A Home for Christmas: My "Miracle" Story

I laid, curled in a ball on my teacher’s kitchen floor, the rug by the sink acting as my pillow. She stood in the kitchen doorway watching me plead with her not to take me back. She had just hung up with my adoptive mother, who insisted on my return. “Harboring a runaway” must’ve rang repeatedly in her head. One would think that, as a teacher, the threat of police and charges for harboring a minor would be intimidating. But Andrea Viggiano was not easily intimidated. She was already a seasoned teacher with over a decade of experience before she even met me at 15 years old. And now, in my senior year, she felt like she knew me. As my Journalism teacher, my school newspaper advisor, and my feminist club advisor, she and I worked closely after school, editing articles, formatting layouts, and selecting pictures. We talked about everything and shared an understanding forged on personal experiences. We also discussed politics and poetry, feminism and literature, equality and spirituality. She understood me in a way no one ever had. She saw me. She was the only one who saw me.

So, after all these years, didn’t she know me well enough? She had never seen me act like this. When Andrea chose to pick me up from my house earlier that night, it was because something scared her enough to compel that level of intervention. She heard something in my voice when I called her – alone and frantic – after a fight at home. She insisted I leave a note behind with her home number, which is why she just tried to soothe my very irate adoptive mother who came home to an empty house. Andrea suggested we would both benefit from a night away from each other to cool down and process the fight. But my adoptive mother did not agree with this. And so, Andrea stood at her kitchen entrance, watching me with concern and uncertainty. What was the best option? Could she guarantee I would be safe? What if something else happened, something…worse? Andrea had seen my depression worsening and knew I was prone to self-injury. Unable to get access to services as a minor, Andrea discovered Ocean’s Harbor House in Toms River, NJ. Their Outreach Program supplied counseling without parental consent, and she had secretly been taking me to therapy for the past couple of months.

Wait – was that it? “Tiffany, doesn’t Harbor House have a shelter? Some 24/7 number?”

It was the first time that I felt like I could breathe since learning I had to go home. I scrambled to my knees and dug into my backpack by the kitchen chair. I was desperate to find that simple paper business card with that lifesaving hotline number – 732-929-0660.

Andrea called from her kitchen phone and spoke with conviction and care. I was now sitting on my rug pillow, my knees drawn up to my chin, my arms wrapped around myself. I was barely holding myself together, waiting with bated breath, because more than anything in the world, I wanted help. Andrea hung up the phone and told me to get my things together. On a cold winter’s night, we climbed into her unheated car, shaking from both the bitter temperature and the magnitude of the moment.

I was so distracted by my gratitude for a safe harbor that I forgot what that would demand of me. I became nervous and scared as my PTSD brain questioned my safety. Even as the car warmed up, my shaking grew worse, and my stomach ate my insides. But as scared as I was, I still felt that it was my best – my only – option. Despite it all, I smiled to myself when I saw Ocean’s Harbor House was located on Windsor Avenue. How many times did I look down that street? How many times did its name pull me, never knowing it’s where I’d be?

At a quarter to midnight, on Monday December 3, 2001 (22 years ago!!), I walked through the shelter’s doors with only my backpack, schoolbooks, and one outfit for the next day. I couldn’t let go of Andrea’s hand, as I hid behind her like a toddler invisible behind her mother’s apron. She stayed there as I signed into the program. The Residential Counselor called my adoptive mother and explained that the Runaway Homeless Leave Act provided me with legal safe haven despite parental protest. Then, Andrea had to leave, and the weight of my choice slammed into me. This would change everything. How could I face my adoptive mother again after defying her? As Andrea left, I once again, drew my knees to my chin, wrapped my arms around myself, ignored the flow of tears, and faced the stranger before whom I laid bare.

Although her shift ended at midnight, the staff counselor stayed late for hours that night to complete my intake paperwork. If I was going to be there, I was going to need to be honest. I really saw it as my one shot at psychological survival. My intake took hours since disclosing so many personal experiences and answering such intimate questions was very difficult. If my reasoning for staying wasn’t so strong, I might have left just to avoid the intrinsic disclosures. I distracted myself with self-criticism and reproach. Running away was not planned, if it was, I would have chosen a better outfit. To avoid cutting earlier that night, I put on Madonna and a random outfit to work out. The outfit didn’t match and worst of all, I spilt the hot chocolate Andrea made all over the front of me when the call from my adoptive mother startled me. I realized that as hard as my intake was, I was scared for it to end. At the end, was a strange bed, in a strange house, with strange people opening the door to check on me every 15 minutes. I am not sure if I slept at all. My room was big, with four beds and two roommates whose rhythmic breathing occupied my frenzied mind.

