The Small Story

CAMBRIDGE—Alice Galvin knew: maybe, probably, definitely, this day would come. Someone would finally say no, you can’t sleep on my couch tonight.

Still, when she showed up at that first shelter, at the age of 44, worn down from stress and grief; when she stood before a woman from the old neighborhood whose children she once babysat; when she had to ask that woman for the charity of a shelter bed—it did not feel real.

“I was numb,” Alice says, from the living room of her new apartment in Everett. 

Those were disorienting, demoralizing days.  But other homeless women helped Alice through, pointing her toward clean shelters and friendly staff, warning her where to steer clear. Now, three years later, she’s contributed her own insights to a guidebook for homeless women, published with support mostly from the Cambridge Health Alliance, and distributed this spring in shelters and clinics around the area. 

The idea for the project came from Pat Maher, a nurse with Health Care for the Homeless. She's always been inspired by her patients, women like Alice, who so easily give support. For years, she's listened to them dispense advice outside her door.

“It would choke me up sometimes, the kindness and the generosity, from one woman to another,” said Maher, 56. “These were women in a hard place.”

The 45-page pamphlet offers an exhaustive list of resources, from shelters to job training to rape counseling. But the goal was also to capture the words of the women themselves. On nearly every page, there is advice and reflection from homeless and formerly homeless women, who participated in discussion groups for the project. The bright colors of their artwork line the pages.

Most of the women chose to remain anonymous. But their voices come across strong and clear, guiding the reader through three distinct stages of homelessness: the shock of the early days, the difficulty of navigating services, and the challenge of moving into a home.

At some point in the sessions, the question came up: how on earth do you get through?

One woman’s simple answer became the title of the guide:

“You Find Your Strength,” she said.

Here is how it happened for Alice.

The Early Days

No one thing nudged Alice into homelessness. It started with the low-wage job. That led to the loss of the apartment. Then her brother suddenly died, and it all got so much worse. 

Somehow, one day, Alice Galvin, the daughter of a truck driver and a homemaker, the sister to three siblings, the girl who grew up in a ten-room home in Somerville, found herself at St. Patrick’s shelter.

“This wasn’t how I was brought up,” she said.

She had worked her whole adult life, supporting herself with jobs at Liberty Mutual, at lawyers’ offices, as a certified nursing assistant. For a while there, after her parents died, and the family home was sold, she lived on her own. She welcomed other homeless people into her apartment, friends of her boyfriend—cooked them a meal, offered them the use of her shower.

"Something little to make someone happy," she said.

But the wages she earned were never enough to get by, and when her savings ran out, the rent became too much, and the moving from couch to couch began. Two years later, it ended with her aunt telling Alice to go to St. Patrick’s. 

In the guidebook, several pages are devoted to those early days of homelessness— what to do, what to expect. 

“You’ll be scared,” one woman says. “But try to keep listening, look around—maybe someone will come to you, and extend a hand.”

Those first few hours at the shelter are missing from Alice’s mind. But she can clearly remember later that night, the image of her new roommates: three elderly women, one of them struggling to walk. Alice had withered to 93 pounds by then. She lay her body down on the plastic mattress, and cried herself to sleep.


The Labyrinth of Services

The next morning, Alice’s new life began. She learned where to sit during meals, who was safe to speak with, which staff members to trust. The women introduced her to daily routines, like the lottery for beds. 

It’s all laid out in the guidebook now, for other women to read: When some shelters run out of space, they hand out slips of paper. If yours is blank, you get a bed. If yours has an X, you don’t.

“I got an X,” one woman recalls. “I panicked.”

But there are ways to find shelter if you’re desperate, and the guidebook describes them, along with other insider tips, from when to call certain shelters to where to find free furniture.

If Alice had her way, this guidebook would be sitting on the shelves of libraries and police stations and city halls, anywhere a newly homeless woman might go. 
Alice herself has already handed out a few copies. She turns to the page where her favorite programs are listed, and points to names.

“You call these people immediately,” she tells women. 

In the tangle of any sprawling system, there are helpful people, and not so helpful people. Alice got lucky. She found Pat early. She was living at St. Patrick’s at the time, and Pat was working in the women’s clinic.

Over the years, Pat has pulled Alice through. She’s helped her fill out the paperwork for disability benefits; encouraged her in the wait for Section 8 housing; prescribed medication for her panic attacks. The Saturday morning Alice decided to get sober, she called Pat, who suggested a hospital that could help. 

“She pushes you into that direction, and you follow it,” Alice says. 


Making a New Home

A year and a half ago, when Alice moved into her new apartment, she blew up the donated air mattress, and positioned it in a corner of the kitchen. Someone had to remind her she had a bedroom. 

The furniture arrived, the apartment filled out—the green vase, the wood nightstand, relics from her childhood home, all brought out from storage. It should have been a happy time.

But there was the silence to cope with.

“It was so empty,” said Alice, who started drinking heavily around that time. “There’s only so many times you can walk around the block.”

In the shelters, for better and worse, she had a community. She was appreciated: the five foot tall force of nature with the funny-sounding voice. She would cut the other women’s hair, and fix it up to look so nice. Now she lay in bed in her new federally subsidized apartment, the covers pulled up over her head.

In the guidebook, women have suggestions for this tough transition: get a pet, find a job, join a support group.

“Make yourself go out, even if you don’t want to,” one woman advises.

Alice would not budge for months. And then something clicked. She got sober and stayed that way. A job is in her future now. She knows she can do it. 

She worked a while when she was homeless—a temporary stint, two buses, one train to get there, caring for someone’s severely disabled aunt. Maybe she’ll find work as a certified nursing assistant again.

For now, Alice tends to the plants she bought for the apartment building’s backyard. She plays with her cats. She advises her neighbors on the best local food banks.

And every once in a while, she reads a letter Pat once wrote on her behalf. In it, she calls Alice a “source of inspiration and hope” to many women in the shelter. “Exemplary character,” is how Pat puts it.

When Alice first read the letter, it seemed like someone else was at the center of it. She could not see herself in Pat’s words. Then, slowly, finally, she did.