Beth Wright: 'a human being just like anybody else'
Feb. 11—Sierra Marling
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains references to incidences of domestic violence, graphic injury, drug use, and suicide.
Beth Wright can be seen pacing locations along Eastern Bypass in Richmond, her belongings and best friend — a dog named Smoosh — trailing behind her in a wagon.
She says that she has lived a life of ups and downs, emphasizing the effect of choices, knowing what is expected of her, and maintaining those standards on and off for a long time. Wright emphasized that choices that she made in her 20s really affected her throughout her entire life.
"It takes you in a different way," she said. "It's taken a long time for me to get to this this point where I accept myself. and I realized that I'm not a bad person. Actually, I'm probably one of the better people that I'd love to have me on my side. You know, there's heartbreaks heart aches, giving chance after chance, even throughout this journey that I've taken with being homeless."
The expectations held for Wright were high, as she hails from an industrious family that has contributed to the creation and well-being of Madison County.
She said that her grandfather, a professor of mathematics, chemistry, and physics, retired from Berea College. Her grandmother played fiddle music for Berea College Country Dancers and violin for the orchestra. Her great-great uncle Robert Cowley was part of the establishment of Berea's hospital. She's also related to the late Dorothy Chrisman, founder of Body Recall.
The content of her story so far differs greatly from those she tells of her family, containing many hard lessons learned and ending, so far, with her pacing the bypass with Smoosh.
Wright has been homeless for two and a half years. That means that she was one of the 67 people included in the 2022 Madison County K-Count, a "point-in-time" count of persons experiencing homeless on a single night in Kentucky.
Wright — like every other one of those other 66 people — has had their own experiences that have led to being houseless. She has struggled, made mistakes, shown kindness, been abused, loved, lost, and survived to get to where she is today.
According to Wright, she has struggled with mental health issues for most of her life, experiencing troubling symptoms since she was eight years old. She said that she found out later in life that she actually has bipolar disorder and has also struggled with depression, panic attacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD.)
As someone who is houseless, she does not always have access to medications that she would normally be taking for her mental disorders.
Wright has had two prior incidents where she has tried to commit suicide and described her experience with suicidal ideation.
"I was in denial. I knew I wasn't going to kill myself, but then I look back on it and thought 'oh wow, I guess I was.' I was separating myself from the things that I always cared about and loved, things that meant something to me. In the morning, I'd go and sleep during the day and stay up all night," she recalled.
These mental health issues were exacerbated by ongoing trauma from abusive romantic relationships.
She was first married at 17. Wright says that her parents signed off on the marriage to prevent her from running away to Tennessee to get married. Unfortunately, her husband was verbally abusive. She recollected instances of gaslighting, saying, "He could make something normal sound very abnormal."
Wright alleges that her husband weaponized her mental health issues, playing on her insecurities and depression to make her miserable. Then, when she turned 18, her husband became physically abusive.
"I was 17," she said. "I thought I was grown, and I wasn't."
She was in that marriage for three years before finally leaving and getting a divorce.
She started socializing, becoming a regular on the bar scene. One of her friends was applying to work at the hospital in Richmond, and she did, too.
Wright got the job. She tried keeping up with work and her late-night social life, but it eventually came down to a choice. However, she explained that it was an easy one.
"I started kind of liking this. It was a respectable job that had benefits that none of my friends had. I was getting 401k. I had the credit union. They'd come in with the bookmobile and you could give whatever you wanted, and they take it out of three checks. I got health insurance. I was pretty proud of that. So, the longer it went on, the more pride I got it in, and the harder I worked," she said.
She was also excited to make her father, Matt Paul Mathis Wright, a musician and the host of a local radio show, proud.
He died of a heart attack on the way to emcee a bluegrass festival in North Carolina. She got the call at work.
After a year of rebuilding and adjusting to her new normal, yet another hardship got in her way.
"I had a really bad car accident a year after my father passed away. In the same month, I lost my job at the hospital after four and a half years. In the car accident, I broke both my legs. I shattered my femur on the right side, and they had to cut all that bone and had to regrow bone around a rod. and the left leg I had a compound (tibia-fibula) fracture where the bones came out of my leg. The recovery time ended up being about two years, I had to learn to walk again, and of course, I lost my job."
After her extensive recovery, she said she faced additional obstacles while trying to re-enter the workforce, describing potential prejudice towards her disabilities.
"I tried to get back to it when I got back to walking again, when I was able to do light duty and, you know, push myself. I even went back to the hospital for a job and they didn't offer me a job back. I tried many places to get that kind of job — a respectable-level job. But, when you have two years out of the workforce, the first question is, 'what's this gap in your employment?' Well, I was in a major MVA [motor vehicle accident] and broke both my legs and my back. Then they're like, 'Oh.'"
"That's the moment," she added. "They don't have to say that's why they're not hiring me. They're looking going, 'Oh, she's got in a car wreck, and she's got chronic pain. She's going to be an issue, and she's not someone we can count on."
Due to her inability to find professional employment, Wright said she was forced to take lower-paying jobs with environments of normalized drug use. At that point, someone she knew gave her an idea for extra money.
She took her X-rays to a "pill mill" where a physician prescribed her pain pills.
"At first, the idea was selling to make some money. Then it's like, 'Oh, I do hurt, and with the way my life is going..."So I would get high to escape reality, but in turn, it didn't do anything but make things worse."
According to Wright, the state then cracked down on the sale of pain medications. That was when she began to use heroin.
She said that it was primarily addiction issues that caused her and her second husband to lose their home. His drug use inhibited his desire and ability to manage other responsibilities.
"I said [to him], 'Heroin is one I cannot compete with. She can make you feel better than I ever could, and she can make you forget me, and she can do everything that I can't, and I'll never get you back."
