by Alan Jacques
A WISE man once said that “the more you recognise and express gratitude for the things you have, the more things you will have to express gratitude for”.
These words certainly ring true for one Limerick man.
John (45) spent his first night sleeping out rough when he was only 12 years old to escape an abusive home. By the age of 16, he was sent to prison for the first time, a pattern that he repeated up until he was 21.
Thinking back, he believes he was only getting in trouble to get away from the beatings by his father whom he remembers as a “bully”.
John was also self-harming at this point in his life.
Things improved for a few years when he fell in love and got married. Sadly, he again fell back into his old ways and was back in prison by 27 and stayed behind bars until he was 35.
On his release, he approached homeless services for the first time but admits that he didn’t really trust them.
“I used to go from one place to another and back to the streets. I was drinking heavily then. Some people wouldn’t even look at you,” he recalls.
Life finally started to get better for John a couple of years ago after approaching Novas Initiatives, the largest provider of homeless services in the Mid-West region.
“They gave me a place at McGarry House and this was the first time that someone told me that I didn’t have a drink problem and that something might be wrong inside my head instead. I’d never heard this before.”
Last November, John took up residence at the newly developed Brother Stephen Russell House soon after his wife died of a heroin overdose.
The centre, operated by Novas Initiatives on Mulgrave Street, provides 33 units of long-term supported housing for men and women. One of the city’s oldest homeless services, it was completely rebuilt and redesigned with its former grey dormitory style accommodation replaced with bright single, en-suite rooms and clustered communal living areas.
While grieving over the death of his wife, John slowly came to the realisation that he at long last had a place to call home.
He hasn’t touched a drink in over four months and now volunteers in the kitchen at Brother Russell House, something he says that gives him great pleasure. He has also worked on the PALLS project building garden furniture for the house.
He is now convinced that he would have ended up in the graveyard next door if it weren’t for Novas.
“I can come and go as I please and I always have a bed to come back to. My room is my sanctuary. It has a door that I can lock and that is the most important thing for me. I don’t live in a homeless centre and when I walk out the gate I hold my head up high.
“It is not an institution, it is a family and home. I know I have mental health problems but I can manage them here. The staff here treats me as if I am the same as them. Life has never been better.”
