Vulnerability is hard. So hard.
She was around 50, dressed in a down winter coat, the hood pulled up. Tears had gathered under her eyes, but they hadn’t quite made it down her face. It was like they were waiting for the right moment to fall.
The woman had a phone in her hand, but nothing else. Her eyes were fixed on the burning building across the street. She was alone and you could feel her sadness as her life evaporated right in front of her. As I walked by, it’s like her despair attached itself to me and it was heavy. Boy, was it heavy.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Early in the morning on Christmas Day, Santa couldn’t bring presents to the Drake Building. Fire had taken over the structure and 200+ people, including 100 children, lost their transitional housing. In other words, 250 people who were homeless, were now homeless again. As in every other part of the country, Minneapolis has a huge lack of affordable housing and our city is in the midst of a crisis. At the time of the fire, every other shelter in the city was overflowing. Due to the smoke, the residents were led onto buses to await news of where they would be going next. It was 30 degrees outside and many of the residents fled in only t-shirts and underwear or diapers and coats.
