Thank You For The Gift Of Being Myself – A letter from a former IDignity client

Dear neighbors,

I recently received one of the greatest gifts anyone could receive: the ability to prove who I am. After years of living without a valid ID, finally having this little piece of plastic has brought me more joy than I could ever express. But let me try…

In 2018, I needed to renew my driver’s license. If you have all your identification documents, this is usually a simple process. But, I didn’t have my birth certificate, so I requested to have it sent to me from Massachusetts. Imagine my surprise when I, Jennifer Diaz, received a birth certificate for Jennifer Torres.

“This is a mistake,” I thought. “I’ve never gone by this name.” So, I ordered another copy of my birth certificate. But when it arrived, the birth certificate still said Torres, my mother’s maiden name. And when I took all my documents to the tax collector’s office, I was unable to get a license because the last name on my other documents didn’t match my birth certificate. That’s when life became even more complicated and difficult.

As a mother of four, not having valid ID made everything 1,000 times harder. I couldn’t get into my bank account. I couldn’t use my health insurance. Getting the kids to and from school without a license was a whole dilemma. Basically, getting anything done was more difficult without an ID.

After several years of struggling to hold my family together, a friend told me about IDignity. With the help of IDignity’s team, a judge granted me a legal name change and I now have a valid Florida driver’s license in my name, Jennifer Diaz.

Knowing who you are is one thing. Being able to prove who you are is totally different.

Now that I have my ID, I visit my doctor without any hangups. I go to the bank with no problems. There are no questions when I pick up my kids from school. I feel free. And it’s all thanks to you!

IDignity would not exist, and I wouldn’t have my driver’s license, if it weren’t for the generosity of people like you. But there are still thousands in our community who are struggling to access their legal identification.

This holiday season, please consider donating to IDignity. Your gift can bring comfort and joy to families like mine, whose lives have been flipped upside down because they are unable to prove who they are.

Happy Holidays, from my family to yours!

Jennifer Diaz

6 Easy Ways to Bring Comfort and Joy This Holiday Season

Written by Rahsaan Graham

The holidays are fast approaching. Soon, decorations of all colors and shapes will emblazon everything you love. You’ll soon hear the sounds of Salvation Army bells and Mariah Carey from department store speakers. You may have already noticed the humidity leaving the air, giving way to a long awaited breeze. It won’t be long until local radio stations forsake their pattern of playing the same Top 40 songs and begin playing Christmas music incessantly. And of all the holiday songs I’d been mentally preparing myself to hear over and over again, there was one that came to mind recently.

God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan’s pow’r
When we were gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Comfort and Joy. 

You see, my past experiences with Herculean discomfort and pain gave these words significant weight. I knew where I wanted my brain to go: 9-year-old me unwrapping a Nintendo 64 under the tree. But all I could picture was the unhoused man I’d seen recently at an intersection near my home. 

Five years removed from my own bout with homelessness, I had recently struck a bold new foray into the world of self care in an attempt to nurse the wounds that housing and a stable job couldn’t fix. 

For example, some consider a mimosa at Sunday morning brunch or a good book on the beach a form of self care. For me, self care in part meant reducing the amount of things I carried around with me. Back in my homeless days, I never knew where my next meal, next bed, or even the next wall outlet would be so I could charge my phone. My pockets stayed swollen with change, extra pens and a phone charger. It was a hard habit to break, but the downside of that was not having spare change when it would have been useful.

All of this came flooding to my mind as I searched my car, frantically looking for some change to give to the man in dilapidated clothing who walked up the median next to me. It wasn’t the first time I sat at a stoplight, looking at a person in the situation that I had once been.  And It was clear he had put all his hope in what was written on the cardboard he held up every time the traffic stopped.

I didn’t know this man. I didn’t know where he came from. But I knew exactly what his eyes were saying. And as it became clear that I had no change to give him, I began to feel the anxiety rise in my chest. It was the same anxiety I always felt anytime I passed a homeless person looking for help. Knowing that my current position was largely due to the kindness of strangers and friends makes it difficult for me to drive past someone I could have been if not for the generosity of others. The light turned green and I pulled away, ashamed that I didn’t have the forethought to give to a community that I was once a part of.

And suddenly, my thoughts surrounding comfort and joy became much clearer. Knowing that the situation was so dire and that my version of comfort and joy this year would be built in large part on accessing comforts he couldn’t, I began to ask what comfort and joy meant to me. I began to wonder if I had ever truly experienced either one.

Contrary to what my brain tells me, just because I’ve been homeless does not mean I am responsible for solving the entire issue of homelessness every time I sit at an intersection. But it does make me think more critically about those two forces, comfort and joy.

Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Tidings of comfort and joy. Though an archaic definition these days, the word “tidings” in the original context meant “news or information.” In other words, it meant bringing news of comfort and joy. Now, I imagine that this is a reference to the Gospel, known to Christians as the “good news.” And as I sat with those words awhile, a lightbulb went off.  It occurred to me that the burden of hope that underscored the lyric was the very same that filled my heart. 

It became clear to me that the pursuit of comfort and joy for myself meant the pursuit of comfort and joy for others.

If you are like me and want to put this sentiment into action, here are 6 easy ways to bring comfort and joy to others this holiday season:

1. If you have spare change, spare it.
2. Have toys to share? Donate them.
3. Take time to connect with a friend.
4. Doing online shopping? Select a charity on Amazon Smile.
5. We’re all in a rush, practice radical patience. 
6. Find new ways to put a smile on someone’s face.

