The System Is Broken

 The System Is Broken

My first experience volunteering came when I was in my youth. I was raised Catholic and my mother was very passionate about giving back and helping others. She came from a lower middle class family where things were never easy and she had a lot of responsibilities around the house and caring for her younger siblings from an early age. She was very involved in the Church and involved her two youngest sons (my brother & I) in ger efforts. My first volunteering experience that I remember was serving food for migrant workers. If you are unfamiliar with migrant workers, they are typically people who move to a new country or region to find work and save money to send back to their family. Imagine the level of sacrifice that requires to move to a completely new country just to find the opportunity to provide for your family all the while not getting to see them or communicate with them outside of an occasional phone call or letter (before the days of cell phones & facetime). I always admired how much my mom cared about other people and how willing she was to give away the little extra that she worked so hard to get. That is one of things I appreciated about being raised Catholic although it significantly hurt my mothers ability to love herself (my brother & I struggled with this as well). We all still struggle with this to an extent to this day, we have talked about the feeling of not doing enough to help the seemingly infinite amount of people in need. This feeling of not doing enough is what led me to get back involved with volunteering when I finally found the strength to leave an emotionally abusive partner (another story for another blog). I have been volunteering consistently with the local homeless community since I moved out of the first house I ever bought. When I moved out I had to stay in an extended stay hotel for 2 weeks. One night around 4am I was woken up to a couple arguing a room or two over. I was conflicted on what to do because I remembered what it was like to have loud arguments with my ex, especially when she was unstable. I listened to their argument for awhile before deciding to call the front desk. After I called I tried to go back to sleep and dozed off for a couple hours before I heard the police come and arrest the man who was in the argument. I got up and went to the gym at 6am (I’m basically David Goggins lol) and saw him in the hallway. He was pleading with the woman to tell the police nothing happened so he didn’t get taken to jail. I thought to myself, how does anyone benefit from this situation. The man going to jail isn’t going to help him learn any lesson or grow from his mistakes. The woman is safe for now but with the prison system set up the way it is, the man will probably be back in her life in short order. Maybe next time they won’t be in a hotel with other people around to call for help. That was quite the tangent. My point is that there are a lot of people in need of help and there are a lot of ways to help. They don’t all involve volunteering or sacrificing the little free time that most of us have. Do the right thing when the opportunity presents itself and put yourself in their situation. This brings me back to the volunteer work I do now with the homeless. I serve lunch every Sunday at Hesed House in Aurora. It reminds me a lot of the time I spent serving migrant workers. A lot of the homeless people in the shelters work but a lot of them have been there for a long time. I am enjoying volunteering and want to continue to get to know the people in the shelter better. Unfortunately Sundays are the only time I am able to consistently volunteer when the Hesed House needs volunteers. Given that I started again to feel like I wasn’t doing enough and could do more (anyone sensing a theme). I reached out to another local shelter to offer my time and effort to help their cause. The shelter was Wayside Cross Ministries and the program I was trying to volunteer within was a mentorship program. Through my experience in dealing with emotional trauma I have become very adept at detecting the pain of others and I try to teach the skills that I developed to get through my situation. I was very excited for the opportunity to work with someone who was struggling but actively trying to better themselves. I emailed the program director eager to help, I told him a little about what I was trying to do at Cherry Willow and how I’m involved helping the homeless right now. I was shocked when I got his response. I included it below for your reference. "Thanks for the information. As a Bible-based, Christ Centered, transitional housing and recovery center, we require people who work with our residents as mentors to be affiliated with a local church for a few reasons. Two of them are to help every individual explain and reenforce who they are in Christ. Another is to become their family, introducing them to their church and walking with them in that relationship. Most of them come from broken families and have never had a good picture of what a church family looks like. Rather, they come from a gang or dysfunctional families that have not placed God at the head of their house. That's why it's so important in our recovery process. I hope you understand that brief explanation, and I wish you well in your endeavors at Hesed House.” Leave it to the Catholics to turn down a helping hand. At the time I thought it seemed like they were more concerned about indoctrinating the homeless people into the Church than actually helping them. It didn’t fully come together for me until I was reading my good friend's book “Altar Boy to Atheist: Giving Up God” , a great read for anyone interested in learning about growing up catholic. He cited how the Church is often more concerned about improving the institution than the people within. This made a lot of sense as I reflect on the interaction I had with the Program Director at Wayside. They are essentially praying (pun intended) on the most vulnerable among us and telling them that the only path to recovery is a path through Christ. This exclusionary viewpoint is central to the Catholic belief system and the hierarchy which they try to maintain. A lot of Catholics believe suffering is essential, including that ghoul Mother Theresa, who did more harm than good (another story for another day). The point I’m trying to make is we can’t rely on our institutions to help the most vulnerable in our society. We can’t count on the government to help them either. Both of these institutions thrive when people are in need. They relish the power that comes from people relying on them. Both of these institutions have more than enough power and wealth to create a solution that ends homelessness, yet they don’t. They need people to be weak and suffering so that they continue to have power over them. This is why it's up to people like you and me to make a difference. That is why I started Cherry Willow apparel, to empower these people to care for themselves so they don’t have to be under the thumb of these institutions any longer. I want to thank you for reading this blog. I encourage you to share the stories of the homeless people whether the stories I’ve documented or the countless others out there trying to do good. Supporting the brand could make a real impact in the lives of these people and people who make it out of the worst situations are usually the type to not stop until they bring others with them. Together we can make a positive impact in this world, together we can empower all individuals by showing them how beautiful they are, together we can end homelessness.