August 12, 2025 • 30 mins
“After being relocated again, Harrisburg’s homeless still have issues despite a new initiative aimed at providing housing and support services for them.” www.amiracle4sure.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Sylvia Moss, and this is Insight, a presentation
of iHeartMedia where we really do care about our local
communities and all our listeners who live here. You know,
from time to time you heard me mention that there
are things going on are local communities that some people
don't believe. There's also those who are aware of an issue,
think that they know why it exists, are quick to judge,
(00:22):
and then they turn away. And that's why through this program,
each week, I make a sincere effort to demonstrate our
owgoing commitment to you in a number of ways. I
do listen. I listen intently to you about the issues
that you're concerned about, whether they're specific to Central Pennsylvania
or they happen on a state or national level and
impact us here. What I've learned after all these years
(00:45):
is that some issues are very complex and for the
most part, not exactly as I've said many times, not
exactly as we think they are. And that's why I
always try to provide for you exactly what you deserve.
The best available experts educate us and provide us with
resources no matter what the issue. One of those most
pressing issues that we're going to talk about is homelessnessness.
(01:09):
It doesn't affect just individuals anymore. These days, whole families
are homeless. Across Pennsylvania. On any given night, fifteen thousand
people are homeless, and right here in central Pennsylvania, they
are at least four hundred people in the city of
Harrisburg alone who are homeless. Even with so many supportive
services available, the number of homeless is increasing. But why,
(01:31):
How is homelessness defined? And what are the reasons that
people become homeless? Today you're going to meet a truly
remarkable woman who's going to help us better understand the
intricacies of homelessness. She knows well because she's been through
it herself. We're also going to discuss a specific group
of homeless individuals who remained a topic of our local
(01:52):
news for quite a long time with us is Marsha
Curry Nixon. Marsh's the founder and executive director of a
local organization known as a Miracle for Sure That is
a miracle the number four sure dot Com. I think
Marsha I had kind to go in another direction, but
I think I'm going to start with asking you about
(02:17):
what happened to you, starting when you were a kid.
To make my point of how you pass this on
and there's got to be somebody along the line that says,
this is enough of this crap. I don't want this
for my children. But tell us you're from Philly, right, yes, ma'am, Okay,
what happened when you were a kid? A lot of trauma?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Oh yes, My trauma started at the onset when neither
of my parents were able to take me home from
the hospital because because they were both in addictions.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Oh boy, okay, so then what happened?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
So my mother at the time had already had two
other children, and she advised my father to be responsible
for me. Father's mother is the one that picked me
up from the hospital and taken me home.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh that's so terribly sad. So who raised you? My grandmother?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Okay, beautiful street of thirty third and Lehigh.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Wow. So as you were a little girl, what did
you have a decent life? Your grandma raised you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yes, ma'am, very stern, very structured. I had cousins. My
father's brother had children, so we kind of grew up together.
I had friends in the neighborhood, my grandmother and her
sister that lived across the street. Cared for three young
ladies who had severe mental health issues. So they were
(03:42):
my sisters until I met my mother's children and my
father's children when I got older.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
At one point, you talk about trauma, that's what sends
people in that direction. What is it that sent you
in that direction of all the crazy things that went
on in your life?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So I want to believe that you know I dealt
with as a child. You only know what you know,
that's right, right. I met my father when I was six.
I went to court with my parents when I was eleven.
So I did all through elementary school and then abruptly,
at ten years old, my parents got their lives in
(04:25):
order and decided to share custody.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
But did it last?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It lasted probably, can I say too long? So each
of them had their own household makeup. In my mother's home,
there was neglect, addiction, and drugs, incest in my lestation.
I was exposed to so many things at that address.
(04:55):
At eleven years old, I was raped. I was raped
by her boyfriend. She denied that it had happened. However,
I was taken to the hospital and a police report
was filed. The trauma in itself in that space had
already set in. The Incest and molestation is something that
(05:15):
is traumatic and genetic if you will. It is something
that can tear down and break down a household unit
and the drop of a dime. So somehow we managed
to deal with that and address that and its capacity.
(05:38):
Then there was the weekends that I got to go
visit my father. They lived on literally two different sides
of Philadelphia. North Philadelphia my father lived in West Philadelphia.
I am truly grateful for what my father had to
do to save his life and to bring himself out
of his addiction. He became a Jehovah witness. I don't
(06:00):
blame his religion. I don't blame his choice. However, it
was a religious practice that I did not adjust to
very well. He was married to a woman that I
believe he loved. They had children together. However, there was
abuse in that space. I was always the other child.
(06:22):
She would beat me as if she had no structure
in it. I would run away from home. I would
do everything I could possibly do for somebody to come
and get me and take me out of that space.
