The Shattered World
The Shattered World Trauma, Identity, and the Paraprofessional Lens "When the assumptive world is shattered through loss, all hope is lost." — Beder (2005) 💔 Homelessness Doesn't Begin With the Loss of a Home One of the greatest mistakes we make as a society is assuming homelessness begins when a person loses housing. It doesn't. By the time someone sleeps in a shelter, on a couch, in a vehicle, or under an overpass, something much deeper has often already been lost. A mother may have lost her sense of safety. A veteran may have lost his identity. A young adult may have lost their connection to family. A survivor may have lost the belief that life will ever get better. The homelessness we see is often the final manifestation of losses that began years earlier. And yet our systems continue to focus on the symptom while ignoring the wound. As I conducted my research, I became increasingly aware that the stories of homelessness were not primarily stories about housing...