Dear Friends of Street Talk,
We wake to a sparkle of frost some mornings and the shadows are long in the afternoon, reminding me that it is time to write to thank you for keeping Street Talk going for another year, a year when more people than ever, across the world live under the shadow of fear. We watch them on the news, families, like our own, leaving homes, to walk to safety with all they can carry, sometimes carrying a baby or their old people. We hope they meet kindness on the way, find safety. With your help some of the most vulnerable women on the streets of London have met with kindness and found safety this year. Thank you for making it possible to work with our women, some of whom started out with nothing, while others have had everything torn from them, whether fleeing from war thousands of miles away, fleeing from cruelty just a few streets away or running round in circles, chased by harrowing memories of childhood terror.
Have you come across the Chinese word yuanfen? I came across it this year. I think it means strangers who unexpectedly become friends. It made me think of all of you, finding your way to Street Talk to support the work, generous with money, expertise, and time. Most of all encouraging us with kind words.
I thought of the concept of yuanfen when one of our therapists who overcame harrowing abuse in childhood in Africa and in later years harnessed that experience to become a gifted therapist, met Amal, a woman who has fled from similar abuse in her family in Iran. Amal was rough sleeping when she heard about Street Talk, terrified of being sent to immigration detention centre or worse being sent back to Iran, supporting herself by selling sex, living in the shadows on the street. She is much safer now, living in a hostel, in the asylum system, coming to life in the therapy, as Pádraig Ó Tuama might say, saying “hello to here”.
Kath, a Traveller woman in her sixties is volunteering this year, befriending Lara, a young care-leaver, tangled in the mess of street prostitution and addiction. Kath treated Lara to hot meals in cafés on winter days sometimes, but more than that is enabling Lara to find her own humanity in their companionship, across the generations and cultures. I heard that one bitter day last winter Lara pitched up to meet Kath for a coffee wearing flip flops and Kath who doesn’t have much herself, took her to buy her winter shoes.
Sisters in their eighties from Birmingham knitted baby clothes and blankets for Amina’s baby. In Albania, Amina had been sold by her parents to a stranger who beat her and pimped her out when was still a teenager. One of her punters helped her to escape to the UK on a carer’s visa but, shortly after arriving she discovered she was pregnant and lost her care home job when the baby was born. Along with the job, she lost her accommodation and her immigration status. Amina gave birth with nobody to look after her, nobody to admire her beautiful baby, nobody to tell her she could do this when she was exhausted or overwhelmed, no home to take the baby to from hospital, no recourse to public funds. The hand knitted clothes not only kept that baby clothed and warm, but showed Amina that there were people in this world who cared about her. Social workers were circling over Amina and it seemed that her homelessness might result in the baby being taken into care. We worked very closely with social services and mother and baby are together, great news for Christmas. Amina is in therapy with us, unravelling her own tangled ball of childhood trauma, understanding that the bad things which have happened don’t mean she is bad and might even mean that she is brave. Earlier this year we submitted a report to the court which added vital context to Amina’s asylum claim, containing important details that she had not felt able to share with any other agencies. The judge, who agreed that Amina would be in danger were she to be returned to Albania, specifically referred to our report when explaining their decision to grant one year’s leave to remain, leave that will allow Amina to find work once again and provide a safe and loving home for her child.
Laura has been on a training placement with us this year and I want to share what she has written about working with Street Talk because her words are better than mine.
“I entered counselling training from my past work experience of working in homelessness services where clients were often refused mental health support. The highlight for me has been that, through the relationship I have developed with the women, women who have experienced so much cruelty and disrespect, I have reflected back to them that they are worthy of the best of what human connection has to offer; compassion, being seen as they are without judgement, tenderness and honesty. Thank you for entrusting the opportunity and great pleasure to me of connecting with the glorious women that Street Talk reach with an open heart, women who have been told by their experiences that there is no love in this world for them.”
Street Talk will have been a registered charity for twenty years next year. Over that time I have watched many charities in the sector go under and I have wondered that Street Talk kept going against all the odds, such a little charity on a wing and prayer. It is thanks to the love for Street Talk from our friends. You will all be invited to celebrate with us next year to meet our women and the therapists who do this work. When I started Street Talk I worked by myself, going into hostels and day centres all over London, thinking the work was too hard, or at least working with me would be too hard, to ask anyone else to join me. Well people have joined me, whether I asked or not. It is a little miracle that such tender-hearted, patient, humorous, forgiving people have found their way to work with Street Talk. I was giving a talk about the work some years ago and a young doctor in the audience told me afterwards that he thought I had found my humanity in this work. He was right. That is what we are all doing, finding our humanity together, just walking each other home.
Thank you for all that you do, the big things, the little things, which keep this work going with women who are invisible to many. Together, we see them. We hold them in the light this Christmas, wherever they are, prison, immigration detention centre, hostel, crossing the sea in a tiny boat or sleeping out on our streets.
The Street Talk team, Alison, Amanda, Catriona, Karl, Laura, Nikki, Oliver, Rose, Sandy and Shirley, join me in wishing you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.
Pip
