You may have noticed that we now have a new URL at the top of the page. We are now located at lovewins.info – if you could, please change your links on your blogs and webpages and bookmarks to reflect the new address. 

If you are reading this through a feedreader or via email, the change should be seamless. 

If you still have the old address bookmarked, no worries, it should forward auto-magically. 

Thanks for bearing with us as we go through these changes.

One thing I have wrestled with for a while now is that, since I am the main one writing on this blog and publishing the newsletters, it could seem to the casual reader as if this ministry is all about me. And it is not. Not at all.

I get to work with some awesome people — schoolteachers, nurses, engineers, entrepreneurs. Until now, their story has largely went untold. That is about to change.

This website will undergo a few modifications over the next few days as we move it from a personal blog to more of a full blown website and team blog. You will get to hear the stories of my partners and fellow workers. I have no doubt that I will still end up posting more than anyone else, but that is the blessing (or curse) of being the full-timer in this outfit.

Bear with us over the next little bit, please, as we go through some growing pains. And when you see some posts by new people, please be welcoming and nice and say hi, would you?

Danny* is 52 years old. He has been chronically homeless for most of the last 10 years, and before that he existed primarily on the generosity of family members. He has run-ins with pot and alcohol and while he is one of the tenderest people I know, about six months ago he was arrested for cutting a guy in the soup kitchen. And, his favorite topic of conversation is women.

Because of this last fact, I was not surprised when he told me he had a girlfriend. He always has a girlfriend, or needs a girlfriend or wants a girlfriend. In his mind, he is Casanova, with women swooning at his every word. We laugh at him, and with him a lot. Maybe you can tell.

What did surprise me, however, was when he told me his girlfriend was in college. And 18. And that her parents loved him. At first, I put it off to his normal bragging. But he was pretty insistent.

It turns out, she was one of several college kids who hang out in the park and befriend the under-resourced who hang out there, usually waiting on the soup kitchen to open. She was nice to Danny, talked to him and, in his mind, he had a new girlfriend. Her parents had Danny over for dinner (trying to be nice) and this only drove the point home more. She was oblivious to this until we clued her in.Then, she was mortified, scared to death she had done something to lead him on or make him think that she was ‘interested’ in him.

She did not do anything wrong. She just did not know how Danny’s world operates. In his world, if you are a woman, there are three possibilities: You are either someone’s mother, someone’s sister or someone’s girlfriend (or rarely, wife). In his world, there are no liberated women who define their own identity. It is a possibility that never even comes up.

And before you call Danny a sexist pig, realize that the women who are his peers encourage this. The women who live on the street are always accompanied by a man for protection. There are no single, liberated women in their world either.

* Names are changed to protect the confidentiality of those who trust me with their friendship.