okay... I am a TBI survivor. My accident occured in Feb 2001. I've had complication after complication with trying to 'work the system' just to get basic health care following my brain injury since I couldn't hold a job. My story is both a story of survival of brain injury and homelessness. To make a long story short, I'm just going to post an admissions essay I used to apply to Harvard University:

I always thought homeless people were homeless by choice. I thought they were dirty, lazy alcoholics who liked to live off the system. But when I found myself homeless in New Hampshire in 2002, at age 20, it wasn t for any of those reasons. I was homeless because I had been in a car accident the year before and sustained traumatic brain injury and a broken neck. I had ongoing neurological and cognitive issues that made day-to-day life a struggle let alone holding down a job. I needed basic medical care and rehabilitation for my neck and brain injury, but since I was unable to hold a job, I couldn t get health insurance. And without health insurance I couldn t get rehabilitation. And without rehabilitation I couldn t hold down a job.

I was 20 years old. I knew nothing about the welfare system, or what to do if you suddenly become disabled. I had no family to turn to, because I had left an abusive home situation when I turned 18, and it wasn t worth the abuse to go back. I knew I needed help, but I had no clue how to navigate the system. Several months prior, I had read on the Internet that disabled people could apply for Social Security so I had done so, but I was told it could take at least a year to get approved.

When I ended up homeless, the city welfare office sent me to apply for state disability, but I was denied because of lack of medical documentation. All I had to show for my brain injury was my hospital records but once the hospital released me, no one was obligated to give me rehabilitation because I had no insurance. I appealed the state of New Hampshire s decision, but was denied again for state assistance (including basic case management) because I was under 22 when my brain injury occurred. As a result, my brain injury was classified as a developmental disability, and because all of my neuropsychological testing showed that my IQ was above 75 (the cut-off for mentally retarded), I couldn t get assistance. If my accident had happened after age 21, my disability would have been considered an acquired brain disorder and I would have qualified for state disability benefits. I was stuck. I couldn t get rehabilitation without health insurance, and I couldn t get health insurance without a job. I couldn t get Medicaid without being on Social Security or NH state disability, and I couldn t get disability benefits without medical documentation. I was going in circles trying to get the help I needed, but no matter which way I turned, it seemed I was up against a wall that I couldn t break through.

The one area where I did qualify to receive services was Vocational Rehabilitation, because I was having difficulty holding a job. These services included paying for college, so I decided to return to school. Prior to my accident, I had plans of becoming a doctor, so I enrolled in a medical assisting program at a local school, and also finally landed a job at the local hospital as a nurse s aide in pediatrics. Also, three months after entering the NH shelter, I received Section 8 (a voucher for subsidized housing), and I got an apartment shortly thereafter. Things were starting to look up.

Then one of my doctors made a serious error in my medication doses, and I ended up in the hospital and out of work on medical leave. Around this time, my landlord stopped accepting Section 8, so I had to pay full rent but I had no income. Despite my disability, the city welfare office could not help me because I had no children and was in school. They told me that if I quit school, they would pay my rent. I wanted so badly to finish school. I loved what I was doing and my grades were at the top of the class. It hardly seemed fair that I d have to quit school just to keep from ending up homeless. The argument went on for almost three months. Finally, in the dead of winter, I realized I had to quit school so I wouldn t have to sleep on the streets in the cold. But all I got out of quitting school was two weeks of rent before the city welfare office decided that they couldn t continue to help me because I had no children.

It was the coldest week of the year when I found myself homeless again in February 2003. I didn t know where to turn. I recognized that if I stayed in New Hampshire I was stuck. There were very few homeless shelters, but most importantly I realized if I wanted to get my life back on track and be able to hold a job and go to school again I really needed to go through a brain injury rehab program. After much research, Spaulding Rehab Hospital in Boston seemed ideal. So I packed two bags and made my way to Boston in hope of getting rehabilitation.

My first night in the shelter I sat and filled out all the necessary forms to apply for Medicaid and disability in Massachusetts as well as to transfer my SSDI claim. It didn t take long before I got approved for basic health insurance and state disability, but it wasn t enough coverage to go through Spaulding s program, so I spent the following three months filling out medical forms in hopes of getting better coverage. In the meantime I bounced from shelter to shelter along the North Shore and throughout Boston and Cambridge. I dragged everything I owned along with me everywhere and spent many nights outside wandering around or sleeping in random store doorways, church steps, and various tunnels. I spent my days at the library reading books or online looking for a way out of homelessness. I started an online journal (weblog or blog) titled Life From the Perspective of an Anonymous Homeless Girl. I wrote in it daily not expecting many people to be interested in it, I just wanted people to hear things from the perspective of a homeless person since we are group that is typically ignored. Blogging was the best way I could think of to pass the time.

February quickly turned into March, and March into April. The months were slowly passing and I just sat around waiting- waiting for housing, waiting for health insurance and SSDI, and waiting for hope. I just wanted to get back on my feet. I knew if I waited it out, I would get the rehab help I needed to get my life back on track. The Section 8 waiting list froze April 29 for the state of Massachusetts. After hearing that news, everything seemed hopeless. I was tired of the library, tired of sitting in homeless programs and on benches all day waiting for the shelters to open so I could put my name in the bed lotteries in hopes for a place to sleep each night. Just when I was about to give up on life, I started seeing the previews on Lifetime TV for Homeless to Harvard: the Liz Murray Story. The previews were for a true story of a teenager who got herself through high school while living on the streets and got into Harvard. I wanted to see that movie so badly. I wanted to know if there really was hope to get out of homelessness. But the night it premiered, the shelter staff turned off the TV half way through the movie and sent us to bed. Disappointed, I wrote in my blog the next day about how much I wanted to see the end of the movie. A few weeks later, Liz Murray stumbled over my blog and saw my entry and invited me to her home in NYC that weekend to watch the rest of the movie. A day with Liz was all I needed to break my downward spiral. Liz expressed to me what an excellent writer I am and how much potential I have. That was the first positive thing I had heard in months. I had gotten so used to being torn to shreds by social workers and shelter staff and being looked down on by society. After meeting Liz, I realized that I could rise above homelessness, and being homeless didn t mean my life was over.