So here I am, at twelve years old, dealing with
levels layers of trauma from the onset. And it wasn't
until I complained to a teacher who told the services,
(06:47):
and then social services got involved. Back then, there was
no such thing as children in youth and all of
those things, and people come into your house and make
sure that the children and the house are safe. They
did things very differently there. I went before a judge
at twelve, and at that age they ask you, yeah,
(07:08):
where do you want to live? Where do you want
to be? And at that point I didn't want to
live with either of them. So the judge court ordered
me to stay with my grandma, and that's what I did.
I went and I stayed with her. I still have
visits with my parents again. Couldn't wait till the weekend
(07:30):
was over and I get back to some sense of
normalcy for my senior my junior year in high school,
I strictly stayed with my grandma. I went all the
way through high school in North Philadelphia, graduated from Meryl
Dobbin's AVTs. Now it's something else now, but that was
(07:52):
my escape. School was my place, my safe space. I
enjoyed having friends and doing some of what we call
quote unquote normal things. But I graduated from high school.
I went to my prom.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Oh wow, at what point did the drug addiction start
and the abuse and as far as a relationship that
you had, and how did you become homeless? Because I
know you had several children too throughout all this.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So you get to a point in your life, you know,
we graduate from high school and think we're grown.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Oh yeah, my grandmother had rules. She had revery strict rules.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I'm very sure that that's where my direction and how
I structure life moving forward. But yes, I started dating
and I got in a relationship with a young man.
I enjoyed going roller skating. I love doing the things
that I love to do, dancing, singing, and roller skating.
(08:59):
And I met a young man at the Royal Estate
skating rink, and out of that relationship, I bore a child. Okay,
I wasn't quite sure that was permissible. I think I
(09:19):
thought it was best that I had left Grahams's house.
She didn't ask me to leave. It was something that
I had decided to do at that point. I had
also been going to some of the basement parties in
North Philadelphia, so I was experimenting with you know, marijuana,
drinking some wine, coolers and things like that. In my travels,
(09:44):
I met another young man. So the relationship with my
oldest son, Timothy's father didn't go very well. He was
not he was another relationship. So it was like maybe
two or three of us expecting children at the same time.
(10:05):
So just months after having my son, I had met
another young man down in North Philadelphia, and that's probably
where things started to turn for me. I went to
visit my mother up at her home. That's when I
bumped into him. He walked past me with a hard
(10:26):
hat and construction boots, and he looked like he was normal.
What I didn't know was who he was. I really
never knew who he was, but I needed a place
to call home. We got into a physical relationship, and
before Timothy was six months old, I was pregnant with
(10:49):
my daughter, Felicia. I stayed with him in what looked
like a rooming house and then we left from there
and moved down to North Philadelphia, in the deep end
of North Philadelphia with his brothers. There was there was
no power in the house, but I was in love,
(11:16):
so I thought this was how life was supposed to be.
It looked normal, it felt normal, and here I am
with an infant child and one on the way, and
I trusted him. He left every day as if he
went to work, and he returned home at night, and
I meane the best of what I had. I had
(11:37):
a home, so I thought, But there was no running
water at times, and so the struggle began. I went
to visit my mother as often as I could, taking
a shower there because we had no running water.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Were you really throughout all this? Nobody need to rely
on your grandmother? But you were all so At the
age my grandson turned eighteen and he said, I'm an adult,
I said, you know what. The only thing that does
is put you in the same category you can be
arrested as an adult is There's no magic powers with
(12:12):
it or anything. But you're at that age, maybe between
eighteen and thirty, where you think you know it all,
and in cases like you're, there's so much that you
missed out on. And I mean the fun times in school, yes,
but the connectedness and the need to trust someone and
be loved by them. Could you how could you not
(12:35):
have ented up this way?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right? And I couldn't have said that any better. How
was I supposed to turn out? How was this story.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
You didn't have much of a chance. And the thing,
as we were talking about there is it's typically like
a drug and alcohol abused mental illness, you pass it
on to your children unless you get to the point
where you think enough is a I know this is wrong.
I love my children enough to do something, So forgive
me for interrupting the godhead.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, but you're right. And that all lasted for a
good couple of days. I wasn't sure about the addiction.
I think one day I got upset because I felt
that he was leaving me alone too often and I
didn't feel safe in the house with his brothers and
(13:26):
all of the visitors that were coming, and I approached
him about it. It ended in a fight, But that
was the day that he said, oh, you want to
know so bad where I'm going? Well, why don't I
just take you there? And what he did was back
then they called them crack houses. Oh boy. Yes. He
(13:48):
would ask for my public assistance monies and I wouldn't
willingly give it. And then that one day I said,
I'm not giving you my money. You take me where
you're going, You're not going to get He keeps leaving
me here by myself with these children, and.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
That was pretty brave too.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I didn't know what else to do. But I regret
the day that I asked. I regret that I I
just wish that I had never because what I didn't
know was what was behind door number two. Door number
one was the house that he would come to when
(14:30):
he saw fit to coming home. But door number two
was nothing but pain and trauma and the answer the
self medication process of me surviving out here where I was.