Ghosts Are All Around Us

Picture by Nancy Kitch

My class visited the Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine, FL, on a first-grade field trip. Tucked within The Castillo are two rooms connected by a narrow crevice—just the size for a first-grader to fit through. The tour guide led us through The Castillo, relaying its storied history, culminating in our visit to the first of these rooms. We children were each invited to crawl into the passage and witness what lay on the other side. Wriggling through, I couldn’t believe what I beheld on the other side: nothing. Until a chill swept over me. The energy of the tiny room behind the wall felt animate. It felt like another person was there with me. My first-grade mind was made up: I was sharing this space with a ghost.

Now older and wiser, I feel silly applying any supernatural label to the experiences of a first-grader. We, adults, aren’t supposed to believe in ghosts, right? But what if I told you they surround us?

Put away your proton pack though, the ghosts around here aren’t the Ghostbusters kind. The souls I’m referring to, multitudinous yet often overlooked, are identity ghosts. Not ghosts in any metaphysical sense, but people—human beings—who have no access to valid identification documents through some misfortune and thus are invisible to society.

To live without identification, for many, feels like not living at all. Being unable to prove who you are leaves a person feeling more like a ghost than a human.

The label of “ghost” is often self-applied by people enduring the loss of their identification documents. A former IDignity client, Joe described living without identification: “without those credentials in our society…we’re non-entities.”

Societal exclusion renders many who are living without identification feeling more spectral than human. Because the truth is: living without identification documents can be a waking nightmare.

People without identification can’t pick up their prescriptions, rent a hotel room for the night, get hired for a new job, receive government benefits, the list goes on. After receiving his identification documents, Joe stated simply, “today, I am viable.”

I find his use of the word viable more than a mere term of art. “Viable” originates in the Latin word vita, meaning life. To become viable is to become capable of living. Identification is such a significant possession that to be without it renders you inviable—incapable of living.

To be an identity ghost feels like a permanent state for many. It’s not, though. When discussing people who have no valid identification documents, we’re discussing only their present state. It’s important to remember these people, though without identification, are not without identities. To take a myopic view of the present would leave the past and the future out entirely. Take, for example, our former IDignity client, Chris. He served in the U.S. Army before his identification situation. And in the years after resolving his identification struggle, Chris has found new employment and gotten himself a place. Life doesn’t begin and end at identification, but access to identification empowers people to live.

So, dear reader, ghosts walk among us. Not the haunting kind I encountered as a child, nor the slimy Ghostbusters kind, but real human beings on whom ghostliness has been unceremoniously forced. These identity ghosts can no longer inhabit the same plane of opportunity as we all do because so much of society is closed off to those without identification.

But, there is a light in the darkness for the people trapped between the worlds of opportunity and exclusion. IDignity is dedicated to helping these individuals regain their identities and their lives.

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Written By: Liam King

Celebrating the Freedom Identification Brings!

Dear Friends of IDignity,

What do you picture when you imagine the American dream?

Is it a home with a white picket fence? Is it a corner office with a view? Or are these things merely conventional representations of the American dream?

For me, a former IDignity client, simply standing on my own two feet again became my American dream after I experienced life without proper identification. Recently, I sat down with Chris Holaway, a fellow former client, and we talked about how the inability to prove our identities shaped our wants and needs.

Chris spent eight years serving our country in the U.S. Army. Afterward, he worked as a gravedigger, where he severely injured his back. To cope with the pain, Chris was prescribed highly addictive painkillers. And when his medicine became difficult to obtain, he turned to heroin. Within a year, Christopher was homeless on the streets of Orlando, consumed by his addiction. Somewhere in all of that, Chris lost his identification documents, making it nearly impossible to turn his life around.

“You feel hopeless,” said Chris. “You have no documentation, so nobody wants you. You can’t go to detox. You can’t go to a treatment facility. You can’t even get a hotel room if you want to get cleaned up for the night.”

But then he met Sherri Claudio, an outreach specialist with the Veterans Administration, and was quickly connected to IDignity through its partnership with the VA.

“Right away, I started to see that pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel,” said Chris.

Before long, he was at an IDignity event reclaiming legal proof of his identity and, thereby, his life. After obtaining his identification, Chris was able to rejoin society and is now 27 months sober. He has a great job, an apartment, and a golf swing that’s getting better every week.

“I’m very content,” said Chris, gesturing to the modest yet cozy studio apartment he has rented for the last two years. “I don’t need more than this. I’m not seeking wealth, or fame, or anything like that. I’m extremely happy with the lot that God gave me.”

The American dream we all hope for is entirely too diverse to relegate to a home or some land. In its purest form, it is the freedom to pursue the life we desire. Thankfully for the Orlando community, IDignity specializes in providing access to the tangible things that make previously intangible dreams possible. Or, as Chris puts it, “The difference that IDignity makes is that they put people back in a position to have everything they need and everything they want.”

You can contribute directly to fulfilling someone else’s American dream by providing a gift to IDignity. For every $300 raised, IDignity can make that dream a reality for one person, ultimately making our community a more inclusive place for us all.

I am honored to join you in celebrating our independence and the individuals like Chris who serve our country to protect this freedom.

Sincerely,

Rahsaan Graham
Writer and Former IDignity Client

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