northwest original artist-writer

This is my painting, “Main & 25th,” which is my former home where I abided for a spell, not un-recently.

I know the persons in this painting, and painted them with acrylic and pastel on a linen cloth with tenderness and care. I spent days and nights with these folks, and know a bit about their troubles, frustrations, senses of humor, their loves, their aspirations and private griefs.

This is the homeless row of downtown Vancouver, Washington, around the corner of Main Street and 25th Avenue. Most ironically, this is where sits the lusciously designed and expensively constructed Vancouver Housing Authority building.

Most of the time, in my experience living on this street, the VHA building is unfrequented by the homeless who live there. Much of the building’s space seemed underutilized to me while I was homeless, and came in to use their restroom and printer. It was also curious to me during this time, that although from various news sources that huge sums of monies had been granted to VHA and Council for The Homeless, For transitional housing, I never saw it going to that, could not figure out where that money was going, and absolutely not one of the persons who work for these and other homeless organizations and city-county government, would not respond to my requests to see the accounting of those funds.

My name is Heidi Hansen, and I was one of these invisible persons, part of the collective Throwaway population of Vancouver’s unresolved homeless culture.

Homeless culture is a sad fact of life, many Vancouver residents and politicians say over and over and over but from what I have seen on the ground, the voters, and persons of credibility and power fail to implement solutions that actually make it different.

In family systems — found in counseling psychology as well as on a macro-level in sociology — when a pervasive and unwanted problem exists in a group and is a continual source of source of problem-solving dialogue and vague attempts at solutions, which fail, we must face ourselves honestly and ask the question “Is this problem actually undesirable? Do Vancouver people really want the homelessness problem to be fixed? Is there secondary gain for keeping the homeless right where they are? Is there some scapegoat value that our society does not really want to give up? And what might that be?””

Shocking words eh? Outlandish and nervy question?

But it must be answered.

Sometimes groups act in ways to preserve their “problem child” — their scapegoats — because of an overall and pervasive, unspoken commitment to their base need for the function of that problem staying right where it is.

That’s what I want Vancouver to think about when they look at “Main & 25th.” That is why I am proposing “Know My Name,” — a viable solution to getting more homefullness outcomes, more sustained and maintained homefullness culture, and a visible transformation for individuals from living out homeless culture to transforming themselves in homefull culture.

Homelessness strips away a person’s identity, and then, a person’s self-esteem. Both are required for a person to survive, thrive, remain stable and become fruitful in their lives.

This blog post was featured as an article in the Camas – Washougal area newspaper, “River Talk Weekly.”

“Know My Name” is a project I propose that recruits a volunteer force of homefull persons who have become sustainable in homefullness culture, and are stable and confident enough to be a mentor, a sponsor, for an up-and-comer homefull person.

A homefullness sponsor does not do social work or donate money or housing itself.

A homefullness sponsor will go through a training with me, (I’ll be the leader and organizer here) and be matched with a sponsee who is willing and determined to not relapse once housing has been achieved.

A homefull sponsee and their sponsor will set out an attainable goal plan to get strong in their identity in their new homefullness culture and get strong in their areas where relapse back into homelessness is a risk or vulnerability.

In other words, a sponsor shows the sponsee the ropes of homefullness culture, walks beside them to guide and support them in building their own new personal identity and by so doing, prevents relapse into homelessness — and instead, finds a meaningful and valued niche, homefull relationships and groups, and becomes useful in homeful culture.

This operates on the premise that we become more like the people we hang out with. If we want certain successful traits and habits, we will get them by spending more time around people who have achieved those success habits and traits

I am inviting interested persons to email me and sign – up to be sponsors, and then I will set up some Zoom meeting trainings to review the expectations, skills, and nuts and bolts of goal setting and communication.

Each week a sponsee will communicate with me to stay on track, while they stay in weekly communication with their sponsee, sharing their experience, strength and hope, motivating and encouraging and celebrating those goals, reinforcing their new positive relationships and activities, and be there for their sponsee when homefullness stress and discouragement hits.

