Essence’s Story

Throughout her experience with homelessness, Essence learned an important lesson: you have to be able to humble yourself. 

Essence came to Atlanta Mission’s overnight shelter My Sister’s House looking for answers—she had always been a hard worker, she was determined, but she just hadn’t been able to take that next step in her journey to ending her homelessness. 

The team at My Sister’s House works together with each woman and child to address their unique needs. Ultimately, for women like Essence, the goal is to find a job that will provide a sustainable income that eventually leads to housing. She says she was at My Sister’s House for about two and a half years, and while at the shelter she joined the Atlanta Mission Next Steps program.  

Atlanta Mission Next Steps is an extension of Atlanta Mission that specializes in workforce development for clients who are ready to take the next step in their journey of ending homelessness. The program finally helped Essence reach that goal of attaining a sustainable income.

Learn something new

Essence says the Next Steps program helped open her up to techniques and training that she could apply in daily life to help her earn and keep a job.

“I think what I learned most from my time with Next Steps is that you have to humble yourself,” Essence says. “There are a lot of people that may say, ‘Oh I know this, I know that.’ 

“But you just have to push that to the side and put yourself in a position where you can learn something new and take it with you.”

Through the Next Steps program, Essence was able to get a job working with a local restaurant. She’s now been at the restaurant for a year and a half. She says through the training she received with Next Steps she’s learned how to better work closely and collaborate with other team members. 

She says she’s “been trying to recommend the program” to her boss because she feels like other people she works with could benefit from the training, as well.

Next Steps Ensured Her Success

The process of transformation is never an easy one. Essence learned this quickly.

She says while she was involved in the daily classes at My Sister’s House, she often found herself annoyed by the “redundant” activities. She says now that she’s graduated from the program, she understands how important these activities were to ensure her success. 

“Some of my favorite times during Next Steps were each morning during the morning motivations,” she says. “I’m not going to lie—at first, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so redundant. We’ve got to do this every day?’ But then, all of the sudden, I’m done with Next Steps and I realize that that was actually kind of fun. I kind of miss it now. 

“Now I try to always just remember the training I did, apply it, and just keep working hard.“

Be willing to change

Atlanta Mission’s Next Steps program helped give Essence hope. Hope that she could one day end her experience with homelessness, hope that she could find a job that would provide her with a livable income, and hope that she would eventually move out of the shelter and into a place of her own. 

But the program, while beneficial for her, is not for everybody, she explains. 

“While there are a lot of people that could benefit from Next Steps, you have to be willing to do the work,” Essence says. “You have to put yourself in a position to learn more and put yourself in a position where you can open yourself up to different ideas.”

While the job and the program may be a difficult experience in and of itself, Essence says the hardest part can be the limit you put on yourself.

She says you need to learn to accept help and that you don’t have all of the answers if you want to make progress. 

“If you can’t open yourself up, you’re not going to learn and you’re not going to be able to apply what you’ve learned to reach your goals,” she says. “In the end, you’re only hindering yourself.”