The Safety to Laugh:  JoAnn’s Story

Morning comes quietly now. Heat fills the room. Water runs hot from the tap. The door closes and stays closed.  None of it is remarkable, except that it is.

For JoAnn, these are still worth noticing.  “It’s warm,” she says. “Comfortable.”  There’s a pause, as if the word needs confirming. For a long time, comfort didn’t hold.

The earlier version of life was unremarkable in a different way. A home. Steady work. Children growing up inside a routine that didn’t require explanation. The shift began the way it often does, incrementally. A divorce. Then, an incident that could have unfolded anywhere. A man she had been dating arrived under the influence and refused to leave. Police were called. He was arrested with drugs.

She lost her housing. Policy made no distinction between cause and response. Someone on the property had drugs. That was enough. The eviction went on her record and stayed there.

I have always worked, but it didn't matter

After that, the pattern changed. Housing applications stalled out before they started. Calls didn’t come back. When they did, the answer was no. The one comforting constant was work.  “I’ve always worked,” she says. “That was never the issue.” It didn’t matter, though. No matter how hard she worked, it seemed she wasn’t getting anywhere. 

The years that followed were not marked by a single collapse but by accumulation. Moves. Temporary arrangements. Repeated attempts to reset. Fatigue set in slowly. A move to Idaho was meant to break that cycle. Instead, it tightened it. The home situation deteriorated. Hotels replaced housing. Sleep became conditional. “It was unsafe,” she says. “You don’t really sleep.” The environment was transient and unsettled. People moved through it without pattern. Drug use was visible and close. Over time, exposure turned into participation. Not immediately. Not at the beginning. But eventually.

The pivot came without warning as a pregnancy. At the time, she was still using, still moving through the same instability. Pressure was put on her to terminate. At the pre-natal appointment, the timeline shifted, further along than expected. She left the appointment, and that night, threw away her drugs and what remained of that life went with them. “I never touched it again.”

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Returning to Washington did not restore stability

Housing remained out of reach. A $500 trailer became the next step. Parked in a campground along the Skagit River valley, it was meant to bridge a gap, but it ended up lasting three years. Three very long, cold, and frightening years.

The structure measured 27 feet. No insulation. Limited power. Heat that couldn’t be trusted. Winter required adaptation. Blankets sectioned off a smaller space. Bodies close together held what warmth they could. Sleep stayed light. Cooking depended on electricity that didn’t always hold. Bathrooms were outside, shared. Water had to be managed, timed.

Then there were the rats. “You hear them,” she says. “Sometimes you feel them.” They were on her kids. As if that wasn’t enough. Aside from the constant activity inside the trailer, movement outside was constant and unstructured. People passing through. Sometimes too close. After signs of someone entering while she was gone, cameras went up.  They recorded movement. They didn’t stop it.

Thankfully, she still had some income.  Delivery routes filled the days - DoorDash, Uber, Walmart. Children in the back seat. Eight-hour shifts, five days a week. “I treated it like a job,” she says. “Because it was.” 

Living that way narrows the world. Attention sharpens. Rest disappears. The body adjusts to a constant state of alertness and stays there. “It sticks.”  She could see the effect their situation was having on her kids – physically and emotionally.

Sleep fractures. Stress compounds. Health follows. Recovery, when it began, didn’t announce itself.  Meetings through Cocaine Anonymous provided structure and protected her during a vulnerable time.

An idea took hold 

In that process, an idea took hold and held onto her: the environments you move through shape what’s possible. Stability had to be seen to be believed. From there, the next steps followed.

Work at Island Hospital. Entry into a medical assistant program. Training supported, progress measurable. 9 long months followed but still living in difficult and unhabitable circumstances.  The situation had reached a point where I needed help and a brief and direct application was sent to the Anacortes Family Center with little or no expectation, but a call came days later.

The transition was immediate. A scheduled surgery for her daughter overlapped with the move. Discharge and relocation happened within the same window. No time to prepare.

What changed first were the basics - heat that held, water, a kitchen that functioned. A frozen pizza given as a gift was a bit of a novelty as it involved the first use of an oven in years “I hadn’t had one,” she says.

Her son noticed the utensils. Real ones. Not disposable. “It sounds small,” she says. “But it’s not.”

Bathing became routine. Sleep came without interruption from outside movement. The space held quiet.

Things are in the right direction

There is still hesitation in full celebration – a natural cynicism that is born out of survival. “It’s a little scary,” she says. “Like, what if it goes away?”  Things are in the right direction, though. Her wrongful conviction was reversed. JoAnn has grit and nothing is going to hold her back ever again.

For a long time, that survival left no space for play. Evenings were structured around necessity. Now there is room for something unstructured - Time playing on the floor. Laughter. Noise that doesn’t signal danger. “My kids laugh,” she says with bright eyes, and adds, “a lot more. . . and I feel like a badass.” 

Nothing about the trajectory suggests a single turning point, let alone a clean resolution. What changed, instead, was accumulation in the other direction. Heat. Water. Sleep. Work.

She has something good to hold onto, on which to build. With the support of the Anacortes Family Center and her own fierce determination, JoAnn is building a new life for her family.

We wish them all the best.