About Relocating

"As someone who has moved from Allentown, Pennsylvania to Stamford, Connecticut to Los Angeles, California to Albuquerque, New Mexico to Indianapolis, Indiana all on my own, the adventure of heading off to a new place with new things to do and see and new people to meet can be very exciting.

The Greyhound trip from Stamford to Los Angeles was the most scary as I knew no one in Los Angeles. I was thirty, single, alone, escaping an abusive situation. I didn't have a job nor had I even seen a map of the city. I had no idea what I was going to do once I got there -- where I would sleep the first night, where I would live. I had $2000 in cash and general office skills. About the time the bus reached Amarillo, Texas (where I saw my first cotton fields) I was beginning to ask myself "what were yu thinking?". But it was too late to turn back, I could only move on.

When I arrived, disheveled and tired after four days and nights on the bus, I said goodbye to my "family" on the bus (I travel a lot on the bus and find it amazing how quickly 66 individuals become a community--sharing snacks, babysitting so a mom can get some sleep) and we all headed out on our new lives. A cab driver took me to a motel that was clean and relatively safe, I found a housekeeping room in a run-down residence hotel for $108 a month, and a lady who lived there recommended me to a temporary agency. It wasn't fancy in the beginning, but people helped and I was okay.

And these new homeland refugees will meet up with great people and organizations who will help them begin a new adventure in a new place and find a new way. And that is what it is all about, isn't it?" Shari