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Flip the Script: Unhoused Individuals

Andrea Hylen
4 min readFeb 8, 2024

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Image from ABC 7 in Los Angeles

Day Seventy-six

Unhoused individuals

“There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.” ~Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life off Success at the Edge of Your Ability

There was a time when barn raising and building homes together in community was a way of life. There was no shame or loss of dignity. It was how people helped each other to have a roof over their heads and a way to provide basic needs for living.

Studying the unhoused, people experiencing homelessness, has shown me the complexity of this challenge in modern times. A house fire, loss of a job, death of a partner, student loans are some of the reasons for experiencing homelessness. There is also mental health that is pathological or with so many losses the person breaks.

One of my mental health breaking points came after eight years of loss and change. The end of a marriage and divorce. A family betrayal. The loss of a job by layoff. Remarrying and the death of our son at 19 months. Giving birth to a daughter two weeks after our son died. Then, when the first death anniversary of my son arrived, I went through another cycle of grief with tears and body aches. Physical symptoms of muscle weakness and fatigue came in the form of an autoimmune…

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Andrea Hylen
Andrea Hylen

Written by Andrea Hylen

Founder of Heal My Voice and The Incubator. Life Scientist. Live house-free. Widow. Mom of Adult Daughters. Grief. Writing Sexuality. Evolutionary Woman

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