Welcome to Women in Vans--a blog about women who've stayed in vans. Really lived in them, overnight and all, through breakfast, lunch and dinner, for a period of time ,whether by choice or not. They know where the public restrooms are at every hour. They've been to the train stations open all night. They've rushed into Starbucks, asked for the code (at Starbucks requiring codes for restrooms). And, they found out recently that, due to an amendment, homeless people can use Starbucks' restrooms without actually purchasing anything. They might've stayed up all night crying, wondering how they wound up in a van, shaking, trembling, out in the cold. Fearful.
My hope for all Women in Vans is that there is a beginning, a middle and an end to this kind of thing.
I found myself living in a van with all of my belongings for a short period of time, a month-and-a-half to be exact. It wasn't a choice. A series of unfortunate events landed me there, sleeping upright in the driver's bucket seat during the dead of winter between December 2017 and mid-January 2018. The snow began early for Philadelphia that season-- in December, in fact. I remember the first snowfall because it was during an Army vs. Navy game. I was chilled to the bone as the snowflakes fell slowly in front of the windshield. I was sitting in the van on Wilder Street near Shackamoxin, up there in the Fishtown section of the city, under a bridge. Across the way, on the other side of a major highway--Sugar House--a casino recently added to the cityscape.
The reasons are many and varied as to how I wound up in this predicament and why I remained there for a time--money being one reason, the others I'll get to another day. I'm a 'good girl' from Newark, Delaware whose never been in trouble. This was way beyond anything I'd imagine for myself. Often I wonder who else might wind up in a similar situation beyond his or her control. I see stuff happening all the time...and I wonder.
Because of this experience, I wanted to seek out other stories about women who've stayed in vans. It's the kind of thing parents don't want for their kids, particularly their daughters, but it is 2018 as I write this, and women, today, are more often finding themselves in situations similar to men who were held accountable for being providers and, if they didn't measure up, they felt cast aside, ostracized and, well, maybe living in a van. At least it seems that way to me, that women are becoming more like men.
We can't rely on being saved. I grew up that way. We can't rely on being saved, protected, by men. That knight on a white horse was berated and mocked by the Girl Scout Organization when I grew up. The organization broadcast an entire television commercial warning young ladies to depend upon themselves, not men. There are pros and cons to this notion. The Girl Scouts said we needed to know better. We needed our independence. The thing is, this also means we might experience getting laid off from work, we might've grown up in single-parent households without money or support....we might wind up in a van.
It's the new reality that's actually been going on for a while. This from someone who grew up in a region indoctrinated with people who still watch that old T.V. show Father Knows Best or that Cleaver family as the way the way the world really works.
It doesn't.
With this, I am soliciting stories from around the United States from Women In Vans. I'd love to hear your stories and will post them on this blog. This is in preparation for a compilation I'd like to publish someday. A tomb, if you will, preserving a time period, which isn't so Cleaver-like, in existence today.
I still believe in feminism and women's rights, but where's the balance?
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