Hours before school started the next morning, I reentered the office, sitting on the same love seat as the night before. But now I was dressed, my heavy backpack full, and perched on my knees. I hugged the bag to me as new staff entered and learned of my presence, followed by my pleas to attend school. “We’ve never had a kid who begged to go to school before!” one billowed. The staff was hesitant to take me themselves, but without school transportation, it was the only choice. I insisted I needed to turn in my AP history homework, but I knew that I really just needed Andrea. I needed help processing the past 24 hours, to figure out my next move…how could I go back home now? Where would I go?

Andrea hugged me the second I entered her classroom. She had also been busy researching, questioning, and planning how best to help me. My gratitude filled me with tears, and I just hugged her, and thanked her for helping me. “I trust you, Tiffany. I know you. If you say you can’t survive it anymore, I believe you.”

After school, Andrea walked into the downtown Toms River Court House and filed a petition for custody of me. The validation made me giddy and dizzy. Meanwhile, living at the Shelter Program wasn’t fun and games. Yes, they had art supplies and rented Blockbuster movies every weekend, but it was emotionally demanding. My counselors held me responsible for my behavior, regardless of its trigger. All residents attended nightly groups at the Outreach Center, a 5-minute drive from the shelter in the largest, ugliest van imaginable. My housemates would be singing to the radio, laughing, and telling each other jokes. That wasn’t always the case on the way home, as some nights group was heavier than others.

There were other children, other adolescents, living at the shelter and attending the community groups. I was a few months shy of 18, but I met youth ranging from 10 to 19 years old. Over the course of my three weeks at the Shelter, clients exited, and new clients appeared. Sometimes, like me, in the dead of night. We were all so different, yet all shared a common thread as we sat exposed to each other and our counselors.

My initial three-day stay had several legal extensions, and a maximum 30-day extension was approved by The Family Crisis Intervention Unit (FCIU; then a county-based service located in downtown Toms River). FCIU conducted family meetings to help resolve the issues between my adoptive mother and me, but despite their best efforts, they were not fixable. As Christmas approached, conversation turned to my post-exit plans. I refused to return home, which left me with only one possibility – to move into an Atlantic City homeless shelter when my time expired at Ocean’s Harbor House. It would only be for three months, but it would mean changing schools, leaving Andrea, my boyfriend, and the little support system I spent years cultivating. Could I really do that? As insane as the choice seemed, it still felt like my only option. Although the city scared me, I was presented with no other possibilities.

On the last day of school before winter break, I cried as I said goodbye to Andrea. She made me little wrapped notes for each day we would be apart, but the break would still mean weeks alone; it would mean Christmas at a homeless shelter. To her credit, my adoptive mother asked me to return home for Christmas, insisting I didn’t need to stay there. But I knew I had to protect my mental health if I wanted to survive my own mind. And not returning home was the way to do it.

It was a surprise to me – and Andrea – that my adoptive mother wrote a letter giving Andrea temporary custody. Although she had filed for it already, the hearing was not yet scheduled. This was a choice my adoptive mother made to keep me out of the shelter on Christmas.

It was not the first time I experienced a Christmas “miracle” – a home in time for the holiday. In December 1990, I was alone in a New Mexico foster home. My older half-brothers had already been returned to their biological mother, and I was left waiting to meet my birthmother’s family for the first time. I walked into that home on December 22, 1990. I would walk into my second home, Andrea’s home, on December 22, 2001.

I didn’t stay at the Shelter long enough to go Christmas caroling like we’d been practicing, but my relationship with Ocean’s Harbor House was still only just beginning. And even though I wasn’t there Christmas morning, the staff gave me the donated presents they had already wrapped. I still have the knitted winter hat from the garbage bag of donations and, for years I survived off of the clothes I was gifted from the donation closet.

This Christmas there will be no such miracles in Ocean or Monmouth County. Ocean’s Harbor House closed their Emergency Shelter doors on July 28, 2023.

My story, and stories like it, cannot be replicated by other youth in need this holiday season. For 128 days (and counting), there is no emergency housing for youth in my community. On November 13, 2023, The NJ Office of Homelessness Prevention released its 2022 annual report showing that 22.73% of youth 17 and under needed Emergency Shelter Services. They concluded that “there is still a substantial need for immediate shelter services in both households with children and unaccompanied youth in New Jersey” (p. 78). This is not unlike the rest of the nation, as the National Alliance to End Homelessness found during a single night count in 2022 that there were 2,695 unaccompanied homeless youth 17 and under, with even larger numbers for 18–24-year-olds.

If there was no Ocean’s Harbor House Emergency Youth Shelter in 2001, what would mine or Andrea’s options have been? Would I still be here?

Is this harsh reality really something the community is willing to accept? I know I cannot. That is why I’ve spent my academic and professional career focused on youth and their families. Homelessness is not how anyone’s story should end. I know, more than most, that this is not how it has to be.

This month’s edition of A Perfect ACEs Perspective LinkedIn newsletter features a 5-part introductory series on my 22-year relationship with Ocean’s Harbor House. It is also a Call to Action for my community, my state, and my country.