Rebuilding Shattered Lives Podcast
St Mungo’s oral history project, Street Stories, interviewed 15 women about their experiences of homelessness.
Some of their stories have now been compiled in a series of podcasts as part of the Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign.
You can listen to and download Episode One now through iTunes.
Rebuilding Shattered Lives – Podcast One
Kimberley, 40:
“We just ended up having massive rows and it just got too intense and the only way for me to do was to basically break free from him, was to make myself homeless. I didn’t want to make myself homeless.”
Casey, 26:
“It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. It was cold, wet, trying to find a doorway where someone isn’t… like the police aren’t going to tell you to move on please. You know constantly just being outside. There’s no warmth. There’s no friends…Once you get to that point where you’re homeless, you feel like there’s no turning back; that’s your life. That’s how it’s always going to be and you’re never going to get anything better and you’re not going to achieve anything you know?”
Tracy, 40:
“And then after that he said to me, ‘Right, we’ve found you a place.’ I said, ‘Where?’ And he said, ‘It’s only a rolling shelter,’ and I said, ‘Mark, I’ve never been in a hostel before.’ He said, ‘You’ll love it.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m scared.’ He went, ‘A big woman like you? You’re scared? After what you’ve been through? Come on!’ So he’s took me to a rolling shelter which was in Islington, and I remember walking in this building and all these staff looking at me. And I remember they showed me round and that, and it was like… and there were no words for it, I was like that. ‘What this is my room? My room, I’ve got my own key, it’s mine?’ And they were saying, ‘Yes.’ And I was like a little child in a fairy-tale.”
