YWCA Regina launched a campaign to raise awareness about our work including great big billboards around town. One of the people who has been integral to that campaign is Joan Beanlands. In the week of International Women’s Day, it seems appropriate to share Joan’s story of surviving and thriving because she attributes much of her ability to turn her life around to the support she received from women of the YWCA – both the women who work at the YW and her friends in residence.

Joan Beanlands – Her Story

We spoke with Joan Beanlands in December 2019 about how she came to be a resident at YWCA Regina in 2013 and why she lives at the YW today.  The following article was edited from that interview. Here is Joan’s story.

“You can be rich, and you can still have a problem and your whole world can fall in a day and you might need a room at the Y. Hopefully, somebody directs you there.

I grew up in Regina and then I moved to Saskatoon and then Calgary and then moved back to Regina.

I have probably drank all my life since I was 14 years old… I didn’t come from a family of drinkers, abuse, or anything like that. It was just something I was hell-bent on doing it, like destroying my life, and in the meantime, I destroyed everybody else’s who chose to love me.

I think there was something in me like a loneliness type of thing that I never knew was there and I just drank it away.

I would be one of the last persons that I would have ever thought needed help.

My partner for 25 years, we had a successful business. We had the house with the pool, and I got a Corvette for Mother’s Day, so money wasn’t a factor or anything like that, but we both drank… Things happened and you split up and then I had another fancy house with somebody else, but my kids were growing up at that time and then once I split up from that relationship I just stayed on my own.

Every time I went to detox, I came out, I drank harder because I was screwing up more. So, the last time I went, the third time I went, I had lost my job. I had broken relationships with my family, with my kids. Used everybody. Told horrible lies.

I knew I was going to lose everything, so part of me thought: ‘I’ll just drink myself to death.’

I was drinking a 40 of vodka straight a day and I thought that was normal. Who drinks a 40 of vodka?

My sister found me in my apartment and if she didn’t, I would probably not be sitting here… My sister said: ‘You’re going to die and we’re not going to watch you, so you better make a choice.’

They took me to detox… When I came out of detox, and I had to go to a shelter because I was homeless, I ended up at MAP, which is My Aunt’s Place, and I was there for 26 days… My Aunt’s Place is a shelter for women going through anything from homelessness, to domestic violence, to – in my situation – I was going for my sobriety for recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction.

The manager of My Aunt’s Place at that time helped me get a room at the YWCA downtown so that I could go ahead with my treatment and have a safe place to come back to… and I’ve been there ever since so that’s six and a half years and clean and sober.

I didn’t know what the YWCA was all about. I thought it was the place where you learned to go swim and that’s how naive I was.

They were amazing women that we’re working there at the time… They were just a bunch of compassionate women that really had your back… They saw how broke I was, and they wanted to help me, and I wasn’t used to anybody wanting to help me… They gave you a sense of belonging.

I can go home and see a smiling face is there. I’m not going home to an empty apartment. If I’m having a bad day, I know I can come flying down the stairs and go into the workers’ office and bawl my eyes out if I need to and the support is there.

I don’t think I would have made it out alive if I didn’t have YWCA… very powerful women just want to see you do your best and take your next step so I feel I have become the person I am because of the women of YWCA… They give me; they gave me hope.

It’s the resident women there too. We became kind of a family and we all are really there for each other… When the younger girls come in there if I can be helpful, just to be a mentor. It makes me feel more powerful and it keeps me grounded to who I was when I walked through those doors the first time.

I live at the YWCA and I still work downtown at my job at Tim Hortons in the Cornwall Center and I’ve been back there six and a half years and my life is good, but I still need the women that are there to keep me going.

I will never forget coming back from treatment and they were all so, ‘Oh I’m glad you’re back.’ It was like you come from some place so dark; it was so dark where I was, and it’s like you see the light and it was the YWCA; it’s women; it’s power and you know they’re there for you.

The YWCA to me is my safe haven where I know the women are there for me. It saved my life. I wouldn’t be here talking to you today if it wasn’t for the YWCA. Simple as that.

 

Leticia Racine started with YWCA Regina last year as a Resident Support Worker, but she was not new to the YWCA community. Leticia first came to YWCA in 2015 in need of a safe, sober place to stay. Just four years later Leticia was hired to help other women like herself in transition. Now every day on the job her own healing journey enhances Leticia’s abilities to empathise with her clients and support them on their way. Leticia Racine lives the YWCA Regina philosophy of “Here for Her”.  This is Leticia’s story…

I’m grateful every single day to have a job that I have, to be serving my community, and helping my people, and sincerely connecting with individuals that have been, or, that are in the same place that I used to be. I can truly relate to them and I have compassion for them.

