How could you?

I know you don’t understand. Maybe you think I’m heartless. Of course you have the question, but she’s your mother; how could you allow her to be homeless? I know people see others on the streets and ask themselves: don’t these people have families?

At the risk of sounding like I am groveling, I have a two-fold explanation. First is simply this: even people who are loved can be harmful to live with. Having a self- and other – destructive person in your household – even though they are deeply loved – is not wise or loving for them or yourself, or your children.

Additionally, a huge part of what I had to learn was to stop taking care of my mother as though she were the child and I the parent. If she were to ever assume responsibility for herself, I would have to get out of her way of doing it.

I also had to learn to stop sabotaging my own life to take care of her, or for any reason. So, pouring out money, time, and energy on someone who did not want help was only damaging me and actually furthering her own destruction.

I also, at the time, could only partially accept these truths. In order to defend my own position in my head and heart, I assumed a partially judgmental stance. While most of me believed all of the above to be true and right, during the times when self doubt and judgment from myself and others flooded me, my only defense against hating myself was to decide that my mother had worked her way into this and could work her way out. While there is some truth even in this, it is far too harsh for the reality of the situation – too hard on both of us. My mother needed help, and I was not the only person in the world who could give it to her.

This brings me to another thought. I do not believe that illness or homelessness should be the problem of the family alone. I believe that we are all responsible for members of our society, and that, in fact, people who are not members of the family can actually be in a much better position to help than the family themselves. So, when you see a homeless person, ask yourself what we can all do to help.

John Donne, Meditation 17:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath afflicion enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security."