That Christmas I Got My First Period In A Homeless Shelter

All this week, The Establishment will be sharing stories from our Sadlarious Holiday Series. In lieu of sentimental platitudes and Hallmark-approved happy endings, these short essays focus on the messy, tragicomic spirit of the season.

Turn up your Pandora holiday playlist, spike some eggnog, and enjoy.

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My Christmases have not always been good ones; they also haven’t always been bad ones. Strangely, the Christmas I recall most fondly is a bit of both, from the holiday season I lived at the Salvation Army shelter in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, when I was 12.

My mom and I had moved to the shelter after we got kicked out of a nasty freeway motel at the very fringes of the suburbs where I’d spent my entire life. Our homelessness had begun when we’d moved in with my aunt and cousin earlier that summer, after losing our house. To a seventh grader, the fancy hotels were exciting at first, but soon we could only afford the worst sorts of places — and then suddenly, we couldn’t afford anything at all.

Somehow, less than two weeks before Christmas (a very high demand time for shelters), my mom managed to get us a set of bunk beds at a shelter just south of the college where I’d eventually get my bachelor’s degree (the campus and shelter were so close…