Hannah Booker’s life has come full circle.
“Three years ago, I was a homeless drug addict,” Booker said. “Sleeping in park bathrooms in a horrible domestic violence marriage.”
Now she is helping addicts recover and get into housing.
“This is the first job I’ve ever had that it was OK to be an addict, it was OK to be homeless,” she said. “Being that I have so much experience with homelessness, domestic violence, addiction makes me the perfect candidate for my job.”
It was a hard way to get prepared for a career. Booker and her then-husband were caught in a spiral of failed recovery with no viable housing.
Child Protective Services had taken her children away because she couldn’t provide safe and stable housing for her children.
“I didn’t want to live anymore because the rights of my children were terminated. I just had no hope in life.”
“In the past when I tried to get clean,” Booker, now 32, said, “and I would go back home in the same environment with the same people, I would relapse and the cycle would continue.
“We really wanted to stay clean and we really wanted to get our kids back, but the only houses what would open to for us were drug houses” Booker said of her life in Stone County. “So we stayed in a park bathroom for two weeks until finally we were tired of it and went back to what we knew and started using drugs again.
“You can not go to the same people, places and things and expect to be sober.”
It was a bleak outlook for Booker. Then it got worse.
“My now ex-husband beat me so bad in public that someone called the cops,” she explained. “He was arrested, and I went to the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence”
The center provides support and service to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and survivors of homicide victims.
“I took full advantage of everything they offered there. I went to every class. I met with the resource manager to make a plan for my life,” she said.
Stable housing changes everything
“After I was there for about three weeks, they offered me housing,” she said.
“(They) paved the way for me to get my children back. They were offering me a new life.”
Booker said she had been fighting with CPS for about three years to get her children back. But without stable housing, it was never going to happen.
“Within three months of me being at my apartment, my children were allowed to start coming to stay with me on weekends,” she said.
“From there, my life just spiraled with goodness.”
“Being in the new apartment brought such a new mindset to me. I walked different. I talked different. I felt so much better about myself because at the end of the night, I wasn’t sleeping on concrete. I had a bed to go home to.”
Booker has since remarried and her children are back in her home full-time.
The staff at the Center for Nonviolence suggested Booker return to school to become a peer counselor. She now works at Singing River Services in Pascagoula.
I’m blessed because with this job I’m able to give back to what’s been given to me,” Booker said. “I’ve helped hundreds of people with employment, with housing, with long-term sobriety.”
“I inspire them, I give them hope because if I can do it, then they can do it.”
Booker said she sees her clients benefit from stable housing the same way she did.
“When we successfully place our clients in housing after being homeless, the way that they change is absolutely amazing to see. They feel better about themselves. They feel safe. They feel like they can go out and get a job.”
Being free of the burden of homelessness makes recovery possible, Booker said, “because when you have a home to go home to, a shower…to be able to take a shower and get ready for these jobs It makes all the difference in the world.”
The Center for Nonviolence and Open Doors Homeless Coalition are part of the Continuum of Care for the Mississippi Gulf Coast region. The Continuum is an alliance of more than 50 agencies that work together to reduce and eventually end homelessness in South Mississippi.
“Had it not been (for) the army that God sent me through the shelter and Open Doors and all the resources that were available,” Booker said. “I would not be sitting here today to tell you my story.”
