Neighborhood Drama

There is a family in the Ward by the name of Hudson (Jackie and Michelle).  They live next to Alicia.  Jackie suffers from severe mental illness.  He regularly has doctor/therapist visits and is highly medicated.  He has been making progress with his activity in the church and recently received the MP.  His wife Michelle continues to smoke, shows no real interest in the church and is the cause of much contention at times in the family and the neighborhood.  Most recently, Jackie has been building some storage sheds out of pallets and scrap wood for those in the four-plex that they live.  There was a disagreement about the shed that Jackie was building for Alicia and Jackie tore it down in a violent rage and piled the remains in the street in front of Alicia's apartment.  During this disagreement Michelle began to verbally condemn and criticize Alicia which got very ugly and deeply hurt Alicia.  Alicia reached out to us for help of which we immediately came over and calmed her down.  This was bad enough for Bishop Kruger to get involved.  We assured Alicia that she did nothing wrong and people have their agency on how they act or react to difficulties that come their way including how she should act or react.  We assured her that she was not the person that Michelle was claiming she was.  Over the next several days things seemed to settle down but Michelle continued to press Alicia with verbal abuses. 

Alicia decided that she needed to get away so she went to Pocatello and stayed with her parents for a couple of weeks.  During that time Michelle continued to text ugly things to Alicia's phone.  Upon her return we discovered that Alicia had a new cell number.  She told us that she got it changed so Michelle would stop.  Now the interesting thing about all of this is how Alicia has reacted.  We have seen a change in her that we complimented her on.  She is beginning to take responsibility for her life and situation and making good and sound decisions.  We here impressed that on her own she decided to change her phone number.  She also has accepted Michelle and Jackie for who they are and realize that she cannot change them but she can control how she deals with them or any other negative person or situation that comes her way.  Also on her own she contracted the landlord and worked out an agreement that she could get out of her lease early without severe financial consequences.  She wants to move and we have encouraged her to do so.

Keep in mind that those who deal with mental illness and live in poverty struggle with self-reliance because of the limited resources they have.  Therefore we are very proud of Alicia and the progress that she is making in becoming self-reliant with the limited resources she does have.  She is realizing that she does have the ability to make good/positive choices for herself and not blame her circumstances on others.  Her High School Graduation and approval for disability payments have been major turning points in her recent life.