Emily's Worldview

8, 6, 4, 1 and 7 weeks. Those are the ages of the children my client, an African-American woman a year older than I am. I am at my twice-weekly internship at a homeless service agency downtown. As we fill out papers I ask if she is currently pregnant, and she laughs out loud and says no, thank God.

She is getting her life back together, living in a transitional women's shelter, recovering from addiction, abiding by the terms of her parole. When I ask her if she likes the place, she gushes: it's clean, it's safe, they have great classes that teach her how to manage her anger and how to fight addiction. She says that if she had known how nice it was, she would have brought her children with her. As it is, they are staying with her partner's family. She has asked so much from them that she feels she can't ask for the $10 she needs to get a copy of her birth certificate. That is why she came to our agency, and I help her fill out the form and send away for the document, to be returned in three weeks.

This is the type of tiny victory the agency specializes in; the administrative tasks that help homeless men and women to reclaim their dignity and their citizenship. With clients like this, we feel like we are succeeding. More to come.