Wider Circle’s Stories From The Circle: After four years without a home, Alfreda found her circle

“I want better for my kids. I just don’t really know where to start.”

Alfreda shared those words after four years without a home. In this edition of Stories from the Circle, meet a mother of two who found her starting point right in her Wider Circle community. Together, the community navigated parenting stress, opened up honest conversations about grief and mental health, guided Alfreda through housing applications, and helped turn her new apartment into a home.

Today, her health is more stable, her stress is manageable, and she is even helping lead an upcoming community event on parenting. We hope Alfreda’s story reminds you just how much changes when a community shows up.

Alfreda N.

Finding a Place to Start: How Alfreda’s Circle Showed Up

After four years without a home, Alfreda asked for help. Her Wider Circle community answered, and she is now helping others do the same.

For four years, Alfreda and her two young children had nowhere of their own to sleep. During this period of homelessness, she experienced frequent epileptic seizures and worried her blood pressure was rising as well.

At her first Wider Circle event, Alfreda found a community ready to help. She opened up about her homelessness and told her group, “I want better for my kids. I just don’t really know where to start.”

Women in the group exchanged numbers and started checking in regularly, and Alfreda became a regular at events. She learned from others as they shared parenting tips, cooking ideas, and engaged in open conversations about grief and mental health. When the talk turned to healthy cooking, she described her own meals: mostly processed food she could warm up wherever she was staying. At an event with a nurse, she said it out loud: “I bet my blood pressure is higher because I don’t have a home.“

When an opportunity for a housing voucher came up, her Wider Circle Senior Community Engagement Lead, Lanita Williams, told her what to gather in advance. Alfreda had every document in order within two days and applied.

At the next event, she showed up with a big smile and a key. “I got my key!” she told everyone. She had an apartment but nothing to put in it, so her community made a list and asked neighbors for donations. “My friends in Wider Circle brought me things for our new place. Bed, mattress, coffee maker, cleaning supplies. We didn’t have much, they have helped me so much.”

In her new kitchen, Alfreda now cooks her own meals and has cut back on sugar and processed foods. With the constant strain of homelessness behind her, her blood pressure has stabilized, and she hasn’t had a single seizure since moving in.

Alfreda’s relationships with her community grew into a group she calls “a small circle,” and they talk and connect outside of Wider Circle events now. “Wider Circle has helped me because I now have people that I can call on for help and to ask questions,” Alfreda says.

Alfreda’s willingness to ask questions and seek help opened the door for others to speak up, too. When she spoke about the stress of parenting, a mother of nine in the group pulled her aside to offer encouragement and share her own experience. Other mothers quickly joined the conversation, sparking such an overwhelming response that the group decided to plan a dedicated parenting workshop for next month, with Alfreda helping lead it.

The stress that once made everything harder has eased, and Alfreda is looking into local classes for job training. She is also opening up to the idea of therapy. She used to feel ashamed of it, but “now I’m ready,” she says.

“Wider Circle has helped me by connecting with good people that really do care about me and my little family.”

Thank you, Alfreda, for sharing your story and showing what happens when someone asks. And thank you to our sponsors for helping make stories like Alfreda’s possible every day.