http://urm.org/services/hope-gardens/
Hope Gardens is an amazing facility and 2 year program for homeless mothers with children, and a separate lifetime program for elderly homeless women. We were introduced to Hope Gardens by women that work and volunteer at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles.
From our first day there, we fell in love with the women, both who lived there and worked there. The acres of wooded land and gardens in the mountains of Sylmar… blew our minds.
Again, we brought out writing and sharing workshop to encourage the women to “get-out” their intensely brave and painful stories of physical and emotional abuse, as well as addiction and homelessness with children.
We cried and laughed and added beauty, literally. Lashelle taught make-up lessons and gave eyebrow shaping to all the women. Over the months that we were there, we also wrote about, verbally shared and made vision boards from lots of photo cutouts and words to give them hope and a clear empowered vision of whom they can dream to be and actually live in the future. There were beauty makeovers both inside and out!
Here are some of their stories…