I wanted to make my life count for something. I was tired of sitting and waiting around day after day for a shelter bed and insurance approval to start rehab. So I started volunteering at Children s Hospital and Ronald McDonald House since both facilities had a special place in my heart because a 4-year-old buddy of mine in high school had received care there following a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. I wanted to give back to them what they gave to Carissa s family. No one at my volunteer jobs knew I was homeless and for the first time in months I was treated the same as everyone else- not like I was less human. It gave me something to look forward to each week, a way to make the days go by, and a way to help others despite my situation.

I made it a point to go to the library every day to update my journal. I wrote about breaking homeless stereotypes, and the way the homeless are mistreated by society. I wrote about the way the system fails people and how difficult it is to just go get a job when one is homeless. By this point I had attracted over 400 readers a day. I remained the anonymous homeless girl until July when the Boston Globe ran across my journal and found out I was local and asked to profile me in the Sunday paper. So on July 27, the two page article ran in the City Weekly section. I immediately started receiving requests from organizations asking to reprint my writing.

Towards the end of the summer my SSDI claim was approved, so I immediately started rehabilitation at Spaulding. I quickly learned how much work it was going to be to recover, especially considering how much time had lapsed since my accident. But looking back I can see a dramatic improvement overall. I am amazed at how much hard work it has been, but all those hours of speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy are paying off. I have finally been able to do some of the simple things that I took for granted before my brain injury that became extremely difficult after.

Despite being homeless, I really wanted to return to school. Before my accident I had hopes of becoming a doctor. I didn t give up hope right away after- I still continued to pursue a career in medicine though it was much more difficult. But after this year, I realized that despite my progress in rehab that maybe medical school wasn t what I would be best at. From the time I was a child, I ve always been a good writer. It s something I really enjoy. Since I was in high school I ve been told over and over by people, Crystal you should write a book. I laughed it off for several years. But it wasn t until I ended up homeless that I realized maybe I should write a book. That I can share my story of falling through the cracks of the system and fighting for survival- and at the same time break some of the homeless stereotypes and share the stories of others I ve met on the streets. Every homeless person has a story- but society tends to ignore them as they walk by the panhandlers on the streets or the women that push all their precious possessions in shopping carts. I want to be the voice for the homeless. So I enrolled in the Intro to Memoir class at Harvard Extension School in September, and somehow managed to juggle my rehab schedule, my volunteer work and class assignments. After enrolling, several shelters informed me that if I was going to be going to rehab during the day and school at night that I wasn t allowed to stay there because shelters are meant for those who need them, and if you are going to school you must not need to be here. I had come so far, and I knew I was going to get somewhere. I didn t want the shelter rules to hold me back from accomplishing my goals so I left the shelters to stay on the streets. I realized I could manage to get my school work done working in cafes using a laptop someone had given to me. I could wander Harvard Square at night once the cafés closed and catch a few hours of sleep on church steps or in the doorway to a store until the redline started running. I d relocate to the train and sleep for another hour riding back and forth from Alewife to Braintree. I d find breakfast somewhere and then go to rehab. When I was done at rehab I d go back to Harvard Square to Youth on Fire, a homeless youth drop-in center and take a shower, wash my clothes, get some food, and take a nap if I was tired. From there I d go back to working in cafés until they closed. Once the cold weather hit, the fear of hypothermia became more real as I heard stories of other homeless people that died in Boston last year. I started finding warmer places- sleeping in tunnels, crashing dorm rooms of a few Harvard students I had become friends with, couch surfing in the homes of some of my blog readers, or going to University Lutheran Shelter. It s been tough, but I ve survived and I know I m going to get far in life. Being homeless is simply another challenge I have to overcome, but in the end I will be a stronger person because of it.

The Boston Globe ran a follow-up article on my story in October. Within days I was contacted by several schools in New England asking me to come and speak to their students about women s rights, domestic violence, religious abuse, surviving traumatic brain injury, causes of homelessness, and personal experiences being homeless. I ve given several speeches and have several more lined up for the spring. It wasn t until one of my first speeches to a group of 140 college students that I realized how many people that my blogging on homelessness and my personal story could impact. Several more articles on my story have been written in various newspapers both in the United States and in Europe, and two of the essays I ve written on homelessness have been syndicated by street papers internationally.

I got into rehab, my writing has been published, I ve been offered some work in the development office by a local homeless program, and soon I ll be getting a subsidized apartment. I won t have to carry my whole life with me any more. I am only going to look forward; there is no sense in turning back. I want to finish college with the best education I can get. I m very interested in research on homelessness and poverty and how it affects women and youth. I want to do a joint concentration in Women s Studies and Sociology and when I graduate, I would like to open a program geared towards ending youth homelessness. I want to go back and work with street youth. I want them to see that they aren t stuck and that there really is hope.
my online journal can be found at http://www.beinghomeless.com

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