So when he took me into this space and he
introduced me to his friends at this place that he
(14:52):
went too often, it was just a matter of time.
So he introduced me to powder cocaine. I tried it.
I did not like snorting cocaine. And then from there
was another table in the house, in the room in
the house where you would go, and they were cooking
(15:14):
the drugs. And honestly, I would say for the next
ten years life was a big blur because of the
drugs and all that comes with the drugs, and the
trauma and the embarrassment and the isolation, and the abuse
(15:39):
continued and continued. My daughter was abused while our addiction
was taking ground. If you will it escalated to we
became the crack house, and people came into our space,
and I didn't know when and what people were doing
(15:59):
to my children when I was under the influence. That
went on and we struggled with getting clean staying clean.
He would get arrested, I called the police, they'd come
and take them away. He'd come back. So the vicious
cycle of addiction, which is what my parents were experiencing
(16:23):
because of their inability to take care of their children.
So that cycle was transferred over to me, and I
went through that for ten years until it led to
the end result of January nineteen ninety four. About that day,
some people could look at it. You can look at
(16:46):
it two ways. It was the day that I was arrested,
but it was also the day that I was rescued.
I had gone through through the whole rehab and the
cycle of getting myself into mental health treatment. He did
(17:08):
the same. We both got married in a recovery house.
We lived together for maybe six months before he was
arrested again, before he used again. We ended up moving
after he came home, I was clean, and we moved
to the suburbs. We talk about this geographical change. Yeah, oh, Okay,
(17:30):
maybe North Philadelphia is the problem for Marcia and Greg. No,
it wasn't. But let's go move into the healthy community
of Montgomery County in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where public housing was
provided for me. At the time, I had five children,
(17:51):
and we had a child eighty four, eighty five, eighty seven,
eighty nine, ninety ninety one, and we just moved about
as if homelessness came periodically. We were in shelters, I
was on the street with the children until we got
into this home.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Let me let me interrupt just for a second. You
talk about trauma and the kids and everything and being homeless.
Of course you were doing drugs. Well, no, you stopped
doing drugs for a while, right, what does what does
it feel like to be homeless? I mean, your life
was so full of trauma that it was just probably
part of part of the of the show, of the
(18:33):
whole thing.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Right, it became the norm, the norm, the norm. It
became the norm. House hopping. At that point, I had
burnt all my bridges. I was sneaking into my grandmother's house.
The addiction and the behaviors that came with it really
disconnected me from my family. But then there's that humiliation,
(18:57):
you know, that self esteem sure that I just didn't
want anybody to see me that way, and so I
avoided them as often as I could. Of course, when
I went through rehab and I got myself clean and sober,
i'd go visit. I looked better, I felt better. They
were more welcoming now. They didn't trust me as far
(19:19):
as they could throw me, but they would allow me
to come visit with the children, and I thought that
that was a sense of normalcy for me. Moving into
the housing development in post Town was a new opportunity,
a fresh start. I found a church, I knew my
next door neighbors. I was clean. But when I tell you,
(19:44):
I think we moved there in ninety one, right after
I had David. David was just learning how to walk,
and I got a picture of him going down that walkway.
That might be the last picture I had taken, because
the next couple of years after I relapsed, started to
(20:05):
dwindle away really quickly. It was the blizzard of ninety
four where we got Greg and I got into a
really big argument. I called the police. They hadn't come.
They were tired of come into my house, but I
had good neighbors, and I talked to you prior to
the recording, we need good neighbors.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, Tlue.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
It just so happens that the neighbors next door with
Jehovah witnesses, and they used to come over and do
some studying with me every once in a while. I
tried everything to stay focused on this journey, but I
have to admit there was a lot of trauma that
I hadn't addressed, a lot of trauma that I wasn't
dealing with, and so thus when you don't deal with it,
(20:48):
it just festers up, and it's just a matter of
time before I started to use again. I had access
to resources in that area, I started to use them,
but once I relapsed, none of that mattered. So I
went on a tangent for the next couple of years
until a good neighbor.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Before you venture that, let me ask you this too,
what makes someone relapse.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Again? I want to say, it's not dealing with or
not accepting it. I call it self medication. Okay, you
learn pain, the pain of the reality of the disappointment.
