Back to School with Stability & Support: A Client Success Story

Content Warning: This article includes descriptions of suicide ideation and a suicide attempt.

When asked why he wants to go back to school, you can feel the weight of everything Ace* has experienced in his pause. Eventually, he simply says, “Because I want to do this the right way.”

Ace, a Lifebridge North Shore client, starts business school this fall at North Shore Community College, but the journey to that accomplishment has been long. Before coming to Lifebridge, he had enrolled in college, but he didn’t finish because he couldn’t afford the cost. “I lost all motivation and stopped going to class,” he explained. “I just focused on making money.” Unfortunately, his mental health made it difficult for him to have hope for his future. Struggling with anxiety, bipolar disorder, and PTSD from child abuse and sexual abuse caused him to spiral.

A Dark Place

“I was in a very dark place,” Ace says. “As a man, we’re supposed to hold things in and be the strong one. You get to a point where you say, ‘I’m tired.’ If you hear that from a man, ask if they’re okay, because that usually means they’re ready to go. That’s where I was: tired, on the church steps, in the freezing rain, with my gun and a bible.”

He admits that when the police arrived, he’d hoped that if he was too scared to kill himself, they would do it for him. “It didn’t get to that point, thank the lord,” he says. They took him to the hospital and he opened a bible for the first time. “I was still so tired of fighting, of trying to survive, and I asked the Lord, ‘What do I do?’ As I flipped through the bible randomly, I landed on Psalm 88. It was like He was talking to me. It was everything I was feeling, everything I was going through. It was a wakeup call.”

A Turning Point

Ace spent months committed to the hospital’s behavioral health inpatient program working through his traumatic history. “I told the doctors that there’s no happy ending to my story,” Ace remembers. “But there were two ladies who would not leave me alone. I know God put them in my life for a reason. They’d come in, try to make me laugh, and read me scripture every day for a month. They tried to feed me when I’d gone days without eating. They’d say, ‘Well you don’t want that stuff; we’ll order you Chinese food,’ and I’d think, ‘I guess I could try that Chinese food.’”

Ace laugh fades as he continues: “They just didn’t give up on me, even when I was giving up on myself.” He points to God as a turning point in his journey and that He sent these two women to change my life. “I started to take my faith more seriously.”

As his discharge approached, Ace worked hard to find somewhere to go that wouldn’t put him back in a dark place. He’d already had negative experiences at shelters in the past, with work therapy, cult-like power trips from people claiming to help him, and required Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that felt irrelevant to a sober person like him. He recalls, “Every day at this place, I would look at Route 1 in the distance and think, ‘I’m ready to walk in front of a truck.’” So when it came time for him to make his decision, he did his own research and found Lifebridge.

Starting Again at Lifebridge

“I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived with a garbage bag full of my stuff,” he said. The Lifebridge Day Center is located in downtown Salem and offers free case management and support services to anyone who needs them. The high demand for shelter meant that beds couldn’t be guaranteed, but Lifebridge’s emergency protocol allowed any person without housing to take temporary shelter in the Day Center during last winter’s extreme weather.

The first person Ace talked to was Cindy, a Lifebridge case manager. “I was more open than I’d ever been. In the past, there wasn’t trust and I bottled everything inside,” Ace explains. “But my first day, I opened up to Cindy. I told her what was going on: that I’d tried to kill myself, my mental health disorders, that I’m on medication. And Cindy listened. That same day, she got me an appointment with another case manager who got me food stamps, this and that, right then and there.”

Once he had his basic needs met, Ace began looking for work. “I was looking for any way to better myself, and Cindy took notice. I was given a seasonal bed.” Seasonal beds are overflow cots that are used during the winter when demand for services rise. As Ace continued to improve, he received a bed at the Lifebridge emergency shelter, where clients stay until they find permanent housing.

When Ace talks about what has changed since coming to Lifebridge, his answer is all about God and having a foundation of authentic support. “I’ve been homeless before, only then I did it the wrong way. I did it by myself. I didn’t have God. I didn’t ask for help back then because I had too much pride. I’ve had to swallow my pride and accept help. Now I have a strong foundation on faith. I’ve started again by living here and going to therapy and going to church. I’ve started to see that I can do things for myself when I have help from God and Lifebridge who have my back.”

Support through the Hurdles of Returning to School

While the waitlist for permanent housing can take years, Ace doesn’t take his newfound stability for granted. “I have to take advantage of having a bed while looking for housing,” he says. “I have a better mindset, but I still struggle with anxiety and PTSD, so having support means I can finally get my degree.”

“It’s not common at all for clients to take the steps to go to school,” says Carina, Ace’s current case manager. “A lot of people want to, but there’s so much in their way to actually do it. Ace is my first client to get this far.”

One of his hurdles was that his school transcripts were over ten years old, which meant Ace had to take a placement exam before he could register for classes. While his strongest skill was English and writing, he also placed well enough to take the college math courses needed for a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. He admits that math may be a challenge, but he’s ready to rise to the occasion. “I’m ready to find the resources I need,” Ace states. “Like if I need a tutor, I’m going to get one.”

Once he signed up for a full course load, he approached Carina about getting a laptop. “A lot of classes these days make you submit everything online, and the tools you need are on sites like Blackboard,” Ace says. “Carina made the whole process easy. She spoke to Human Resources to get the purchase approved, and now I’m ready to start school with a computer.” Since Ace wears clothes larger than what is donated to the Lifebridge Thrift Shop, his case manager also secured funds to purchase him business school-appropriate clothing. These client-specific purchases would not be possible without the generous donations from our community.

Ace has four years of college ahead of him (though he plans to take summer courses to speed up the process). When asked what he’s most looking forward to, Ace responds, “I was the first person to graduate high school in my family, and now I’ll be the first to graduate college.”

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of our clients