Negative Press

So, for the third day we read about Shylea Thomas. WTFH?! I mean, I know we are all busy...but how in the world does a person let a child who is so incapacitated become so malnourished that she dies?! Was her adoptive mother so proud she couldn't ask for help? I do not understand. Yet, as an outsider, I understand that some people just refuse help. For example (of course, because these are my tirades!): at the public library where I work we have a regular woman who happens to be homeless. Several of us (people who work for the library) have offered this woman help; from rides to places to advice on how to get help to food. This woman is not mentally challenged. She is not insane. She is a hard-working woman whom for whatever reasons, which many of us know, fell upon hard times. And she refuses to ask, get, accept help. As if it's against her core-being to accept help?! It frustrates me. How can I help her when she will not help herself?! Yet, for nearly 2 years she's lived in her vehicle, or stayed at stranger's houses...and now, she has no vehicle and her "friend" has been evicted. Where will she stay? How will she survive in our community that does not have a soup kitchen nor homeless shelter. I can't invite her into my home because she would view it as a handout, it would remind her of what she lost...it is heartbreaking. She will not ask her family for help. She tried to make it on her own after she left an abusive relationship.

When I lived in Chicago, years ago, there was a homeless woman who caused such a ruckus. She'd lift her shirts and show people her bare-breasts for money. The police knew this woman and regularly told her to move along. They were accustomed to her tricks and ways to get money. Her name was Mary. She'd take the few dollars people gave her and spend it on wine or booze. Most of the time she'd sit on the sidewalk, dirty, unkept and stare at people as they walked by. She was grubby and dirty, weathered and worn. Every time I saw Mary, I wondered "where are her family? Is she so incapable of getting along with others that she can not accept help? Maybe there is no one to help her." And I wondered back then, 1989, what we were doing wrong that people like Mary were falling through the cracks of our system. And, now, today 20 years later, in my small town that is growing, Fenton, Michigan, I come into contact with a woman who doesn't appear to have a drug or alcohol addiction, she keeps herself clean and has coherent, intelligent conversations with people; yet, she's homeless. In twenty years, there's been no improvement. The Mary's of the US are left to beg, borrow or steal their way through life because we have nothing better to offer them. There is something seriously wrong with this picture!