Fear Fighter

The memories are still haunting. Her two year old being pulled from her arms. Her four year old screaming he promised to be good if they let him stay.  Having to watch helplessly as they took away all four of her children. She was sick, and her desire to live was gone. “My spark was almost dead because my body felt like it was dying and my mind was almost gone,” she recalls.

 

Those memories are hard places for Shanna Delap to return to. It was the most difficult time of her life. But this story, including all of its challenges, is what fueled an incredible transformation and the birth of a dream.

 

Shanna was hospitalized after her children were taken away. She had been misdiagnosed previously, and was on a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs. Her doctors later told her that the combination she was taking should have killed her. During her hospitalization, she discovered she was pregnant. Doctors quickly suggested an abortion, as they believed the baby would be disabled due to the drug complications. Shanna refused. She left the hospital with the clothes on her back, and found herself without a job, a car, and homeless. She was estranged from her family and had lost every friend she ever had when her kids were taken away.

 

With nowhere else to turn, she went to the Appleton shelter. During her initial meetings, doctors and social workers told her the situation was impossible. They said “The kids you already have deserve better, and you need to sign this paper to give your baby up for a special needs adoption. You can’t do this.”

 

What they didn’t know about Shanna is that she was a fighter. She loved her kids with everything she had, and she committed to doing anything she could to get them back. It was seven months of hard work before she was able to see her kids again. Even then, it was in a supervised room with a two way mirror. It only made her fight harder to find a place to live and prove she could support and care for her children. She continued to hear from everyone that she couldn’t do it. It was impossible. Yet, she didn’t believe them. She knew she could do it.

 

During mandatory morning meetings at the shelter, she would hear people list all of the reasons they couldn’t do something. It would light a fire under her as she would tell them “Don’t tell me you can’t do it. I’m pregnant and homeless. I’m still doing it, and you can too.”

 

When she delivered her daughter, Grace, the only person in the room was an administrator from the shelter. Not long after the birth, the shelter started a program to help raise awareness of kids and homelessness. They chose to name it Project Grace, after Shanna’s daughter. She developed a strong relationship with the shelter staff, as they watched and encouraged her to keep fighting. She was quickly becoming an exception to the rule when it came to beating homelessness.

 

The staff noticed something different in Shanna. She was fighting like many others weren’t, and she was determined to prove everyone wrong. She found a job. She took taxis and buses to work. She walked wherever she could. She worked extremely hard to do what she knew was best for her family. It took just over one year, but she did it. She was reunited with her kids, had a steady job, and had found a place of her own to live. She had beaten the statistics.

Fast forward ten years later. Shanna’s life has not been easy. She has continued to beat the odds by fighting for everything she has. She was reunited with the shelter staff when she returned to her hometown of Appleton after living in Florida for a while. They were in the process of writing a story on the 10 year anniversary of Project Grace. Grace and Shanna were invited to be interviewed and attend a photoshoot for the newsletter article. During the photoshoot, a staff member asked Shanna a question that stirred something in her. They asked, “Would you be willing to speak at events for us?”

 

Shanna was shocked. Her immediate thought was “I am a single, working, low-income mother. I live in a 600 square foot apartment with three kids. I’m barely making ends meet. They will all laugh at me. What could I possibly offer anyone? I can’t do this.”

 

She put the volunteer application in her purse and left it there for weeks. Her entire life, people have told her she won’t make it. They’ve told her she’s not good enough, and she doesn’t have what it takes. Even though the idea of speaking to homeless intrigued her, she convinced herself she didn’t have anything to offer. She had forgotten her own story.

 

Then one day, she saw a blog post from Jon Acuff asking for adventurers.  She thought to herself, “That’s a dare!” Shanna has always been the kind of person to accept a challenge. As evidenced through her experience with homelessness, she is determined to face challenges head on. Shanna describes the beginning of the Start Experiment this way:

Joining this group was an act of boldness not often expressed.  Within the first few days, before the project had even actually begun, the community members of The Start Experiment encouraged me to just go ahead and do what I’d been fearing. I’d feared living. I feared acting on any of my dreams because I’d been told they were silly or impossible. However, I pushed forward. Within the first week of those 24 days, I pulled out that volunteer application, filled it out, and then took it one step further.

Shanna was also inspired by a comment from fellow Starter, Ryan Westbrooks, on one of the first days. He said, “Why are we all sitting around talking about what we want to do?” She felt that was another dare. It prompted her to get out the volunteer application for the shelter, and fill it out. Not only that, it pushed her to write a proposal for a peer mentoring project. The idea had been stirring since the shelter staff had asked her to speak. She would have loved to have someone mentor her when she was living in the shelter. Why couldn’t she mentor others and encourage them to push forward and take the necessary steps to beat homelessness?

 

Fear was telling her it wouldn’t work, and they would laugh at her proposal. But, thanks to her new Start Experiment friends, she punched fear in the face. She wrote the proposal, which included a very detailed and well thought out outline of her vision of the program. When she went to the shelter to submit the proposal, fear was still telling her they would think she was crazy. However, the reaction was quite different. After reading her proposal, the shelter staff said, “There’s nothing like this out there. We HAVE to do this!”

 

She was stunned, and excited. A few weeks later, she presented to the board of the homeless shelter. She was completely intimidated sitting in that room. Once again, she felt like she didn’t belong. But, when she started talking about the proposal, she realized what a big deal this really was to her. THIS was her passion.

 

She told the board, “I cannot be the only person who has this kind of fire that has lived or is living in a shelter. There have got to be more people like me living here now. Somebody has to help them re-ignite their fire. Everyone else is telling them they can’t do it. The people giving them their food stamps. The people who see them on the street and don’t believe they are a human being. The people who give them condescending sideways glances. The people who are making them feel unworthy. They have lost their spark. And I want to help them find it again. I want to give them hope. I want to help one person take steps that will change their life.”

 

The board loved her proposal. They believe that Shanna’s program will make a difference to the people living in their shelter. She will begin the first phase of her program next week, where she will lead morning meetings and be a voice of hope to the residents who are sitting where she once was.

There is no doubt Shanna’s dream of reaching one is going to impact so many more than she can possibly imagine. Her passion and drive was reignited from The Start Experiment. She has found encouragement and challenge and love here. She sums it up perfectly by saying, “This experience has led me to begin to realize my crazy dreams really are possibilities.”