Lisa

Alamance County, NC. Restaurant worker. Resident at Allied Churches homeless shelter. White, female, age 49. Interviewed by Elon student Gloria So, October 8, 2012.

Overcoming Adversity

I don’t want to be on welfare.  It’s my goal to cut out the food stamps and to pay my own way.  I never really chose to be, I don’t guess anybody does, but I don’t, I’m ready to do my own thing. I want to have a job, I want to get a car, and I want to get a home that’s mine, where I don’t have to share the bathroom with 20 other women, or if I want to get up and get me something to eat in the middle of the night, but I’m grateful, I’m grateful to have it.

I was married.  Well, I got married in 1984 and I was married for 15 years and we split up.  And then I got married in 2005, from 2005 to 2007, and like I said, that was a very abusive relationship and I almost died on account of it.

I got thrown out of a car and he got sent to prison, so that’s how I got out of that one.

Over the next several years it went from food stamps to housing, and other various programs to help me out, ‘cause I don’t have insurance, and like I said, I can’t get… I haven’t applied again for Medicaid, but last time I applied I didn’t qualify.