Every time I relapsed, I was disappointed in myself, so
(21:37):
I self medicated. I went back to what I know
when when I wanted to be with my husband and
have some sense of normalcy, we spent our most time
together using so I kept revisiting that I understand and
and and that became the norm for me. And so
when he wasn't present, I would leave and continue the
(22:01):
addiction because I was still struggling with the fact that
he had been gone for days. So it then became
Marsha's individual responsibility to accept that it wasn't Greg's addiction
that was the problem. It was Marsha's addiction.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Everybody abuses you and leaves you, and that.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Was the history, that was the pain that I continued
to try to medicate.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So what happened when the neighbors called the police.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
The neighbors called the police. I had left after the argument.
I left before the police came to address the reason
why I had called. I got into a fight. I
was bleeding from the mouth. Greg had kicked me in
my face with his boots and just through the left
and went upstairs. I ran out the house, ran over
(22:51):
to a girlfriend's house, and from her house I sat
there and I wound up walking into town. I had
to be gone for hours. Kids the kids were at
the house by themselves. I come back hours later only
to see my next door neighbor sitting in the house.
(23:16):
The house, mind you, was in the worst condition you
could ever imagine, unclean, inhumane, just as if two drug addicts,
active drug addicts lived in this space with five children
who were not getting the responsible care that they should
(23:39):
have been given. I remember reading about I read the
article while in prison and looked at the details, and
they shared word for word what the condition of the
house was that my children were living in. So I
would return to the house. The neighbors said to me, Marcia,
(24:01):
I'm sorry, but the police has asked me to give
them a call when you returned. Greg hasn't been back,
so I hope you don't mind. We sat and we prayed,
and then she made a phone call. The police came
out and they told me that I had twenty four
(24:22):
hours to report to the police station. They were still there.
It wasn't until the lady asked if they would allow
for me to get my affairs in order to try
to make some phone calls to see if someone would
come and get the children. I knew I had nobody
(24:43):
to come and get the children. I knew that I
had burned the bridges that I had burned, so I
made some phone calls that night, and then the very
next day they came back to the house and a
fish arrested me and charged me within danger in the
(25:05):
welfare of my then five children.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
And then you remained in jail for how long.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So I went to the county, the local county jail,
my sister. They agreed to stay with the children. My
sister agreed to come pick up my son, but there
was a church family that had agreed to house the
children until Children and Youth could have placed them. So
(25:35):
the children actually went to some folks that they knew
from that we had met at the church that we
were going to locally, so they were in foster care
through that system. They took me away. I tell the
story about the visual that I get that keep that
kept me clean all through this journey, And that was
(25:58):
the vision of Yah Children and Youth placing my children
in the back seat of their car, and and them
seeing them handcuff me and putting my head down into
the back seat of the police car, and them looking
(26:19):
back through through the back window watching me drive off.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
And the thing of it is. While you were in jail,
you didn't did you have access to drugs? No, ma'am,
So you had a face reality and I'm coming off
of drugs. From what I understand, it is a nightmare itself,
but thinking about those I can understand why that would
crush you as a mom. So how long were you
(26:50):
in uh? In jail? Then?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
So I went through the the physical at the county
and found out that I was pregnant with my with
my seventh child. That was a difficult reality for me.
(27:20):
So they put me in a different housing unit and
I stayed on the met unit while I was detoxing.
I think it was maybe two months after I went
through my court and I got sentenced. This wasn't the
first time they had come. They knew what the history was,
(27:42):
and at this point I really believed that God had
a plan. So they sentenced me in October and so
one one and a half to five years of state prison.
That was when things started to set in for me.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Wow, wow, you know what, I'd like you to come
back and we'll do part two and let our listeners
know a little bit again what has happened to you
and how you turned your life and what you're doing
for other people and a whole lot of other things
that will help us understand about homelessness. Is that okay,
yes me, okay, dear again join us next week We're
(28:21):
gonna talk to Marsha Curry and Nixon, who now is
the founding executive director of a local organization that is
dealing with a lot of whole other people in our
community that are facing addiction and homelessness. I'm selling Moss,
this has been insight. Thanks for listening. Talk to you
next week.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
The twentieth annual Wolfstock, hosted by the Central Pennsylvania Animal Alliance,
will be held on Sunday, September twenty eighth, from eleven
to five at Riverfront Park in Harrisburg. Wolfstock is the
largest festival for dogs and they are humans on the
East Coast, and it features all sorts of great music
and food, a pet costume contest, a low cost vaccine
and microshipping clinic, massage therapy, and lots of pet theme vendors.
(29:26):
If you're interested in sponsoring, we're volunteering at Wolfstock this year.
Go to Central PA Animal Alliance dot org for more information.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Hi, this is iHeart Public Affairs director and host of
Insights Sylvia Moss. Each week on Insight, we address and
try to provide the best local resources for issues that
you tell me are the most important to you, the
ones that have the biggest impact on your everyday lives.
Insights also a place where we can let you know
about exciting community events and introduce you to many of
the incredible people who work hard every single day just
(29:56):
to make all of our lives better. If you're not
able to listen to Insight when it airs on this
station each week, then catch it on your favorite podcast stuff.
