Joan

Joan had what she calls an amazing childhood. She’s originally from Temple, Texas, where her parents and grandfather started a plastic plant and where she was born in ‘61, along with three other siblings: Nancy, Betty and Bill. Her parents knew each other for 11 days before they got married.

Her family moved to Massachusetts when she was still young, and her father, Bill, became a preacher.

"I was gonna change the world."

Joan’s family took a car every summer to different parts of the country to look for rocks. Her family home had three acres with woodland in Lincoln, Massachusetts, complete with walk-in closets, bidets and fresh lobster that could be collected in the water next to the house. Her father used to ski behind their house. Their second home, which they visited two or three times a week, was in Rockport, about an hour away.

Her parents never smoked, used drugs, cussed, fought or used the Lord’s name in vain. Her mother, Bonnie, died 52 years later on the day they met.

Her family ended up in Pebble Beach, California, because of her father’s need for a more temperate climate due to heart difficulties in ‘77. She then went to Carmel High School starting at the last half of her sophomore year, where she excelled in the choir program and graduated in ‘78, a year early, through double enrolling in Monterey Peninsula College. After graduating, Joan moved back east to attend Georgetown University for two and a half years, where she earned a degree in domestic policy. She then went to Northwestern University for about two years to get a degree in theater performance in addition to theater management, graduating in the early eighties.

“I was gonna change the world,” she says, explaining that she wanted to write federal policy and law in America, until she found music.

Growing up shy, Joan started taking voice lessons at the Conservatory of Music in Boston when she was fifteen, and one of her sisters studied there. After she figured out that music was her passion, she eventually traveled and did shows with the National Improvisational Theater of New York, sang with the San Francisco Opera for a season in ‘86 and performed “West Side Story” in Chicago, continuing to do improvisational work until ‘85. She performed shows for the army at military bases for about a year as well, and stopped performing in ‘89.

“I could get on stage and not be me, not be myself,” says Joan, a younger version of her being so reserved, her friend would often speak for her.

By around 1989, Joan managed the Red Lion, now a hotel, for about four years. And in 1990, Joan’s daughter, Corrie, was born. She continued to live with her daughter throughout the years, never going a day without speaking to each other. They moved to Texas and Arizona and ended back in Carmel again, but as the years went on, Corrie struggled with addiction problems as Joan scraped together money for rent, paid for with disability checks while Corrie and her partner, Rachel, worked multiple jobs.

In July of 2022, Corrie’s lungs failed as she was told that she was going to die. She was rushed to CHOMP, a hospital nearby, then to a Stanford medical facility. Joan spent weeks in a motel and paid for transportation to Stanford daily as well as Corrie’s medical testing. Corrie had to take a medical leave from work, so Joan and her daughter had to live with a monthly income of $851 from Joan’s disability check.

Corrie knew Regina Williams, a program manager at the Navigation Center, and advised Joan to enter the program. Her daughter continues to visit her there as Joan has had problems finding work.

"All I want is a home where we can sit around and have someplace to be when I die."

As her age increases, Joan’s disabilities worsened and have played a role in her becoming homeless. Among other health issues, she lives with an ostomy bag, an external waste bag, a degenerating disc on her neck and back, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and stage four chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, meaning she has chronic respiratory problems. Her health problems have made it difficult to find work.

“Because of my ostomy bag, I can’t work with open food,” she explains, adding that severe arthritis can cause hand spasms, disallowing her to work some desk jobs. “I can’t stand or sit for any length of time.”

Joan can’t use regular bathroom stalls because her hand strength in conjunction with the spasms prevents her from unlocking the bathroom doors. She currently has seven medical specialists working with her, but wishes there was a way for things to be how they used to be, before her family’s health problems.

"People treat these people like they don’t exist."

“All I want is a home where we can sit around and have someplace to be when I die,” she says, continuing that she wants her daughter to be happy and sober, and thinks her daughter wants that too. “I want a Thanksgiving and a Christmas and real holidays. I just want to be a family, united again.”

Letting her daughter down would be the toughest, and if she needed to sleep on the street, she would for her daughter in a second. In her time at the Navigation Center, Joan has seen a trend in the treatment of the homeless people around her.

“People treat these people like they don’t exist,” she says, and that when the homeless ask for change, they often aren’t even given eye contact. “They’re human beings.”

According to Joan, beyond the exterior of dirt, scabies, or conditions from lack of care, people all boil down to the same and they all deserve to be loved. And that many people really just don’t get that.

Even in her childhood, Joan’s mother said that out of all her children, Joan would be the one to survive. And that is what she continues to do, through her ailments and lack of home: keep surviving and living with no regrets. She says that everything that she’s done, good or bad, has gotten her where she is, and it all depends on what you do with what you have, so make the most of it and learn.