Brandi Johnson cradled the air, holding nothing in her arms but a memory. In her mind, she was back in Colorado, homeless, living in a vehicle with her babies.

 

“We found ourselves in a position where we had very little food, very little gas, very little money, very little anything. We didn’t have enough to make it up the mountain to have a safe place to sleep and be able to come back down for (my husband) to go to work or to get food the next day.”

 

She knew this was the end of the journey, one way or another. It was time to ask for help.

“If we went up the mountain again, we were going to die,” she said. “We would be stranded and I’d have to watch my babies starve to death.”

 

Johnson never imagined this being her life. Since her early, unstable years being raised by divorced parents, she still tried to do everything right.

“I was always the good girl,” says Johnson, who suffered verbal abuse at home and bullying at school. “Even now, I still have the reputation of being the good girl, but a lot of times you don’t feel like anyone is going to be there because your life isn’t a mess on the outside.”

 

Early on, that silent cry turned into cutting and suicidal thoughts in her teens. Soon, the parent she lived with kicked her out and she found herself sleeping on a friend’s couch. She needed help, but she didn’t know where to find it. Eventually, through church, she met her future husband and, at age 21, got married.

 

“Like any wife, you start looking at houses, you start looking where you’re going to be able to call home. We’re the homemakers. We’re the ones that make everything comfy and make sure people cared for,” Johnson remembers. “Anytime I would start getting excited about it or would try to approach him or talk about things with him, it was always negative. I was shut down and it was, ‘I can’t afford that. There’s no way we can afford that.’ And, over the years, the houses got smaller and smaller.”

 

Then there were no houses, only apartments. Then no longer apartments, maybe a remodeled bus or van. Then it was the car. Or a tent. Or a shelter. And no sign of anything getting better.

 

Before long, they were gypsies, living on the road, staying in KOA campgrounds, traveling from Corpus Christi, Texas to Michigan to, eventually, Colorado. Throughout the upheaval, one thing Johnson didn’t want was for her two young sons to feel the weight of the situation.

 

“I didn’t want them to understand what we were going through. I didn’t want them to realize we’re homeless. That life is terrible. I wanted them to be able to have the best experience they possibly could,” she said. “So, I did everything I could possibly think of to make it fun for them.”

 

When they stopped at a train crossing, she made the train passing an adventure. When they camped, she took them on hikes or built toys out of sticks. When they were at the beach, she took them hunting for seashells. Whether it was roasting marshmallows or scavenging for interesting rocks, she tried to shield her boys until the reality couldn’t be pushed back any further. They couldn’t go up that mountain. They had to get back home.

 

“I called my Mom…and begged for her to help us get back to Oklahoma, and she did,” says Johnson. “We stayed with her for a while, and I immediately went out and got a job.”

Maybe things would finally get better, she hoped and she prayed, but healing would only come with a more drastic change.

 

Johnson worked a graveyard shift for her new job. Then she would come home, sleep a couple of hours, and take care of her boys until it was time to go back to work.

 

“I was really struggling mentally, physically, spiritually. I was struggling with everything, knowing God is good and God loves me, but not understanding what was going on or how He could work good out of it.”

They moved out of her mother’s, into an RV campground, and eventually in with her in-laws. With all the constant moving, changing, shifting, and instability, the suicidal thoughts returned. She knew, this time, she had to get help. For her sake and for her children’s sake, she needed to heal so she could be there for their future.

 

She reached out for help from family in Oklahoma and moved back there. Eventually, without the support and stability she needed, Johnson would find herself in the back of a patrol car being driven to the impatient facilities at the Lighthouse Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) in Durant.

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As hopeless as the circumstances felt at the time, Johnson would say that was when healing began. With help from Lighthouse, she got on the road to recovery. Now, she lives in a more supportive environment while working a stable job, rebuilding her relationship with her children, and attending her counseling sessions.

 

The future for Johnson now has more hope and, she says with a smile, every win is celebrated.

 

“This has made such a drastic difference for her,” says Erron Albright, Johnson’s cousin and closest friend, about her changes after getting connected to Lighthouse. “She speaks just wonders about her time and her experience and how, no matter day or night, they’re there for her. It’s just been wonderful to see, as the days have passed, her getting a little better and a little happier and a little bit of her joy coming back.”

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