Thank you for listening.
Hi, I'm Sylvia Moss, and this is Insight, a presentation
of iHeartMedia where we really do care about our local
communities and all our listeners who live here. You know,
from time to time you heard me mention that there
are things going on are local communities that some people
don't believe. There's also those who are aware of an issue,
think that they know why it exists, are quick to judge,
(00:22):
and then they turn away. And that's why through this program,
each week, I make a sincere effort to demonstrate our
owgoing commitment to you in a number of ways. I
do listen. I listen intently to you about the issues
that you're concerned about, whether they're specific to Central Pennsylvania
or they happen on a state or national level and
impact us here. What I've learned after all these years
(00:45):
is that some issues are very complex and for the
most part, not exactly as I've said many times, not
exactly as we think they are. And that's why I
always try to provide for you exactly what you deserve.
The best available experts educate us and provide us with
resources no matter what the issue. One of those most
pressing issues that we're going to talk about is homelessnessness.
(01:09):
It doesn't affect just individuals anymore. These days, whole families
are homeless. Across Pennsylvania. On any given night, fifteen thousand
people are homeless, and right here in central Pennsylvania, they
are at least four hundred people in the city of
Harrisburg alone who are homeless. Even with so many supportive
services available, the number of homeless is increasing. But why,
(01:31):
How is homelessness defined? And what are the reasons that
people become homeless? Today you're going to meet a truly
remarkable woman who's going to help us better understand the
intricacies of homelessness. She knows well because she's been through
it herself. We're also going to discuss a specific group
of homeless individuals who remained a topic of our local
(01:52):
news for quite a long time with us is Marsha
Curry Nixon. Marsh's the founder and executive director of a
local organization known as a Miracle for Sure That is
a miracle the number four sure dot Com. I think
Marsha I had kind to go in another direction, but
I think I'm going to start with asking you about
(02:17):
what happened to you, starting when you were a kid.
To make my point of how you pass this on
and there's got to be somebody along the line that says,
this is enough of this crap. I don't want this
for my children. But tell us you're from Philly, right, yes, ma'am, Okay,
what happened when you were a kid? A lot of trauma?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Oh yes, My trauma started at the onset when neither
of my parents were able to take me home from
the hospital because because they were both in addictions.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Oh boy, okay, so then what happened?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
So my mother at the time had already had two
other children, and she advised my father to be responsible
for me. Father's mother is the one that picked me
up from the hospital and taken me home.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh that's so terribly sad. So who raised you? My grandmother?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Okay, beautiful street of thirty third and Lehigh.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Wow. So as you were a little girl, what did
you have a decent life? Your grandma raised you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yes, ma'am, very stern, very structured. I had cousins. My
father's brother had children, so we kind of grew up together.
I had friends in the neighborhood, my grandmother and her
sister that lived across the street. Cared for three young
ladies who had severe mental health issues. So they were
(03:42):
my sisters until I met my mother's children and my
father's children when I got older.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
At one point, you talk about trauma, that's what sends
people in that direction. What is it that sent you
in that direction of all the crazy things that went
on in your life?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So I want to believe that you know I dealt
with as a child. You only know what you know,
that's right, right. I met my father when I was six.
I went to court with my parents when I was eleven.
So I did all through elementary school and then abruptly,
at ten years old, my parents got their lives in
(04:25):
order and decided to share custody.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
But did it last?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It lasted probably, can I say too long? So each
of them had their own household makeup. In my mother's home,
there was neglect, addiction, and drugs, incest in my lestation.
I was exposed to so many things at that address.
(04:55):
At eleven years old, I was raped. I was raped
by her boyfriend. She denied that it had happened. However,
I was taken to the hospital and a police report
was filed. The trauma in itself in that space had
already set in. The Incest and molestation is something that
(05:15):
is traumatic and genetic if you will. It is something
that can tear down and break down a household unit
and the drop of a dime. So somehow we managed
to deal with that and address that and its capacity.
(05:38):
Then there was the weekends that I got to go
visit my father. They lived on literally two different sides
of Philadelphia. North Philadelphia my father lived in West Philadelphia.
I am truly grateful for what my father had to
do to save his life and to bring himself out
of his addiction. He became a Jehovah witness. I don't
(06:00):
blame his religion. I don't blame his choice. However, it
was a religious practice that I did not adjust to
very well. He was married to a woman that I
believe he loved. They had children together. However, there was
abuse in that space. I was always the other child.
(06:22):
She would beat me as if she had no structure
in it. I would run away from home. I would
do everything I could possibly do for somebody to come
and get me and take me out of that space.
