Where is the home for the angry?

Wow. I'm really in the writing mood. We'll see how long this lasts once I start writing papers for school again. But for now I guess I have a lot to say :)

I've been volunteering at a maternity shelter, which provides housing for women who are pregnant and homeless. The goal of the program is to cure homelessness in these women, giving them the opportunity to start school, find a job, and learn how to be good mothers. It's a pretty remarkable and necessary program considering emergency shelters can be unsafe, unsanitary, and unstable places to be pregnant.

Anyway, I have many roles at this shelter - they are constantly in need of another set of hands, another gentle voice (haha) to answer the phone. One of the most challenging tasks for me has been conducting telephone interviews with women who are in need of housing. And this week's interviews were particularly difficult.

I had to turn down two women in a row because they had anger problems. Since this shelter offers housing, education, food, counseling, and opportunities for spiritual growth at no cost to the residents, it naturally receives many calls each week from women in need. There are enough applicants without anger problems that the staff will quickly reject one if they see even the hint of an "attitude."

But I can see why these two women were angry. Both had been abandoned by their boyfriends, fathers, and most male figures in their lives; they had grown up in poverty and likely experienced racism both overtly and indirectly. All of the sudden they find themselves pregnant and responsible for another life without any support from family or the father of the baby; oftentimes they fought parents who had encouraged them to get an abortion. After jumping around from a friend's house, to a run-down motel, to a homeless shelter, to the streets they are pretty frustrated, desperate for a safe, nurturing home for their child. Not to mention all the crazy hormonal things that go on for women when they're pregnant.

No wonder these women were so angry at me when I told them that the program wouldn't be a good fit for them. No wonder they demanded to know why. No wonder they became even more elated when I explained to them that their self-proclaimed anger problem would not do well in our intrusive group setting. One woman cried "well, don't you guys have counseling or something?" Yes, of course we do. And she could probably benefit from it - maybe even more than some of the women we are accepting in the program. But I didn't tell her that. I told her that that didn't matter anymore, she had already eliminated herself from the pool of applicants. I asked her if I could give her a referral to another maternity shelter.

Of course, we all knew that no other maternity shelter would take her for the same reasons we wouldn't. So I don't know if she will ever have the opportunity for counseling to work through her anger. I don't know if she will find a safe place to have her baby. I don't know how her baby could grow to be a healthy adult, who can learn to love him/herself and care for others.

We need something more.