Sheila was a client of our Naomi women’s story, recently housed.
“I want to say that the situation in my country is very hard.”
Sheila, a client from our Naomi program, tells us about what brought her to Cornerstone. She came from her home country to Chicago last year, and 11 months later she has a job and a home of her own.
Growing up, Sheila studied rigorously. She was a high achiever and strongly believed in her own responsibility to her people. But she was kidnapped on her way to work as a young woman, an event which highlighted her need to escape the country she loved so much. “There is no food, no hospital, no education. I didn’t see my life there. I came to America. Sometimes I’m still crying for my family, sometimes I’m still crying for my country.” With the help of her niece, Sheila made her way to Chicago and landed at Cornerstone.
She says, “Last year, when I came here I did not speak English very well. Trust me. You helped me go to Truman college,” she says, addressing her case manager, Eve. “It’s a very professional school – when you’re not speaking English well, the teachers have patience for you.” When asked what she most longed for upon her arrival, Sheila says that she wanted to go to school, go to church, and take care of her family and her community – and that’s exactly what she’s been doing ever since. She wanted to pay for her education on her own, so she got a job and started taking classes at Truman College. She found comfort in prayer, in walking the 20 minutes to Lake Michigan, in reading, and in listening to music.
“The shelter helped me with getting a doctor, with food, with clothes, and shoes,” she says, and “I see the team working – you have been given a job to do, and you do it well”.
Sheila says she is leaving with contentment. She has not stopped thinking about her family, her community, back home. She has an admirable love and compassion for the country that was so unsafe that she had to leave – she says, “I tell you, I love my country, I love my people”, she says. Really, her stay at Cornerstone is just a tiny piece of Sheila’s life.
I personally happened to meet Sheila for the first time a few weeks before she moved out of Cornerstone. She was wearing a sophisticated white pants-and-top set, and she told me she was about to leave for her graduation ceremony. That day, she got her nursing assistant certificate, and walked in cap and gown.
Just a few weeks later, Sheila, the case managers, and the program aides on the women’s floor sang Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration”, and danced, as the ink dried on Sheila’s new lease. It was a day of great accomplishment for Sheila – a milestone of her journey to the United States. She’s now working as a certified nursing assistant, a job which she loves. And she has her own kitchen now (she loved to cook back home, and she was very good at it).
We wish the absolute best for Sheila, for her family, and for the communities she loves.
“It’s time to come together –
It’s up to you, what’s your pleasure?
Everyone around the world, come on!
It’s a celebration!”
- Written by Ellen, interview translated from French by Caro