So here I am, at twelve years old, dealing with
levels layers of trauma from the onset. And it wasn't
until I complained to a teacher who told the services,
(06:47):
and then social services got involved. Back then, there was
no such thing as children in youth and all of
those things, and people come into your house and make
sure that the children and the house are safe. They
did things very differently there. I went before a judge
at twelve, and at that age they ask you, yeah,
(07:08):
where do you want to live? Where do you want
to be? And at that point I didn't want to
live with either of them. So the judge court ordered
me to stay with my grandma, and that's what I did.
I went and I stayed with her. I still have
visits with my parents again. Couldn't wait till the weekend
(07:30):
was over and I get back to some sense of
normalcy for my senior my junior year in high school,
I strictly stayed with my grandma. I went all the
way through high school in North Philadelphia, graduated from Meryl
Dobbin's AVTs. Now it's something else now, but that was
(07:52):
my escape. School was my place, my safe space. I
enjoyed having friends and doing some of what we call
quote unquote normal things. But I graduated from high school.
I went to my prom.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Oh wow, at what point did the drug addiction start
and the abuse and as far as a relationship that
you had, and how did you become homeless? Because I
know you had several children too throughout all this.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So you get to a point in your life, you know,
we graduate from high school and think we're grown.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Oh yeah, my grandmother had rules. She had revery strict rules.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I'm very sure that that's where my direction and how
I structure life moving forward. But yes, I started dating
and I got in a relationship with a young man.
I enjoyed going roller skating. I love doing the things
that I love to do, dancing, singing, and roller skating.
(08:59):
And I met a young man at the Royal Estate
skating rink, and out of that relationship, I bore a child. Okay,
I wasn't quite sure that was permissible. I think I
(09:19):
thought it was best that I had left Grahams's house.
She didn't ask me to leave. It was something that
I had decided to do at that point. I had
also been going to some of the basement parties in
North Philadelphia, so I was experimenting with you know, marijuana,
drinking some wine, coolers and things like that. In my travels,
(09:44):
I met another young man. So the relationship with my
oldest son, Timothy's father didn't go very well. He was
not he was another relationship. So it was like maybe
two or three of us expecting children at the same time.
(10:05):
So just months after having my son, I had met
another young man down in North Philadelphia, and that's probably
where things started to turn for me. I went to
visit my mother up at her home. That's when I
bumped into him. He walked past me with a hard
(10:26):
hat and construction boots, and he looked like he was normal.
What I didn't know was who he was. I really
never knew who he was, but I needed a place
to call home. We got into a physical relationship, and
before Timothy was six months old, I was pregnant with
(10:49):
my daughter, Felicia. I stayed with him in what looked
like a rooming house and then we left from there
and moved down to North Philadelphia, in the deep end
of North Philadelphia with his brothers. There was there was
no power in the house, but I was in love,
(11:16):
so I thought this was how life was supposed to be.
It looked normal, it felt normal, and here I am
with an infant child and one on the way, and
I trusted him. He left every day as if he
went to work, and he returned home at night, and
I meane the best of what I had. I had
(11:37):
a home, so I thought, But there was no running
water at times, and so the struggle began. I went
to visit my mother as often as I could, taking
a shower there because we had no running water.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Were you really throughout all this? Nobody need to rely
on your grandmother? But you were all so At the
age my grandson turned eighteen and he said, I'm an adult,
I said, you know what. The only thing that does
is put you in the same category you can be
arrested as an adult is There's no magic powers with
(12:12):
it or anything. But you're at that age, maybe between
eighteen and thirty, where you think you know it all,
and in cases like you're, there's so much that you
missed out on. And I mean the fun times in school, yes,
but the connectedness and the need to trust someone and
be loved by them. Could you how could you not
(12:35):
have ented up this way?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right? And I couldn't have said that any better. How
was I supposed to turn out? How was this story.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
You didn't have much of a chance. And the thing,
as we were talking about there is it's typically like
a drug and alcohol abused mental illness, you pass it
on to your children unless you get to the point
where you think enough is a I know this is wrong.
I love my children enough to do something, So forgive
me for interrupting the godhead.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, but you're right. And that all lasted for a
good couple of days. I wasn't sure about the addiction.
I think one day I got upset because I felt
that he was leaving me alone too often and I
didn't feel safe in the house with his brothers and
(13:26):
all of the visitors that were coming, and I approached
him about it. It ended in a fight, But that
was the day that he said, oh, you want to
know so bad where I'm going? Well, why don't I
just take you there? And what he did was back
then they called them crack houses. Oh boy. Yes. He
(13:48):
would ask for my public assistance monies and I wouldn't
willingly give it. And then that one day I said,
I'm not giving you my money. You take me where
you're going, You're not going to get He keeps leaving
me here by myself with these children, and.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
That was pretty brave too.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I didn't know what else to do. But I regret
the day that I asked. I regret that I I
just wish that I had never because what I didn't
know was what was behind door number two. Door number
one was the house that he would come to when
(14:30):
he saw fit to coming home. But door number two
was nothing but pain and trauma and the answer the
self medication process of me surviving out here where I was.
