Second Stories

A 2021 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation uncovered some especially alarming news about mental health.

Jimena experienced homelessness for a long and exhausting five years. Her situation made her eligible for more than one of our programs – she was a teenager, a young mom, largely abandoned by her family, floating in and out of increasingly risky situations because of her desperation. Yet Jimena is one of the many youth who was not able to find help through Second Story or another like ours, for some of the unfortunately usual reasons: she didn’t know what was available to her, and she was burdened by shame and embarrassment.

Jimena shares her story with a rawness and vulnerability that gives us a peek into what it’s like to be in her position, and she reflects with a rare clarity on how those years felt and how they have impacted her as a woman and a mother.

In this episode we’re speaking to Nandred, Second Story’s Vice President of Community Based programs. She leads Second Story’s efforts in our broader community.

When we talk about the “most vulnerable” in our communities, we are often referring to many families we serve through these programs. They struggle with poverty and disconnection, human trafficking and gang violence, poor living conditions, and a lack of access to many of the services that the rest of us take for granted.

Nandred tells us about the unique needs of these communities, why COVID-19 has been especially challenging for them, and what we're doing to help.

In this episode, we’re speaking with Cathy,  Second Story’s Senior Therapist. She leads Second Story’s counseling and mental health evaluations, working both to support staff and implement best practices and also one-on-one with youth struggling with their mental health. She talks to us about the relationship between COVID-19 and mental health and why this has been an especially challenging time for the young people we serve.

Anne Kim is a journalist, author, and fountain of wisdom and insight on youth issues. Her book Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection explores a sobering reality: that nearly five million young people, nearly 12 percent of youth aged sixteen to twenty-four, experience disconnection and abandonment as they enter adulthood. Anne educates us on the causes and consequences of this reality, especially in light of the ways our economy and society is changing right now, and helps us understand what we can do about it.

Caitlin grew up without the family structure a lot of us take for granted, entering the foster care system as a preteen and juggling between families throughout her teenage years until she was emancipated at 18. Yet Caitlin is not one to focus on what she didn’t have but rather what she did: ingenuity, independence, and outright intelligence. Her story sheds light on an important group: teenagers in foster care and otherwise disconnected youth, and she introduces us to all that these young people have many times endured and also all that they have to offer us.

We’re starting off this season with a special episode about COVID-19 and its impact on our work and young people in our community. We begin with Judith, Second Story’s CEO, to talk about how the pandemic has affected our work. As Second Story’s primary decisionmaker and leader, Judith gives us a bird’s eye view of how COVID-19 has both impacted Second Story overall and, more broadly, the youth who seek services like ours both in our community and beyond. 

Renée has a law degree, a master's degree, and a PhD. 

She also was born into poverty. She was a single parent. She was abused. She was a college dropout. 

We see in her a world changer as much as we see her early disadvantages, and in that we are hopeful, we are even more resolved that regardless of a young person’s challenges, with the right kind of intervention, they truly can do anything

If you’ve been inspired by the stories this season and want to make a difference, we invite you to donate to Second Story. 

Lucy’s story is remarkably normal. In fact, statistics say that about half of us will find solidarity with Lucy in that about half of us are children of divorce.

Lucy, in many ways, gives voice to our collective experience. She relives something that is familiar for many of us, and forces us not to write off our pain even if it’s “normalized.” She reminds us that pain doesn’t have to be unique or unusual or diagnosable to be valid.

To experience something traumatic can feel earth-shattering, but common wisdom says that when we experience trauma we should process, recuperate, and “keep calm and carry on.” But it’s actually much more complicated than that - trauma can become a sort of Kaleidoscope, keeping a person from processing or living as they could before. Cathy Benn, Second Story’s senior therapist, shares about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) while Chrystel talks about her personal experience.

Today’s story looks at something major, what came and went as a major news story for most of us, and zooms all the way in at one person’s experience. Because even when we talk about issues and epidemics, they are, at their core, a collection of stories and experiences, and they’re completely more personal than we often make them seem.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 10 million people a year are physically abused by an intimate partner, and young women, between the ages of 18 and 24, are the most common victims.  One of these young women is Bree, from our last episode. Angel, Program Manager for Second Story for Young Mothers, and one of Bree’s most important supporters during her time in the program, will be sharing some more information about how abuse affects specifically young women and their greater circle – their futures, dreams, children, and mental health, while Bree will be reflecting on how some of the broader stats and facts feel personal for her.

At a young age, Bree saw most of the things she thought could count on fall away. But rather than focusing on the present that betrayed her, Bree was brave enough to look to the future that she dreamt of. This is a story of how a young woman, in the midst of hardship, chose to keep going, full of tenacity and hope.