Up With Women Blog

Since I'm completely hopeless at figuring out this blog business, I figured I'd do it manually. If you would like to add comments, please email me at lia@upwithwomen.com  

The Stories Make All the Difference
Everytime one or several of us at Up With Women go into a shelter to talk about survival and coming out of homelessness, I am reminded of one of the key things that makes this work fundamentally important and effective: Our stories. Stories inform us of the realities of life, they provide tools and examples on how to live the life that we want to live, and they remind us that we're not alone. More...

Almost 20 years later, it still haunts me
The first time I met Krissy was on clothing donation day at the shelter. We had all been called in to select some clothes. In came this 16 year old girl with spiky platinum blonde hair and a powerful presence.

“Are they ungodly or too godly?” she asked, peering down at the pile. I liked her right away.

We’d hang out on the stoop outside. She’d light a cigarette and we’d share war stories of the life we’d led before the shelter.

She told me that her mother was occasionally beaten by her father More...

"Every woman has a story"
I remember the day those words were spoken to me. It was January 1990. I was in the dining room of Stop 86, a shelter for young women that was run by the YWCA. A new sheltermate had just arrived and had come to sit with us. The shelter had a regular influx of new women. As every new sheltermate came in, we'd greet each other with our stories.

"How did you get here?", I asked. More...

She had heard of the kidnappings; women on the street being grabbed and pulled into a car. They would be missing for days, and then they would show up again, physically and emotionally traumatized. Few talked about what had happened to them. It wasn’t hard to guess. More...