Hi, I’m Peter.
Everyone has a story about how they became an outdoors-dweller.
Here’s mine:
I worked for many years in food and beverage leadership roles, and had another lively career in automotive finance and sales management before becoming unable to continue in those lines of work. I’m a white guy, 59, legally disabled for 12 years or so with Bipolar I and ADHD.
Over the last few years, I’ve tried every way I could to get back to a high-production state. I sought help, played by the rules, and was living in a section 8 type situation, with my own apartment, but I was never able to work or produce at my previous level. In May of 2018, after becoming more despondent than usual, I called 911 for help and was delivered to an in-patient mental health facility. There, a newer psych med was introduced and, for no apparent reason, this one seems to have addressed my bipolar disorder. My stay in that facility was otherwise uneventful, and was an unqualified success.
Moral: NEVER stop looking for the right med.
Invigorated, I gave up my apartment and made plans to travel with a friend and work with his family. As he drove us out of state, toward his family, he had a breakdown of some kind and became unable to continue. I hadn’t had a license for years, and when the ambulance came and took him away, I was suddenly homeless, for the first time, just outside of Las Vegas. I don’t drink or gamble, we weren’t even headed for Vegas, but there I was anyway.
I spent an educational and action-packed three months on the streets there before making my way back to California, where I was systematically abused and held for weeks without sleep, in another mental health facility. I survived that and made my way to Ventura County.
I continue unhoused to this day. I have an unusual wealth of personal knowledge and hands-on experience with both homelessness and mental healthcare abuse, and I’m going to focus on addressing these topics and facilitating solutions.
If you have tales of abuse in CA mental health facilities, I want to hear about them.
The unhoused haven’t had much of a voice before, but that’s about to change. We’re going to build on the family we’ve become activist community from the unhoused population itself. Well-meaning folks by the tens of thousands are toiling on our behalf and searching for solutions every day–I think its time we lent our experience, wisdom, energy, and voices to the effort.
On this website, you’re going to learn that we’re all God’s children, that He enabled us to heal each other through direct interaction, that He gave each of us special gifts, and that when we find and deploy our gifts we can step into and live our best lives, the way He intended.
Welcome to our site.
PWR