The couple eventually separated. Wright described a time that he stole the shoes off of her feet while they were living outside of the Best Donuts in Richmond. She said that, at that point, he was "doing a lot of running, trying to get dope."
Her husband died of an overdose in Richmond on Jan. 16, 2023.
She said she believed that her husband was a good man before he became addicted to drugs.
Wright has also overdosed twice in her life, almost losing her life to addiction.
"I had an overdose two years ago. I died six different times," she said. "Every time the Narcan wore off, I'd die again...I never, ever want to do that again, ever, as long as I live. My life may not be good; I may not have a whole lot going for me, but I'm here, and I figure there's a reason."
Gaps in service
According to Wright, maintaining a life on the street is difficult. While she has struggled with houselessness, she has tried to be as independent as possible by trying to utilize the community's discarded items. She will go dumpster diving when she can, seek food that restaurants throw out, and also uses the local Free Market Community group on Facebook.
However, there are anti-houseless and anti-handout sentiments that disable her from continuing without assistance.
She alleges that local pizza establishments have destroyed uneaten and extra food and placed locks on the dumpsters to dissuade people from getting their food waste. She said they will also run people from the property when they attempt to collect food waste.
So, what happens when people who are on the street and can't meet basic needs ask for help? Wright says that can also yield excessive judgment.
After creating a post on the online Free Market Community group seeking spare space in someone's shed or storage building during a cold spell, while not breaking any rules, Wright's post attracted some naysayers who questioned her position. While group admins defended her right to ask for assistance and reiterated that anyone can ask for anything in the online group, the comments were still hurtful for her to read.
She said, "They said, 'You know, you've been on here for a while now, I don't understand the issue,' 'Why don't you just go get a job and do better?' 'You're just selfish and self-centered. Why don't you be kind and get that dog to a good home and quit making her suffer?' Well, they say that while that dog lives better than I do. I've gone without to make sure that she goes without nothing."
While Wright says that people will often tell her about the resources available in the community, it is not always easy to get to or use.
With the 2022 K-Count showing various types of houselessness in Madison County, affecting individuals at all stages of life. During that K-Count, 56 people were utilizing emergency shelter in Madison County, and since there were no individuals in transitional housing, only 11 individuals were unsheltered at that time.
Given the increase in local resources in recent years, the big question is: Why are there still people not receiving services?
According to May Katherine Stinson, vice president of Room in the Inn-Berea, the issue is systemic, citing a long list of issues there prevent the unhoused from procuring services that can be both life-saving and life-changing.
"Since we don't have our own facility, we work with motel partners. While it hasn't happened yet, we have come close to running out of the amount of rooms needed to support the local need. With those partners, we have certain rules and guidelines that we have to respect. One of those is typically a policy that doesn't allow pets, which is often a big problem. It turns out, a lot of people have pets, and understandably, that's their best — sometimes only — friend. I can't count the number of people who have reached out to us for shelter, then we find out that they have pets," explained Stinson.
For Wright, the inability to bring Smoosh is a dealbreaker.
Before she lost her home, she raised Smoosh from a pup while saving Smoosh's mother, who was very ill, and her five other pups. Smoosh was the runt of the litter, meaning Wright had to take special care of her to make sure that she survived, including bottle-feeding her.
Stinson's assessment of houseless pet owners would be correct for Wright, as she openly declares that Smoosh saved her life, helping her with her anxiety and suppressing suicidal thoughts.
"I've gone without to make sure that she goes without nothing. That is the only thing that has kept me from trying to rid the city of myself at times, because like I said, you know, it's one thing right after another...She's just been the most constant [thing] that I've had, and no matter what's going on in my life, she's still there. You know, I can count on her. and I can't say that for the people around because people tend to your wonderful at the moment, but when you don't serve that purpose anymore, then you don't matter."
Stinson also mentioned a lack of identification (ID), health issues, and transportation as issues that unhoused people have with receiving local services. Wright and Stinson referenced an additional burden for the unhoused: guarding their belongings, as they will typically carry all that they have with them at all times — not only because they have nowhere else to put it, but also for protection.
"They will steal your underwear," remarked Wright. "So, you know, say you go to jail, which is not something I never thought would happen, but you come out after getting the paper giving you your court date, and they steal your stuff."
Stinson also addressed flaws in assistance programs, including requiring the maintenance of houselessness to qualify, stating, "If you manage to get on a waiting list for housing, the lists are long. While you're waiting for some programs and assistance, you also have to remain houseless to qualify for those services. Some landlords will not accept Section 8 housing vouchers, some properties are in disrepair, and finding housing is difficult. Not having an address can also affect people's ability to apply for these programs."
These are frustrations shared by another local housing nonprofit, Madison Home Inc. Executive Director Melissa Slone recently posted in the Madison Home Inc. Facebook group, calling for compassion for the unhoused and action from city officials.
An except from the post says, "Our unhoused population is continuing to grow and if we don't establish a permanent shelter soon, we are going to have to face a very sad reality. Almost every day someone tells me they never thought they'd be in this situation. Not everyone is a criminal, a drug user, or someone who just don't want to work. It's those who are terminally ill who had to choose their medicine over a home, it's children who go to school right here in our county, it's entire families, it's our elderly. It's people who do have jobs, but don't make enough to keep a roof over their heads. This is the reality that we are facing everyday."
Wright, as someone who lives chronically unhoused, expressed that individuals in the community should look for ways to support each other and spread kindness. She encourages people to carry Narcan, which can be found for free at the Madison County Detention Center, as well as to be understanding of peoples' situations.
"I'm a human being just like anybody else," she said. "And nobody is that far from being where I'm at right now. They don't know what caused me to be here. So you can't just say that I'm a bad person."
