Lisa: A Story of Resilience & Redemption
What does it truly mean to be saved? To unearth redemption when all hope appears to have withered away? In this guest post, Lisa, a tenant of The Doe Fund’s supportive housing, shares her story of resilience and the transformative power of opportunity.
My name is Lisa Landin and I want to talk about what it means to be saved. What it means to have redemption.
For a while, I had a normal, suburban life. I could have been your neighbor growing up. Then things changed when my father died. My mother started dating a man who brought us to Staten Island to live with him. He was the breadwinner, so what choice did we have?
It turned out he was able to provide for us because he was one of the biggest drug dealers in Staten Island. He got me hooked on crack cocaine as a teenager. He abused me and my brother, and not just by beating us to a pulp and saying he’d kill us if we told anyone.
It took years to build up the courage to tell my mother. When I finally did, she didn’t believe me. She was in total denial. I became consumed with rage and resentment. How could she take the word of this man over her own daughter?
So without any plan, I took my baby brother and headed to the streets. I thought anything would be better than living in that house. But I was 17 years old, wild and bitter as hell, and controlled by a drug addiction that needed to be fed.
I did what I had to do to survive. I slept in abandoned buildings in the dead of winter. I associated with drug dealers and gang members. I spent years in and out of prison… and even two years in witness protection.
Through it all, I was beaten and left for dead, stabbed and shot more times than I can count. To this day, there are bullet fragments in my skull, right by my eye. Listen, I know I look fine tonight, but you just have to take my word for it that under this makeup I have scars all over. And when the pain hits, a minute feels like a lifetime.
Eventually, the despair became too much. I tried to take my own life — but somehow, I survived. I woke up with faith in God and the determination to finally set things right. Better late than never!
I was able to get on the right path. I got clean, went to nursing school, got my degree, was ready and willing to work.
I did just that for 5 years. I loved being a nurse — those were the best years of my life. But eventually the toll of my old lifestyle caught up and my health declined rapidly. I was having seizures that I tried to hide at first. But all I could think about is what would happen if a seizure hit while I was in the operating room.
I had to walk away from my career. And without a job, everything else fell apart. I lost my home and I relapsed.
Then on December 31st, 2012 — with nowhere else to go — I found The Doe Fund. Thankfully, by then The Doe Fund was more than just a program for men. It had started developing housing for people like me, who wanted to live with dignity, but couldn’t work anymore.
I applied and was accepted into their permanent supportive housing. That means I got an affordable apartment and access to an entire team of case managers and social workers… led by The Doe Fund’s Yarmila Gabron, who is in this room tonight.
I’m not going to lie: at first, I gave her and the staff absolute HELL. I was their nightmare. But they NEVER gave up on me. Over time, through compassion — and sometimes some real tough love — they wore down the defenses I had formed from 30 years of living on the streets. One day, I just broke down right in front of Yarmila. She wrapped her arms around me and said, “I got you. You’re gonna be okay.” I never had anyone care for me quite like that.
From that moment on, I straightened out. I’ve been sober ever since — over 10 years. It took 44 years, but I even reconciled with my mother.
If not for God, for The Doe Fund building permanent housing, and most of all if not for Yarmila, I have no doubt that I’d be dead. That’s what we’re talking about here: the difference between life and death.
Everyone deserves the chance for redemption, even when it seems like they’re irredeemable. I know that firsthand. And I know that it starts with organizations like The Doe Fund. Honest to God, the people who work here are humanity at its best.