Remember, this is not social work and not monetary. It’s humanity at its own best reservoir for solving a very human set of problems.

Then, I will look for sponsees who want to participate in this project, and match them up with a suitable sponser.

I am asking you, reader, and asking those in social services to help spread the word on this project, and send referrals my way so I can start to organize matches.

This is brand new for me, and brand new for sponsors and sponsees, so this is the time to float your ideas and suggestions and be a part of the building up of this project, if you desire.

I do believe that homelessness relapse can be prevented, and that newly homefull persons can contribute so solidly to their new culture — once they know what that is after living in a marginalized culture — and that this “Know My Name” project can be a viable, life-affirming action with observable, measureable series of viable results.

Interested in helping out?

Please email me at dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com, or call me at 360-835-8591, room 111 in Washougal to discuss your thoughts, questions and suggestions.

Thank you for your interest and your help.

You can get to know me better by exploring my websites at:

http://www.theartistschronicles.wordpress.com

http://www.thetraumaproject.health.blog

http://www.thementalhealthdetective.wordpress.com

http://www.doghotelbooks.wordpress.com

http://www.themuseacademy.wordpress.com

http://www.nativicabook.wordpress.com

Thanks, and take great care of yourself — you are definitely a great person, and I love it that you read this!

Heidi Hansen

june 2, 2019, by Heidi d. Hansen, m.a.

‘the dandelions bloom at midnight’

this was the secret password my son and i used when he was young, used in cases when we were not able to communicate directly but a change of plans needed to be made, for example, if someone else was to pick him up after school at the last minute. the password was used to let him know the situation had my permisssion, my knowledge, and was safe.

but the phrase is more than a secret code — it is true that some flowers and plants bloom in the night hours.

this is also a metapor, that some persons bloom in adversity. in times of our greatest despair, we can choose to act out our troubles, or do something extraordinary with them.

we are all children of creation – creativity is innate within ourselves. we are capable of innovating solutions, finding new ways, summoning up coping skills we have not thought of before.

trauma changes us, but we get to say how.

trauma will change you, but you get to say how

if you find yourself in a spot in life when everything has crashed around you, the things you normally hang onto for sanity have abandoned you, you feel frightened and alone and shaking in your boots — but yet you are still standing — shout out loud in celebration, ‘i’m still standing.’

the one hidden blesing of trauma is that it clears the decks. when everything is lost or damaged, everything becomes a new blank canvas upon which to paint something new and different — perhaps this is the opportunity for you to become a version 2.0 of yourself — a self you always imagined you might want to become someday – and since all is lost and theree’s nothing left to do but re-create yourself, perhaps you can strategically create that self you had previously only imagined, but now you can make it real.

trauma can provide new opportunities to expand our selves

trauma is mesy, it is unpredictable, it will sneak up and bite you from behind when you least expect it. but truma is not an illness. it’s an event that has caused great pain and fear. the side order that comes in tow with that is shame, guilt, rage — even though you have nothing to feel shame or guilt about, we do anyway.

that’s where restorative justice comes in. ‘putting the monkey back on the back of to whom it belongs.’ within lawful limits, a person must make some justice happen in order to be whole again.

advocating for our selves to restore the balance of what was taken away from us can be freeing

trauma can make us feel as though we’ve gone dead inside. that is why it is so important to fill up our lives with life-affirming actions. things that are creative — you are a child of creation, remember — so fill your days with creative things — anything of your choosing, it does not mean artsy or crafty things although those are great too – it can be anything — making up a new song or joke, walking through the library and picking books at random off shelves you haven’t been to before, and reading one paragraph out of the page the book opens to. it can be creating your own coffee specialty item at your local coffee shop — you might want to tip them for this. making a friend froma different culture and listeinging to their family stories. throw yourself into anything and everything that is life-affirming and validates your sense of self, safety, and sanity.

the self, our personality — is a trememdous gift. trauma will try to rob you of that. but remember there is only one person who owns your self, only one person who can make the decisisons for the development and healing and thriving of that self — you.

