Kennedy: Homeless with a house plant

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy

When Susan Grant separated from her then-husband in Virginia in 1990, she took with her, among other things, a potted African violet.

Suddenly, she faced the irony of having a houseplant but no housing.

The 39-year-old Grant soon moved in with her parents in Ringgold, Georgia, where she and her 10-year-old daughter lived until Grant could gather herself and re-enter the workforce as a daycare manager.

photo Mark Kennedy

She has a handy saying for life's troubling interludes: "The Bible said 'it came to pass,' not 'it came to stay.'"

Grant said she parked the potted African violet in a window sill in her parents' home, where it appeared to, well, die.

"Everything fell off. The leaves. The flowers. Everything. It was just a stick," Grant recalls.

Her sister, serving as unofficial plant coroner, pronounced it dead, she remembers.

"I know," Grant says she told her sister. "I just can't throw it away yet."

For no apparent reason, Grant kept watering the "stick." Amazingly, it slowly came back to life.

"The leaves came back, the flowers came back, kinda like the pieces of my life were coming back," she recalls. "It looked like the way I felt in that place and that time."

Throughout her hard times, Grant said she never lost touch with a feeling of gratefulness for food, clothing and shelter.

"Even though it was minimal, I knew to be grateful for the basics," she said.

Now, almost three decades later, Grant - who is now remarried and has grandchildren - looks back on that period of "sheltered homelessness" as an experience that helps her do her job. Since August, she has been a staff monitor for the Next Step program at Bethel Bible Village, a faith-based refuge for children and families in crisis located on Hamill Road.

Next Step provides transitional housing for homeless families while they get back on their feet. Grant says her personal life experiences help her relate to Next Step clients - and them to her. Finding themselves suddenly homeless is often a shock to families, she says. Some of the Bethel clients are people who have simply fallen on hard times, she says.

"It's embarrassing for a lot of people in that spot," she says. "How comforting would it be [for them] to talk to someone who has been down that road and taken that journey already?"

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For many years, Grant, who has a master's degree in social work, worked as a foster care worker and court liaison for the Tennessee Department of Human Services. She has seen family dysfunction up close and knows its triggers.

Her instincts are so fine-tuned that she can usually determine pretty quickly whether a family is on an upward trajectory or a downward spiral. Most of the time it comes down to money basics, she says.

"Some of our transitional homeless are educated people," she says. "One of the thoughts they have is, 'Oh my gosh, I've got a college education. Why am I at this point in my life?' There are a lot of circumstances that can throw you in a spot that you never see coming."

The trick is to count your blessings and never give up hope, she says.

By the way, that African violet lived for 10 more years, dying shortly after she remarried.

"It was God's symbol to me of restoration," she said. "When I moved into his house it was the last piece of God restoring the home, job and husband I had lost."

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.

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