The Power of Compassion
by Amy Van Den Hooven

I have been volunteering with Beauty Night for about 9 months and I recently started working as a Homeless Advocate and Outreach Worker for the summer. Throughout my experience working with a lot of homeless people and people who suffer from mental illness and addiction, I have learned a lot about the darkness that many of these people live in. Many people that I have met have faced severe trauma in their lives, causing them to fall into a dark hole that they can’t get out off. During my time working and volunteering I have also realized that the best medicine for those that are suffering so greatly is simply having compassion for them.

An event that really opened my eyes up to this was a couple weeks ago when I was volunteering at Beauty Night. It was a Monday night at the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Women’s Center and it was tense compared the usual Beauty Nights. Many women were enjoying their pampering, however many were also really on edge. Maybe it was just one of those days, or maybe it was because it had been a month since many had received their last welfare cheque, putting them in survival mode. On this tense night the event that reminded me how important it is to have compassion for people was meeting Angel.

As soon as Beauty Night began a woman hustled into the bathroom of the DTES Women’s Center. For the whole evening this woman stayed in the bathroom and you could see a pile of clothes lying on the floor of her stall. The woman was cutting her clothes. At first I wondered why, but later I realized it was a way for her to “spice” up her style a little bit by changing the way her clothes looked. As Beauty Night came to an end many of us were already emotionally exhausted because of the tension between some of the women. We asked the woman in the stall nicely to leave soon, since the Women’s Center was closing. The woman with her freshly cut clothes was quite furious that she was being told to leave. Seeing the frustration Caroline quickly went over to help calm the woman and to talk with her. She was not only a new face to me, but she was also a new face to Caroline. You could see the woman slowly calm down and begin to have a bit of life back in her face as she realized that Caroline was there to listen to her. As everyone began to leave, Annie and I joined the conversation with Caroline, as she had been talking with this woman for about 45 minutes. As I got closer to the woman I could not tell her age because of the open sores that covered her face, the exhaustion that you could see in her eyes, and her bald head. You could see that this woman was addicted to drugs and in a very dark place in her life.

Once we joined the conversation the woman introduced herself as Angel. She was more than happy to have more people in her conversation. As she began to talk I realized how profound, philosophical, and funny this woman was. Angel was able to share many things with us as we listened, which I don’t think she experienced for a very long time in her life. She talked about her life and the struggles that she has gone through. Angel also shared how she has taken many paths in her life and that she still has not chosen the right one. However, she told us that she would find the right one, and that we needed to pray for her to whoever we believed in. She reminded us it doesn’t matter what you believe in, as long as you believe in something greater than yourself. For a woman that is addicted to drugs, living in an SRO, and has been in a severe vehicle accident where she was left for dead, she had so much wisdom. At the time I wished that I had a tape recorder because I really wanted to remember everything she was saying. For me it was a glimpse into the life of someone that had fallen deep into that dark hole. However, as we listened to her it was almost like we were letting light into that hole. She only really wanted to talk and have someone to listen to her. As our conversation came to an end she thanked us so much for talking and joked that she had been talking for so long. I honestly could have listened to her talk more. One thing that was so powerful that she said, “Before this conversation I just wanted to go get high, but now after talking with you, I don’t have that desire.”

It made me realize that the best thing that we can have for people that are suffering is compassion. If we have compassion and are able to listen it will help put light into the dark places that they are living in. We may not be able to do anything greater for them than show that we care, but sometimes that is all they need. It might change their lives forever, for a week, or maybe just a few minutes, but at least by showing compassion we are making a difference. And I believe that at Beauty Night all of us are working to show compassion for these women. We want to listen to what they have to say so that we can learn from them, and hopefully make as much of a difference in their lives as they make in ours.