Tamara Hinds, 47
Tamara Hinds has had a “good life.”
The 47-year-old was raised in an upper middle-class family, which broke apart after her father’s death when she was 12.
After leaving home at 16, she put herself through school, became a personal support worker, and later, a registered nurse who juggled three jobs.
But a workplace injury in 2005 changed everything. After being put on Percocet pills, Hinds got hooked.
And when her family doctor left the practice and her new physician wouldn’t prescribe them, she turned to stealing to get her fix.
Despite the severe pain, she needed to work, she said. Hinds was caught taking drugs from her job in the emergency department, and her nursing licence was suspended.
“I went to treatment for that,” she said.
“When I came back, my husband had left me. My family had disowned me because I’m a drug addict.”
Hinds, now sober, was homeless for six years. After getting kicked out of the place she had been living, she showed up at the doors of Mary’s Place, “freaking out.” She stayed there for months while she looked for housing.
“There’s really nothing I could have afforded on OW (Ontario Works) unless I was getting a room in a crack house, which was going to be my next option. But quite frankly, I’d rather be on the street and take my chances there.”
Hinds moved over to the YWCA where she accessed their transitional living program and was accepted into Supporting Our Sisters — a wraparound program for women experiencing homelessness. With the help of her SOS worker Hinds found an apartment in October 2016 after an almost year-long search in a “little building” where she prayed one day she’d be able to live.
“The independence and my self esteem — it’s just given everything back to me,” she said.
Now that Hinds has stable housing, she said her next goal is to get her nursing licence reinstated.
She also hopes to, one day, see the perceptions around homelessness change.
People need to understand your life can change at the “flip of a dime” and that those experiencing homelessness are people, too.
“It’s mental illness, it is situational crisis, it’s so much more that people don’t know. And instead of ‘tsking’ and looking away, they need to look at that person and think, ‘Wow. That could be my brother, myself, my son.’”
“I’m totally blessed,” she added. “Through all of the traumatic events that happened to me while I was homeless and in my struggle to recovery ... I’d never take anything back because it just makes you more grateful.”