- [Interviewer] Denise.
We are in Manchester, but you're homeless where?
- In Cornwall.
- [Interviewer] Okay, and that's in England.
- Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
I forget you're from America. (laughs)
- [Interviewer] So we're both having
a little bit of a surreal moment here,
because we've known each other online for a little bit.
- Yeah, mm-hmm.
- [Interviewer] And we just met in person
for the first time yesterday.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] You're homeless.
- Yes, I'm back in supported housing.
The first time I was in supported housing
I'd just come out of rehab.
I'm back in supported housing now as a positive move,
you know, it's more to do with my mental health.
I don't have any alcohol issues or substance issues
that were the problem before.
So yeah, I felt like it was a backward step at first, maybe,
but the way that my mental health was being affected,
I couldn't afford to just flip out
and put myself on the street, so I put moves in place
so I knew that I've got the support.
So I'm back in supported housing.
I live with five other people.
It's not a bad place, it's actually a really good house.
And for now, it's what I need.
While I figure out my next steps, basically.
So it's been nearly five years
since I left my flat, and my marriage,
and all of that stuff, which is what
put me homeless in the first place.
And it's been a long, hard slog.
Not all of it has been roses.
But I'm a mental health writer now,
I have an online blog, and I spend my time
talking about homelessness, and sharing my story,
and my mental health journey, and my addiction issues
that I've now, thankfully, overcome,
hopefully to educate and inspire people.
Because we're not write-offs.
Just because you're having a bad time,
it doesn't mean that you're a no one.
You're still a person with a story, and with talents,
and passions, and drive, but you can't always
put that forward, especially if you're sat on the pavement
day in, day out, because nobody seems
to give a rat's ass about the situation that you're in.
So now that I'm well and I'm recovered and all of that,
I'm fortunate enough to be in a position
that I can campaign and I can draw attention to this.
And that's why we're out today and we're talking
to people on the street, and we've been
to the homeless summit in Manchester,
and we've met other like-minded people.
And it's been incredible.
There's obviously a lot of good going on in Manchester,
but as we've just seen, we've just walked past two guys
who clearly are slipping through the cracks.
And those are the people that we need to focus on.
Not the people that have got the beds
and that seem to be okay, it's the people
sat by the bins with the trench foot.
I don't know...
Just the lack of hope that anybody actually gives a shit.
- [Interviewer] So you've been homeless five years.
- Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Coming up for five.
- [Interviewer] And how we first connected
is because you were writing about
drinking, and bad relationships, and sofa surfing,
which we call couch surfing in the states.
- Oh okay, yeah.
- [Interviewer] And struggling through not having
a permanent residence as a woman.
Could you tell me about that?
- Yeah, it was terrifying.
And one of the things that I talked about yesterday
was how quickly you adapt to a bad situation,
and abnormal becomes normal.
And you do, you wake up on a sofa
and you're reaching for a can and everything's messy,
but you can't remember back to normality
because this is your normality now.
Things have shifted so quickly and so far
that you're slipping further and further
into this abyss of depression and hopelessness.
And you're surrounded by people
that aren't necessarily good people.
There are people, when they can see you've got
nothing left to give of yourself,
they will still try and pick your bones.
And that was what it was like for me, as a woman.
I had some nasty encounters with some
not very pleasant people.
And thankfully, I'm here and I'm in
a completely different place now.
But it was shocking, and it was more luck than judgment.
I was a wrecking ball, I was vulnerable,
I was intoxicated and I couldn't think straight.
I couldn't even remember some of the situations
I was in and got out of.
Things were that bad, and I look back
and it terrifies me.
So now I'm thankful that I'm here
and I'm in one piece, and everything like that,
but I would never ever wish that on my worst enemy.
- [Interviewer] And what people don't understand,
so, from what I know what you were going through,
your drinking increased because you were wanting to forget.
- Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
It was denial, you know?
My marriage had broken down.
I knew that I was gonna lose the flat that we lived in.
I had to rehome my pets.
Everything that we'd pulled together
as a couple over the years was going.
And I didn't want that to happen,
but I couldn't prevent it, and so I just pretended
that it wasn't going to happen until it did happen.
I was, I was homeless.
And it was horrendous.
And so I was drinking more, I was grieving, I was depressed,
I was lonely, I was scared for my future.
I didn't have the coping mechanisms for that.
And so I drank to escape.
And the depression fed the alcohol,
and the alcohol fed the depression,
and it just went into this vicious circle of chaos.
- [Interviewer] And how'd you get out?
How'd you stop the vicious circle?
- I sought professional help.
I knew that I couldn't carry on the way that I was going.
I didn't want to carry on the way that I was going.
