Joy is All We Have: Wisdom from Those Who Experience Homelessness

A man signs into a counseling center with the name “God.” While the staff struggles to know who God is, the man soon decides he’s not God after all.

“Probably a good decision,” the counselor says, asking what brought him to this realization.

“Yes,” he says. “I have decided I am not God because the job is too hard.”

This is just one of the stories in Joy Is All We Have, an inspirational memoir by Ann Rotermund, a retired counselor who worked with homeless men and women for twenty-nine years at the Saint Patrick Center in Saint Louis, Missouri, where her experiences with this group became a personal catalyst of change.

Rotermund shares these lessons here, showing how the people she helped overcame adversity and sickness in their search for better health. At times, they failed or disappeared from the center, not to be seen again. But at other times, Rotermund experienced transformative moments, like getting someone who really didn’t have the right words to find another way to communicate.

Stories are universal, and if we milk the meaning from Rotermund’s stories, maybe we can all increase our compassion and awareness.

Ann Rotermund is a retired counselor who worked with homeless men and women for nearly three decades. She earned her master’s degree in counseling and worked at the Saint Patrick Center in Saint Louis, Missouri, for twenty-nine years. The experience gave her insight and joy as the growth of those she helped became her own. While retired, Rotermund continues helping people as an Anthropedia Well Being Coach, determined to help them live more fully in mind, body, and spirit.