Vanessa Oliver - Healing home : health and homelessness in the life stories of young women

HEALING HOME

Health and Homelessness in the Life Stories of Young Women

Based on research that was awarded the Governor Generals Academic Gold Medal, Healing Home is an exploration of the lives and health of young women experiencing homelessness. Vanessa Oliver employs an innovative methodology that blends sociology and storytelling practices to investigate these womens access to health services, their understandings of health and health care delivery, and their health-seeking behaviours. Through their life stories, Oliver demonstrates how personal and social experiences shape health outcomes.

In contrast to many previous studies that have focused on the deficits of these young people, Healing Home is both youth-centric and youth-positive in its approach: by foregrounding the narratives of the women themselves, Oliver empowers a sub-section of the population that traditionally has not had a voice in determining policies that shape their realities. Applying a strong, articulate, and systemic analysis to on-the-ground narratives, Oliver is able to offer fresh, incisive recommendations for health and social service providers with the potential to effect real-world change for this marginalized population.

VANESSA OLIVER is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Mount Allison University.

Health and Homelessness in the Life Stories of Young Women

VANESSA OLIVER

University of Toronto Press 2013

Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4426-4531-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4426-1344-7 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Oliver, Vanessa, 1980

Healing home : health and homelessness in the life stories of young women / Vanessa Oliver

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4426-4531-8 (bound) - ISBN 978-1-4426-1344-7 (pbk.)

1. Homelessness - Health aspects - Ontario - Toronto - Case studies. 2. Homeless women - Ontario - Toronto - Case studies. 3. Homeless women - Ontario - Toronto - Biography. 4. Women - Health and hygiene - Ontario - Toronto - Case studies. 5. Health services accessibility - Ontario - Toronto - Case studies. 6. Toronto (Ont.) - Social conditions - 21st century - Case studies. I. Title.

RA564.9.H63O45 2013 362.10425 C2012-906819-5

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

To my mothers

Susan Phillips Oliver

&

Nellie Green Oliver

Who taught me the most valuable things I know:

Love

Compassion

Determination

Virginia Woolf (1948) once said, If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people This is a complicated quotation with which to start, but I have chosen it intentionally. Although to cite Virginia Woolf is to engage with early and influential feminist thought, it is also to privilege a voice of privilege - the voice of a woman who could write because she was part of the elite, and who at times spoke from an elitist, classist, and racist perspective. In many ways, Woolf is an example of the sort of feminism that postcolonial feminists seek to problematize. For this she is not to be excused. But Woolf was more complex, as we all are, than these descriptions allow. She was also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a brilliant storyteller, a woman who sometimes sought the sexual companionship of women, and a sufferer of depression, to which she would eventually succumb, drowning herself in 1941 (DeSalvo, 1990; Sproles, 2006). Virginia Woolf and her words speak to the power of stories: what they tell and what they obscure, what they say about particular times and places, and how they, like the people who tell them, are never simply one thing but always complexly becoming.

Most feminist thought believes that there is not a singular truth to be discovered, but rather multiple truths that depend on how one sees the world (Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2002). To tell the truth, then, is to say what one believes to be true at the particular moment and place when one is asked. To say the truth about others is even more complex. This book relies on the voices of eight young women living in extraordinary circumstances who tell their truths through their own stories - stories that have not often been heard before. Through my research I aim to tell their stories while remaining true to the way that they told them to me, and, in so doing, to communicate their experiences through the 300-page story that is this book.

This research would not have existed or been nearly as powerful without the help of the First Stop Woodlawn womens shelter and its staff, who believed in my story and my work enough to tell me to stop being a one-track academic and write some interview questions that mattered. This story cannot be told without the eight young women who told me that their stories needed to be heard. Through the course of this research, I hope that you will, as I have, come to hear them and to better understand their truths, their fictions, and their lives.

Throughout this work I will argue that, due to multiple marginalizations ranging from their age to the social stigmatization of homelessness to inequitable policies, homeless young women face unique barriers to accessing health and social services and also, therefore, to achieving their full human potential. The subsequent chapters and discussion explore the ways in which the womens narratives contribute a personal face and an authoritative voice to the most pressing issues facing young people living in exceptional circumstances. Their thoughts, feelings, and suggestions for change reflect the need for renewed focus on social safety nets and inclusive citizenship for all.

To my father, Norman Oliver, who has always been, above all things, my Dad. And who, with strength and love enough for two, raised a little girl who wanted to make the world a better place.

To my sister, Melissa Oliver Doucette, who gave the world the three most perfect people I know: Brandon, Caleb, and Camryn Doucette.

To my Uncle Clayton Oliver for teaching me humility.

To my Uncle Ross Magill for teaching me vulnerability.

To Isobel Richmond Oliver for doing the caring work that allowed me to do this.

To my family of friends, for love, life, and laughter: Kelly Burrows, Laura Carr, Matthew Coppins, Jennifer Esmail, Francesco Fiore, Christopher Grouios, Christopher Huey, Kathryn Hum, Caroline Hume, Jane Hutton, Clare Frejd, Adrienne Palmer, Daniel Reid, Michael Sung.

To an amazing group of women, academic colleagues and friends, with the utmost gratitude for support, enthusiasm, and motivation: Pat Armstrong, Susan Braedley, Diana Majury, Nancy Mandell, Sarah Flicker, Tamara Daly, Nora Jacobson, Morgan Seeley, Wendy Winters, Melba Cuddy-Keane, Sylvia Soderlind, Asha Varadharajan.