God is a great recycler – he took a broken, shattered woman and slowly breathed life into her again. I began to trust people enough to make some wond… - Ingrid Andersen

The first poem in my childhood notebook was written when I was eleven. It was a poem about the conflict I felt when my cat had slaughtered a bird. I don’t remember much about my writing before then, just that I always escaped into words.

I was a solitary child who lived in a world of words and music, of imagination and the arts and I felt keenly the vast divide between myself and the children about me. It felt very much as if I’d been absent on the day they gave out the handbook on how to relate to other children and how to be a part of the group. It was only as an adult that I found other people who saw and experienced the world as I do.

The most important part of my ministry to homeless people was knowing their names and their stories and loving them just as they were. Counselling the homeless couple whose baby died before his first birthday. Listening to yet another long, wheedling scam story from a guy asking for money for a train trip to a new job. Laughing with him that he thought the story would actually work on me. And then helping him in ways that were better than giving him money to buy skokiaan at the shebeen on the streets amongst the corporate headquarters in Rosebank.