some fought me.

Some trusted me.

All of them taught me something.

🌧️ So Today Hit Different

When I heard about the shooting on Rainier —

on a stretch where homeless people sleep at the bus stop —

my heart didn’t jump to fear.

It jumped to memory.

Because I’ve worked with the very people who end up sleeping on corners like that:

survivors traumatized kids individuals battling addiction youth aging out of systems adults with untreated mental illness people failed by every safety net people surviving however they can

Homelessness isn’t just “not having a house.”

It’s layers of:

trauma addiction generational wounds bad choices burned bridges poverty mental illness survival instinct systems that can’t catch everyone

Some want help.

Some refuse help.

Some can’t do the work.

Some are too wounded.

Some choose the streets because structure feels foreign.

Some never had a chance.

So when violence happens on a corner like that,

I don’t need to know the details.

I already know the layers.

🌧️ The Work Shaped Me — And I Have No Regrets

Those years taught me:

how to read people how to pick up on energy shifts instantly how to walk through chaos without absorbing it how to set boundaries with compassion how to understand trauma how to stay calm in crisis how to hold space for people without losing myself

This morning’s shooting didn’t rock me —

it reminded me who I’ve been.

It reminded me why my intuition is strong.

Why my awareness stays sharp.

Why certain memories return when violence hits close to home.

And I realized something:

**You don’t lose the advocate in you —

you just carry her differently as life moves on.**

I have no regrets.

Just gratitude for the wisdom those years gave me —

wisdom that still walks with me every single day.