When you are homeless

Storytelling and the Circular Rambling "I want people to know."

Marissa's Story by Blake Sanz and Alison Turner

Analyn describes her determination to stay with her children despite abusive partners and entanglements with social services. “Every lawyer that I have is denying my case...They say, we believe that you were done wrong, but you can't fight the system. It's too much for us.”

Two weddings and a resume. “People tend to shy away from me...the unexpected chance encounters are the best ones, usually.”

A young man from Raleigh looks to find his place in a new city. “I'm not going to be no specialized big vocabulary word person. I'm going to give it to them straight up. How do you get through situations?"

From Bubbles to Nick Carraway: “They find themselves searching for godliness.” I can spend $20.00 and not care about shit for three days.

After a one-way ticket from New York to Utah then hitchhiking to Denver, Eryka explores the city with 120 pounds on her back. “Aside from everything else going on, I love myself a lot and I know who I am, what I am. I know what my abilities are.”

How can you know what traumas another person carries? It’s only a hose, but maybe you’ve seen too many snakes to trust your eyes.

A former head of a multi-million dollar company struggles to survive. “I mean, I’ve died on the streets so many times.”

Hear the ways that people use coloring to cope, writing to roam, and music to reclaim. It's like, "Here. Okay. Finally, you all understand now? You all see? This is what I've been doing. This is what I enjoy doing. This is...me."

A mother experiences homelessness for a second time and uses coloring to cope. "The first time, I wasn't expecting it, because the way things happened. This time, I'm more in control of my feelings... because it was my fault."

An artist from Philadelphia works on a photography project: Four Seasons in a Day. “I wasn't homeless. I had a home. I had a life. I had a business. I had everything. I literally walked away from everything to freaking write, to take pictures, to just get in my body and bring something out.”

How do you get by when you can’t prove who you are? “I will. I’ll work. But where? How?”

Meet Lucky, a college graduate from Seattle living on the streets of Denver. “I always have my music 'cause my music is me.”

“That’s part of how we want you to think about this stuff, is with some sense of mystery that we share with you: ‘What happened to these people?’”

A narrator introduces the podcast’s hosts, its 8 stories of people experiencing homelessness, and themes emerging from interviews. These themes are presented in the storytellers’ own words, from clips taken from their edited stories.