So when he took me into this space and he
introduced me to his friends at this place that he
(14:52):
went too often, it was just a matter of time.
So he introduced me to powder cocaine. I tried it.
I did not like snorting cocaine. And then from there
was another table in the house, in the room in
the house where you would go, and they were cooking
(15:14):
the drugs. And honestly, I would say for the next
ten years life was a big blur because of the
drugs and all that comes with the drugs, and the
trauma and the embarrassment and the isolation, and the abuse
(15:39):
continued and continued. My daughter was abused while our addiction
was taking ground. If you will it escalated to we
became the crack house, and people came into our space,
and I didn't know when and what people were doing
(15:59):
to my children when I was under the influence. That
went on and we struggled with getting clean staying clean.
He would get arrested, I called the police, they'd come
and take them away. He'd come back. So the vicious
cycle of addiction, which is what my parents were experiencing
(16:23):
because of their inability to take care of their children.
So that cycle was transferred over to me, and I
went through that for ten years until it led to
the end result of January nineteen ninety four. About that day,
some people could look at it. You can look at
(16:46):
it two ways. It was the day that I was arrested,
but it was also the day that I was rescued.
I had gone through through the whole rehab and the
cycle of getting myself into mental health treatment. He did
(17:08):
the same. We both got married in a recovery house.
We lived together for maybe six months before he was
arrested again, before he used again. We ended up moving
after he came home, I was clean, and we moved
to the suburbs. We talk about this geographical change. Yeah, oh, Okay,
(17:30):
maybe North Philadelphia is the problem for Marcia and Greg. No,
it wasn't. But let's go move into the healthy community
of Montgomery County in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where public housing was
provided for me. At the time, I had five children,
(17:51):
and we had a child eighty four, eighty five, eighty seven,
eighty nine, ninety ninety one, and we just moved about
as if homelessness came periodically. We were in shelters, I
was on the street with the children until we got
into this home.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Let me let me interrupt just for a second. You
talk about trauma and the kids and everything and being homeless.
Of course you were doing drugs. Well, no, you stopped
doing drugs for a while, right, what does what does
it feel like to be homeless? I mean, your life
was so full of trauma that it was just probably
part of part of the of the show, of the
(18:33):
whole thing.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Right, it became the norm, the norm, the norm. It
became the norm. House hopping. At that point, I had
burnt all my bridges. I was sneaking into my grandmother's house.
The addiction and the behaviors that came with it really
disconnected me from my family. But then there's that humiliation,
(18:57):
you know, that self esteem sure that I just didn't
want anybody to see me that way, and so I
avoided them as often as I could. Of course, when
I went through rehab and I got myself clean and sober,
i'd go visit. I looked better, I felt better. They
were more welcoming now. They didn't trust me as far
(19:19):
as they could throw me, but they would allow me
to come visit with the children, and I thought that
that was a sense of normalcy for me. Moving into
the housing development in post Town was a new opportunity,
a fresh start. I found a church, I knew my
next door neighbors. I was clean. But when I tell you,
(19:44):
I think we moved there in ninety one, right after
I had David. David was just learning how to walk,
and I got a picture of him going down that walkway.
That might be the last picture I had taken, because
the next couple of years after I relapsed, started to
(20:05):
dwindle away really quickly. It was the blizzard of ninety
four where we got Greg and I got into a
really big argument. I called the police. They hadn't come.
They were tired of come into my house, but I
had good neighbors, and I talked to you prior to
the recording, we need good neighbors.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, Tlue.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
It just so happens that the neighbors next door with
Jehovah witnesses, and they used to come over and do
some studying with me every once in a while. I
tried everything to stay focused on this journey, but I
have to admit there was a lot of trauma that
I hadn't addressed, a lot of trauma that I wasn't
dealing with, and so thus when you don't deal with it,
(20:48):
it just festers up, and it's just a matter of
time before I started to use again. I had access
to resources in that area, I started to use them,
but once I relapsed, none of that mattered. So I
went on a tangent for the next couple of years
until a good neighbor.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Before you venture that, let me ask you this too,
what makes someone relapse.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Again? I want to say, it's not dealing with or
not accepting it. I call it self medication. Okay, you
learn pain, the pain of the reality of the disappointment.
Every time I relapsed, I was disappointed in myself, so
(21:37):
I self medicated. I went back to what I know
when when I wanted to be with my husband and
have some sense of normalcy, we spent our most time
together using so I kept revisiting that I understand and
and and that became the norm for me. And so
when he wasn't present, I would leave and continue the
(22:01):
addiction because I was still struggling with the fact that
he had been gone for days. So it then became
Marsha's individual responsibility to accept that it wasn't Greg's addiction
that was the problem. It was Marsha's addiction.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Everybody abuses you and leaves you, and that.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Was the history, that was the pain that I continued
to try to medicate.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So what happened when the neighbors called the police.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
The neighbors called the police. I had left after the argument.
