For many of us, the holiday season is filled with gatherings of friends and family, celebrations of love, an abundance of jazzy songs that sing of the prospect of a white Christmas–it’s a time of warmth in spite of the cold weather. During this season of giving and gratitude, the Village’s Director of Neighbor Recruitment Maurice “Moe” Egan shared his experience being homeless during the holidays and how his first Christmas in a home was completely different.
Homeless for the Holidays
Being homeless is never easy, but it is most difficult around the holidays that are closely associated with spending time with loved ones. Moe, who spent about ten years living on the streets in San Francisco, always thought of his family and friends during the holiday season; these holiday memories brought with them painful reminders of the bridges he had burned, the lies he had told, and the money he had stolen from the people he loved.
Instead of lingering on the memories and dealing with his emotions, Moe buried the heart-wrenching feelings with drugs. Holiday seasons on the streets were spent hustling all day and all night, trying to find his next fix to numb his emotional pain.
Living in the Cold
Living on the streets during winter in a city like San Francisco causes logistical problems for people with nowhere to go–when Moe got cold, he did not have the option to pop inside and grab another jacket or warm-up. All-day, every day, as he was going about his day running the streets, Moe was constantly thinking about where he was going to be at night.
“I’m looking for a doorway, an abandoned building, an open car–anything to get inside for the night,” Moe said, adding that he spent many nights walking the streets all night long, strung out and trying to stay warm. On those mornings, when he would see people beginning their days and going to work, he felt more removed from them than ever.
During his decade on the streets in San Francisco, Moe went in and out of drug rehabilitation programs. “Two-week, thirty-day, sixty-day, ninety-day programs,” that Moe kept enrolling in, trying to get clean and stay that way. “At a certain point, willpower runs out,” Moe explained, noting that he had graduated from the program after program, but nothing stuck and he always found himself unable to make the change permanent.
There’s No Place Like Home
Finally, Moe found Delancey Street, one of the communities that inspired The Other Side Academy, where he found the resources and mentorship, as well as skills and confidence to turn his life around.
His first holiday season at Delancey Street couldn’t have been more different than the year before. It’s not just the simplified logistics of having a place to sleep and keep your things safely and securely all day–Moe was surrounded by like-minded people with similar lived experiences as his own, and he had finally forced genuine connections with people who cared about him for who he was, not what he can bring to the table.
As he celebrated that holiday season with his new community, he couldn’t help but think again about the destruction he had caused his family and friends. Instead of avoiding his pain and numbing it, he started to see a path forward to fix his relationships.
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