you’ll need someone to talk to about the pain, the awfulness, the horrors, the ‘world has caved in on me’ experience. one who can use life-affirming strategies to help you re-connect with your sense of self and esteem in a manner of your own choosing, finding a center of joy that you can trust.

find a trauma-skilled therapist. not everyone has the training and expertise to this field. i happen to be a therapist who is, and my trauma project workshops will provide you with a knowlege structure around three types of trauma — the trauma of abuse and violence, the trauma of abandonment and neglect, and the trauma of dehumanization. i’ll also teach you five specific masteries that will help you grow through and even thrive after trauma and throughout your life development.

my trauma project workshops are free and all are welcome to attend donations are appreciated but not necessary to participate.

so call or email me and let’s talk and set up a trauma workshop for you, or individual therapy sessions to addres more personal needs. i want you to be well, mentally and physically, and i’m here to help you do that. thanks for listenting, and let’s talk soon — bye for now..

we’ll talk soon, I’m looking forward to it.

Call or email me to use this coupon to help get yourself trauma-informed. I take online payments using Ally online bank. Free-will donations are also appreciated to help cover my overhead so I can continue to offer free services to low-income and homeless persons. Thank you, and enjoy the next article. — Heidi

are you trauma informed? by Heidi d. Hansen, m.a. june 15, 2019

Heidi’s trauma workshops will help professionals in many different fields be more successful with their clients when they become trauma – informed.

Are you a health care professional? Work in social or human services? Legal services or law enforcement? Sales? Are you in a management or executive position where you train, supervise, organize and motivate employees or departments of the business? Teacher or educator or in childcare? Do you work in non-profit or philanthropic organizations including churches or are you thinking of starting one?

everybody has a story. there are many types of traumas, and they show in up in the workplace, classroom, sales calls, and in patient/client/congregational care. the more you understand how trauma affects a person’s way of relating to their environment, the people and stressors around their environment, the more effective you will be in helping them, and your organization, achieve their goals..

let’s start with the basics. empathy and perspective.

sense of security, personality structure, and esteem are damaged by trauma in invisible ways.

except they are not invisible to the person of trauma. a person of trauma goes to great lengths to hide their dysfunctions so as to appear as normal as can be, because for all intents and purposes, they are normal. they want to work, play and love just as much as everybody else and most persons of trauma are just regular, average people who are skilled, educated/trained, available for relationships and hobbies and life adventures. normal.

except that we know now that the more trauma children and adolescents are exposed to, the more problems they will have in later life with rocky relationships, trouble with the law, with homelessness, domestic violence, unemployment, substance abuse, and mental illness.

we now know that in adulthood as well as childhood, trauma alters the structure of nuerons in the brain that are not reversable. these nuerons are responsible for the chemicals that produce anxiety, depression, impulsivity, low frustration tolerance, poor decision-making.

as a professional, you may have more contact with these individuals struggling with these risk factors than what you see on the outside.

trauma survivors live in a world invisible to most. it is a lonely, isolated world of fears and needs and a sense of being so very different from everyone else sometimes that alone-ness itself is a barrier.

the cure is to be able to connect deeply in life – affirming ways with other people, meaningful work, making the world better for others, but the symptoms of traumatic stress handicap people right at that point — it can be a sensation of living in a tupperware box, almost able to reach out and touch what they see others doing – not being afraid, not over-reacting, not withdrawing or being aggressively controlling but able to really honestly enjoy being with each other, engaged in the moment and find find joy in the day without self-punishment. but they can’t get past the fuzzy tupperware wall. how to live like that is just too foreign a concept for trauma sufferers.

you can begin to assist your people move past those barriers by deepening your empathy for what is happening inside a person of trauma — in a world you are not experiencing. a world which is invisible to you. the following chart will show two columns that may help you see and hear the invisible reality of the person your chosen profession has given you stewardship.

to set up a workshop for professionals, or a private consultation on how being more trauma-informed can help you be more effective in your work, email me at dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com, or call me at 360-600-8745. thanks, and be well — heidi

please take advantage of this coupon to upgrade your acumen on trauma and how that can help you and your work be more successful. I accept payments made to ally online bank, via western union money transfer services, or by money order.