Sheltered by Hope: My Journey out of Homelessness

Mary May's story is not just a personal journey but an inspired plea for understanding and responding to the current epidemic of homelessness. She recounts how easily a single event, in her case divorce, can plunge a striving middle-class wife into a life of lonely homelessness. She describes the triumph of turning her experience of life on the streets and beaches of Southern California into a bootstrapping transformation to activism. Starting with a simple feeding program, she formed a network of outreach including nutrition and healthcare, of making a life for herself and her much-loved daughter. But the hard truth that homelessness has its roots in trauma is underscored by Mary's stress-induced descent into mental illness until she once again finds herself homeless, deprived of her daughter, and bereft of even the comfort of her homeless community and the programs she'd founded. A combination of institutional and family help, faith in the God whom she promised she'd work to help the homeless and hungry, and sheer determination brings Mary to a new community and a new role.