I either wanted it to be over, and be dead,
or I needed to be in recovery.
And so I chose recovery, and I went into detox,
and I did rehab, and I stuck to the program religiously,
and it worked, and I came out and I'm nearly
two years sober now, the 29th of this month.
- [Interviewer] Congratulations.
- Thank you.
Yeah, that will be my anniversary.
- [Interviewer] Now here, detox,
because everybody has health care here.
So I'm assuming the medical health care system
kicks in more than it does in the states.
- Definitely, yeah, yeah.
- [Interviewer] So if you want
to get sober here, there's support,
where in the United States, there often isn't support.
- Yeah, we're lucky.
For me, in Cornwall, definitely, I probably waited
about six weeks, I think, for a bed and detox.
And it was professionally run, the staff were fantastic,
and I really had the support that I needed
and I was very, very lucky.
My support worker had to argue against
another four or five people to get me my beds.
It was whoever had the best worker behind them,
with the best case, that was who got the treatment.
And I was lucky enough that I got mine,
and I'm thankful that I stuck with it and I'm here now.
- [Interviewer] So, um...
A lot of women go through what you went through
and they don't talk about it, understandably.
What gave you the courage to start writing about it
and to start blogging about it?
- A friend encouraged me to write,
because she knew that I was struggling in my head.
I was newly sober, I was living in a hostel.
Again, it was a new environment and I was very unsettled
and very insecure, and she encouraged me to write
to just get what was in my head out there.
And so I did, and I started to enjoy it,
and then I joined Twitter, had a little website,
and I started to post the things that I'd written,
and then people were reading my work.
And that was encouraging and it inspired me to write more.
And then more people read my work,
and it just kind of grew from there.
And then I just thought, do you know what,
I'm not ashamed of the journey that I've been on.
People see it as a shameful thing.
When I was ill, I was ashamed.
But I'm not now, and I can see that
I probably couldn't have prevented
a lot of what happened to me from happening,
and so now I've spun that around,
and I've turned it into a good thing,
and I write about my addiction, I write about my depression,
I write about homelessness, I write about bad men,
I write about everything that I think is relevant
to show other people that, one, this stuff happens,
two, you can get out of it, and three,
you can turn it around and leave it behind,
and that's what I'm doing now.
- [Interviewer] And the reason that there's shame
around all of this is because there's so much stigma.
And it's a personal choice, not everybody
is gonna feel comfortable about writing and being public,
about their mental illness or homelessness.
So you're writing, and you just produced an animated film.
- Yes, yes. (laughs)
- [Interviewer] You know?
- Woo! (laughs)
- [Interviewer] And you're homeless.
- Yeah.
But this is another thing, all of this creativity,
I used to drink to think that I needed that
if I was going to try and focus my thought patterns.
But it was just dumbing me down, you know?
And now that I don't drink, all the creativity and things
are there, and I never knew I had them.
And now I'm embracing them and I'm learning
new things about myself.
I write, I blog, I podcast, I've made a film,
I am a conversationalist.
This was unheard of two years ago,
I couldn't string a sentence together.
And now I'm shouting from the rooftops
look, look at where I am.
- [Interviewer] What would you say to other women
who might be going through the same thing,
and might be seeing this?
- I would say have a bit of faith in yourself.
And have a bit of self-respect.
Because the lack of self-respect and self-worth
was what was keeping me in a bad place.
And if you can look in the mirror and just say,
do you know what, I'm worth more than this,
whatever your situation is, if it's making you unhappy,
and you've got an ability to change it,
then start making that change.
And you will be transformed.
And it takes courage, but it's worth taking the risk
because you know where you are, you know what you've got,
but you don't know what you've got to look forward to.
And if you don't try, you're never gonna know that.
So that would be my message.
- [Interviewer] If you had three wishes, what would they be?
- If I had three wishes, I would--
- [Interviewer] Wait.
Did you prepare for this?
- (laughs) No, I didn't, actually,
but I just thought, oh, I know this question.
If I had three wishes, I would definitely
change the fortunes of those two men
that we've just spoken to, because
that was heartbreaking on both counts.
And my third wish would be that everybody
could just show a bit of compassion,
and just reconnect as human beings.
We're so caught in social media,
and our phones, and what we read,
and what we see on the TV, we lose track
of what is actually in front of our face,
and if you can just pay attention,
and just think, do you know what,
instead of just walking past and thinking,
oh, I can't do anything, what if you could?
What if you just say hi, and you just make somebody's day?
It can be that simple.
So, yeah.
They would be my three wishes.
- [Interviewer] Well thank you very much
for talking with us.
- Oh, thank you, Mark. (laughs)
(soothing music)