I left before the police came to address the reason
why I had called. I got into a fight. I
was bleeding from the mouth. Greg had kicked me in
my face with his boots and just through the left
and went upstairs. I ran out the house, ran over
(22:51):
to a girlfriend's house, and from her house I sat
there and I wound up walking into town. I had
to be gone for hours. Kids the kids were at
the house by themselves. I come back hours later only
to see my next door neighbor sitting in the house.
(23:16):
The house, mind you, was in the worst condition you
could ever imagine, unclean, inhumane, just as if two drug addicts,
active drug addicts lived in this space with five children
who were not getting the responsible care that they should
(23:39):
have been given. I remember reading about I read the
article while in prison and looked at the details, and
they shared word for word what the condition of the
house was that my children were living in. So I
would return to the house. The neighbors said to me, Marcia,
(24:01):
I'm sorry, but the police has asked me to give
them a call when you returned. Greg hasn't been back,
so I hope you don't mind. We sat and we prayed,
and then she made a phone call. The police came
out and they told me that I had twenty four
(24:22):
hours to report to the police station. They were still there.
It wasn't until the lady asked if they would allow
for me to get my affairs in order to try
to make some phone calls to see if someone would
come and get the children. I knew I had nobody
(24:43):
to come and get the children. I knew that I
had burned the bridges that I had burned, so I
made some phone calls that night, and then the very
next day they came back to the house and a
fish arrested me and charged me within danger in the
(25:05):
welfare of my then five children.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
And then you remained in jail for how long.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So I went to the county, the local county jail,
my sister. They agreed to stay with the children. My
sister agreed to come pick up my son, but there
was a church family that had agreed to house the
children until Children and Youth could have placed them. So
(25:35):
the children actually went to some folks that they knew
from that we had met at the church that we
were going to locally, so they were in foster care
through that system. They took me away. I tell the
story about the visual that I get that keep that
kept me clean all through this journey, And that was
(25:58):
the vision of Yah Children and Youth placing my children
in the back seat of their car, and and them
seeing them handcuff me and putting my head down into
the back seat of the police car, and them looking
(26:19):
back through through the back window watching me drive off.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
And the thing of it is. While you were in jail,
you didn't did you have access to drugs? No, ma'am,
So you had a face reality and I'm coming off
of drugs. From what I understand, it is a nightmare itself,
but thinking about those I can understand why that would
crush you as a mom. So how long were you
(26:50):
in uh? In jail? Then?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
So I went through the the physical at the county
and found out that I was pregnant with my with
my seventh child. That was a difficult reality for me.
(27:20):
So they put me in a different housing unit and
I stayed on the met unit while I was detoxing.
I think it was maybe two months after I went
through my court and I got sentenced. This wasn't the
first time they had come. They knew what the history was,
(27:42):
and at this point I really believed that God had
a plan. So they sentenced me in October and so
one one and a half to five years of state prison.
That was when things started to set in for me.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Wow, wow, you know what, I'd like you to come
back and we'll do part two and let our listeners
know a little bit again what has happened to you
and how you turned your life and what you're doing
for other people and a whole lot of other things
that will help us understand about homelessness. Is that okay,
yes me, okay, dear again join us next week We're
(28:21):
gonna talk to Marsha Curry and Nixon, who now is
the founding executive director of a local organization that is
dealing with a lot of whole other people in our
community that are facing addiction and homelessness. I'm selling Moss,
this has been insight. Thanks for listening. Talk to you
next week.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
The twentieth annual Wolfstock, hosted by the Central Pennsylvania Animal Alliance,
will be held on Sunday, September twenty eighth, from eleven
to five at Riverfront Park in Harrisburg. Wolfstock is the
largest festival for dogs and they are humans on the
East Coast, and it features all sorts of great music
and food, a pet costume contest, a low cost vaccine
and microshipping clinic, massage therapy, and lots of pet theme vendors.
(29:26):
If you're interested in sponsoring, we're volunteering at Wolfstock this year.
Go to Central PA Animal Alliance dot org for more information.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Hi, this is iHeart Public Affairs director and host of
Insights Sylvia Moss. Each week on Insight, we address and
try to provide the best local resources for issues that
you tell me are the most important to you, the
ones that have the biggest impact on your everyday lives.
Insights also a place where we can let you know
about exciting community events and introduce you to many of
the incredible people who work hard every single day just
(29:56):
to make all of our lives better. If you're not
able to listen to Insight when it airs on this
station each week, then catch it on your favorite podcast stuff.
Thank you for listening.
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