I know that nobody is hopeless; nobody is a write-off. There’s always hope and if I can bring that hope in a position that I have, then I’ve done my job.

There’s an enormous need right now. There’s a homelessness issue but a lot of people don’t see and being frontline I see it every time I go to work whether it be addictions, or trouble with the landlords, or trouble with finances, a lot of its poverty, intergenerational trauma. We can go deeper, but it all kind of wraps up in and becomes homelessness and so that’s what we deal with every single day.

Whether you see homelessness or not, or are aware of it, it exists. It exists right here in Regina.

You never know what could happen to you and you would want somebody to be there for you… If your loved one was in need, and you didn’t know where they were, and they needed help right away, you would want that support.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to say: ‘Yeah, we have a bed available. Come on in. You’re safe here. You can access everything that we have here.’ That’s an awesome feeling to be able to help somebody. You just can’t do it all the time with the resources that we have available to us.

I really feel like the Creator has put me here for a reason. It’s part of my healing journey because I’m in a position where I serve and I think that’s probably one of the most rewarding positions to be in, to be able to serve. Right now, I work at Kikinaw Residence and I’m a frontline worker basically. I’m also a shelter counsellor and I serve women who are dealing with homelessness, a lot of women coming from the streets and just needing a safe place to be, a safe place to sleep, and a safe place to get on their feet and we offer the supports for someone who’s looking to start over again if they want. I also counsel people. I support them. I advocate for them and I stand beside them. I want to support them and help them to achieve whatever it is that they want to achieve.

I’ve been an alcoholic and a practicing IV user, I was a drug user. I did live on the streets as a youth. I was involved in crime. I’ve been there. I’ve struggled through the identity issues, the sixties scoop. I’ve suffered from the effects of residential schools. Both my parents went to residential school and I was adopted out and raised in an alcoholic home and abandoned at 13 on the steps of child services. So, I’ve been through a lot in my life. It has strengthened me. It’s given me wisdom and depth and understanding and empathy. Knowing that one day I would make it out of there, just having a hope and a vision for myself of how I would live one day, just a glimmer was enough to get me out. But I didn’t do it alone.

I ended up at the front office of the YWCA at MAP – My Aunt’s Place – a shelter in the community – and the first call I made I was able to speak to a woman and she said: ‘Yes, there’s a space available.’ I needed a space. I was starting out. I had nothing. I had a backpack. I’d left everything back where I come from and was starting over from scratch.

They welcomed me in, and I utilized every service they had there, which was a lot.

My healing journey kind of took off from there. I was able to stay for a month there… My Aunt’s Place, and utilizing the services at the YWCA, was a steppingstone.

I wasn’t on the streets. I didn’t have to resort to what a lot of women had to survive on the streets, especially with the amount of women that are going missing nowadays – what we’re facing with First Nations women, and women in general, the vulnerable sector. They’re facing violence and they’re facing a lot of really scary things on the street and I didn’t have to do that.

Who knows what would have happened if I didn’t have that support; if I didn’t have a safe and warm place to be? If I didn’t have that supportive environment when I was so vulnerable? It really let me grow and be myself. Be angry when I had to be angry. Be sad when I wanted to be sad. Be happy and they celebrated alongside of me. In every milestone of my sobriety, they were there, and they celebrated it with me.

It was just a good environment to grow in, to feel like I could grow and be safe and not feel like I’m pressured to do anything. I was just able to advance on my own timing. I wasn’t pressured or felt like I needed to do something every single day. If I needed to take a day off, I took a day off. It was a healthy environment… If I had a bad day I could just go into the office and say: ‘Listen, this is what I’m going through. I just need to vent, or I need to see a doctor. I need to see a dentist.’

And then they helped me get a place and apartment.

They continued to support me while I was in the community getting started… They didn’t just let me go out the door and say: ‘See you later.’ They were there continuously until I felt strong enough where I didn’t need their services anymore.

Four years later I’m working at the Y – same place that I had got the steppingstone from.

If I can give hope to somebody else, to anybody, to one person, then I’ve done my job. I fulfilled my purpose here… And that’s rewarding being able to help somebody… so it is part of my healing journey really to be able to help and give back… Being able to connect with these women, and them reflecting back at me where I’ve been and how far I’ve come, is humbling.

I’m just forever grateful for the YWCA. I can’t say enough good things about it… It’s an environment where I can grow professionally and personally. Supportive environment to work there, and being able to serve, and being able to help other women, there’s nothing better than to see someone grow, and that’s what the YWCA offers your community.

Happy Holidays!
Check out this month’s newsletter below to see what YWCA Regina has been up to lately and has planned for the New Year!

December 2019 Newsletter