A sisterhood of pain, new hope
Disney doesn’t make movies about the kind of life April Hollis has had.
She was routinely molested by a family member between the ages of 12 and 15. Later, she was physically abused by her husband and other men in her life.
Hollis, now 50, ran the streets, became a drug addict, worked as a prostitute. She’s been arrested and jailed more times than she can count. In August, she was released from the MiamiDade County Homestead Correctional Institution after a 10-month stint for petty theft.
“I had a lot of issues as a child growing up,” Hollis says.
After a life of crime, drugs and incarceration, Hollis, a mother of two teenage boys and a former pre-kindergarten teacher, says she’s ready to finally get her life back on track.
Halle Place, a new program to help women who have done time behind bars get back on their feet and become productive members of society again, is helping Hollis do that.
The program is part of The Lord’s Place, a West Palm Beach nonprofit that offers programs to help the homeless.
The women in Halle Place, which started in September, need other women to look up to, women who know what it’s like to be down and out, on the fringe of society.
Enter Burckle Place, a 4-year-old program in Lake Worth for single homeless women. Since the fall, the ladies have been serving as mentors, Big Sisters, if you will, to the females in Halle Place.
The mentoring is infor- Kevin D. Thompson mal, organic. No woman is assigned a particular mentor. The ladies from both programs have met a few times and they just ... talk. During the holidays, the two groups of women had two dinners together.
“We want the women to learn about resiliency and that you can have hope for the future,” says Diana Stanley, CEO of The Lord’s Place. “There’s nothing better in life than having somebody target your life who has already walked the walk. Part of the program at Burckle Place is we want to teach these women how to pay it forward.”
Connie Desnoes, a Burckle Place member the past six months, says she encourages the Halle Place women to never give up on themselves.
“No matter what you’ve been through, just give yourself a chance,” says Desnoes, who was in an abusive marriage for 10 years, battled drug addiction and has had several run-ins with the law. “I can empathize with what these women are going through.”
Desnoes said it got so bad for her, she had a death wish.
“I put myself in a self-built prison,” she says.
It’s important for the women of Burckle Place to be patient with their mentees, who aren’t exactly forthcoming.
“They don’t like to talk about their time in prison,” Desnoes says. “They can be very hush-hush.”
Hollis says the biggest help for her has been the therapy she’s getting at Halle Place.
“It’s a major part of my life right now,” she says. “The program is teaching me to stay in the here and now and focus on the future and not what happened in the past. It’s teaching me how to be a leader and the adult that I am.”
Hollis works in a thrift store, something she enjoys because it’s on the road to independence. She loves to cook and would like to work in a restaurant one day. Most importantly, Hollis wants to be there when her boys graduate from high school after having been in and out of their lives for so long.
As for any old temptations seeping into Hollis’ life, she says she has a good handle on that.
“It’s not even a struggle for me,” she says. “It’s mind over matter. I made up my mind that enough is enough.”
Perhaps it’s not too late for Hollis to have her own, Disney-like, happily ever after.