Opinion: It ‘took a village’ to heal her trauma and homelessness. Will California keep funding this help?

Ten years ago, I hit bottom.

For more than 50 years I had been trying to work my way through traumas that had accumulated throughout my life. As a child, I, along with one of my sisters, was abused by my step-father. When I was a young woman, my mother and my biological father died, and a number of other close family members, including several sisters and brothers, also died prematurely. I’ve been a victim of extreme episodes of domestic violence.

My pain caused me to fall into despair, ultimately using an array of drugs and, in middle-age, falling into homelessness. I became estranged from my family. I ended up staying at the Midnight Mission, in downtown Los Angeles. I cried every day.

While I was at the mission, friends told me to check out the Downtown Women’s Center, which has helped provide housing for thousands of women experiencing homelessness for nearly half a century. They offer dignity to people who too often have been deprived of any sense of their own worth.

I started visiting the center nearly every day, talking with their case workers, eating in their cafeteria, receiving medical assistance and — eventually — getting linked with mental health therapists and counselors at the on-site Trauma Recovery Center, which provides services and support to victims of crime.

That’s crucial because nearly 3 out of 4 people experiencing homelessness in California have endured physical violence, and more than 9 in 10 are crime or trauma survivors.

The trauma recovery center provided me with a community of caregivers willing to go the extra mile on my behalf. I always said I needed a village to help me get whole, and the center staff were willing to be that village.

At the center I finally began to grapple with the pain that has haunted me since I was a child. It was in that safe space — where people didn’t judge me and didn’t make me feel small — that I was able to start talking about my fears and anxieties. I found that as I talked more about the traumas that were so deeply embedded in my life story, and that I had bottled up inside of me for so long, I began relying less on the drugs that I’d been using as a form of self-medication.

It didn’t happen all in a rush, but over time my life began to make more sense.

There are 24 trauma recovery centers in other communities across California. They are places where dedicated, trained staff work tirelessly to help survivors of crime heal from the psychological traumas and damage that have accumulated over many decades and that impact their ability to function fully and happily on a daily basis.

As anyone who’s been through the trauma I have knows, you usually don’t make good decisions if you don’t feel safe.

Sadly, after the passage of Proposition 36 in 2024, the funding stream for programs such as the trauma recovery centers at the Downtown Women’s Center is at risk. I can’t imagine anything more shortsighted than not making sure these centers have the resources they need to get victims immediate access to the help and support they need and deserve.

I understand the frustration of voters and politicians who want quick fixes to social problems and who are angered by continual waves of crime, drug addiction and homelessness. It’s tempting to reach for punishment over treatment and crime prevention when you are angry and disappointed at the actions of other people.

But in a zero-sum world, where more money spent on incarceration means less money available for California’s growing network of trauma recovery centers, that’s a bad bargain.

The trauma recovery center has given me a second chance at life and the ability to give back to the community of which I am a part.

Today I’m 68, living in my own apartment again. I have strong relationships with my children, four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and many of their friends — all of whom consider me to be their honorary great-grandmother and call me their “G.G.” I couldn’t have done any of that without the work of the people at the trauma recovery center.

I hope California’s legislators and governor understand the importance of these centers to thousands of men and women like me around the state, and that they continue to allocate dollars to allow their vital work to go on.

Kathy Brown-Lowe is a crime and trauma survivor who lives in Los Angeles. She wrote this for CalMatters.