The Homestretch (4-min trailer)

Perhaps we might be able to get these matters included in the next State of the Union address. Michelle Obama is already advocating to lessen Childhood Obesity, and for us to get her to include the concerns noted in the CDC/Kaiser ACE study, from the Obesity Clinic there, may be possible. There are the forthcoming Presidential caucuses in Iowa, and primary season here in New Hampshire. We began the statewide homeless outreach intervention project, in part because we didn't want [inter] national media focusing on the homeless folks in Concord, sleeping in a tent alongside the Interstate, whose tent caught fire in winter, during the yearlong presidential primary campaign, or the Portsmouth High School student, who was also working, who froze to death sleeping on a park bench, on a school night. Would ISTSS journalists help us in such an endeavor? 

Thank you for sharing your truths Tina.

This is a big deal to me and it should be to our country.  Allowing teens to be homeless like this is a disgrace. It leads to kids being further victimized by being trafficked, violently attacked, used, and maybe ending up in the shameful "justice" system.  These stereotypes of homeless youth lack a basis in reality. The reality is that society is letting kids down in a major way and needs to take a deep look at its failings. 

I also really despise calling homeless kids runaways. Maybe some have ran away but many are simply thrown out or leave dangerous situations in which if this were a grown man or woman leaving a domestic violence setting, there would be encouragement for her leaving a dangerous relationship (though this is the time when her life is in the most danger).  But when it is a teen - they are a runaway.  Not so fast. Misconception for sure. 

I was homeless.  I took my ACT's in the morning after sleeping the prior night under a tree.  I couch serfed. I was in cars with young people who were drinking and driving and I didn't like that because I never did anything wrong but these were the teens I had to beg for a place to stay.  In fact I had some kind of Sister Theresa complex and didn't believe in doing anything wrong.  We had a person stabbed on my trailer porch when I was 14 or 15 (huge blood stains/german shepherds and police lights) in a town of 50 people.  You were not safe in the same place as my dad. A couple nights before the porch stabbing where a Hispanic migrant worker nearly died, my father took out one of his many guns and threatened to shoot my mother in the head.  We are in a single wide trailer. They are in the hall. There is no way out except by him and he says to her after he blows her head off he is killing the rest of us.  My father is literally insane and the next day my mother leaves us alone with him. Where is child protective services in all of this? No where to be found. One day Leo screamed at me "if you don't like it her, just run away!!!" This was after a session where I had a pipe wrench in one hand and a baseball bat in the other and had to break the bat in half on the ground because he was strangling my brother and my brother's eyes were getting buggy and he was making weird sounds and I couldn't get Leo off him.... It was after he threw his medications on the table and screamed at Renee, why you just take these and kill yourself.  She grabbed the bottles and swallowed them down."  

I wasn't a run away during the times I was homeless. In fact the time my dad told me to just run away, I told him no I wasn't gonna because all I could do was be a prostitute to survive and I wouldn't do that.  

In medical school I got a gal who founded this program (I am not sure it exists anymore) called Voices for Youth in the UP to come and speak at the student organized CME conference.  She was an ex- Detroit cop who found all these teens alone in the woods in the UP and wondered "why are they all alone sleeping outside?" She spoke eloquently about her program and felt deeply (and I deeply agree) that the teens she took in were NOT RUN AWAYS but THROW AWAYS. I was a throw away.... It hurt desperately.  You do feel like a failure and shit and that you are somehow bad.  But you have no say. You can be the next valedictorian of your high school who never smoked a cigarette, kissed a boy, took a sip of alcohol or anything and this can happen to you because it happened to me. 

But the kids who are thrown away aren't bad. It is our society which is sick that cannot see that allowing this to happen to its most vulnerable kids is "SHIT, A FAILURE, and INCREDIBLY BAD"!!!!! When people have massively huge homes and boats and more than they could ever want or need and still have no concern in their hearts to help these throw away kids who have nothing, they are the ones who need to re-assess their morals. I don't believe in God, but if God exists, I would like to remind them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God per Jesus. 

Most logical people, I would hope, would be able to realize.... my kid shouldn't be in this situation and is certainly not a failure or bad. 

All I am really trying to point out is that I see people everyday who think the US is great. But I just have to disagree. If we cannot protect children and we allow them have the experience of homelessness, high adversity etc, we aren't a great country and will not be until we all (not just fellow ACErs) see this as a problem that vastly diminishes (if not completely eliminates) our greatness. 

Not trying to be mean. Just speaking the truth.