WENDY ADAMSON
Author • Speaker • Activist
We Must Stop Looking the Other Way When Confronted with Homelessness
I was driving through the heart of downtown Los Angeles when I found myself going through a homeless encampment under a freeway overpass. Tents, cardboard boxes, plywood, bicycles, and blue tarps were lined up against a chain-link fence for an entire block.
How I Quit Smoking With Roller Blading
It was the early ‘90s, and I was renting a small apartment at a women and children’s center in Santa Monica. Other than going to a 12-step meeting, I didn’t know what to do with the other 23 hours of the day. It was hard not to do what I had always done before: consume massive amounts of drugs and alcohol. But having lost everything, I hoped this would be my bottom.
Inside Job
Gripping a Starbucks cappuccino in one hand I rode the creaky elevator up to the sixth floor of Brotman hospital. It was back in the mid nineties and I was on my way to the local detox center where I had been working as a drug and alcohol counselor for a year. My qualifications for the job came from my own intensive research with mind-altering substances. However, finally sober, it felt as if all the stars had aligned and I knew what I was put on earth to do. Change the world, one addict at a time.
Gratitude
With the Santa Monica Mountains in the background, I gaze out my bay window, in the early morning hours. The sun is breaking through the clouds and the sky is lit up like a water color painting with blue, orange and pink hues. Like many of us this time of year, when I ask myself what am I grateful for, thankfully, I don’t have to look too far.
The Band Is Back Together
Early friendships can provide the core of what you will need later in adulthood, which is connection, a shared sense of history, and sometimes a relief that you actually survived those tumultuous teenage years. This indeed, is the case for Michelle Butler and Ai Kusuhara, who have been friends for over twenty-five years.
How a Mentor Can Change a Life
Standing inside the gymnasium of an after-school youth program called PAL, I can’t help but be pulled back to when my son, Rikki, played here as a kid. It was the early nineties, and I had just hit a bottom with alcohol and drugs. After separating from my husband of 20 years, I didn’t know where I was going to go. Thankfully, CLARE Foundation provided me an affordable one bedroom at their women and children’s center, which would ultimately lay the groundwork for my recovery.
Homelessness and Mental Health
Officers Armond and Dodson, whose personal histories uniquely qualify them for this outreach effort, have personally gotten 49 people off the streets and into drug and alcohol treatment.
Foster Youth Lack the Support and Resources Needed to Avoid Homelessness
When I was 14, I stood next to my dad in front of a judge in juvenile court. I had run away from home. When the judge asked me why, I didn’t know how to explain to him that ever since my mother killed herself when I was 7, it felt like I was carrying deep grief inside my chest. I didn’t know how to articulate the rage I felt toward my dad for drinking himself into a deplorable state every night.