Bronwyn Carver is pragmatic. About three years ago, she suddenly became homeless. She calls the experience, simply, “an adjustment.” She knew some things; she learned others.
“Not that I’m a tough girl or anything, but I’m very street smart already,” she said. “Coming from New York, I already had a sixth sense about things. I tread lightly where I need to. I’m careful where I go at night. I’m aware of my surroundings at all times. I walk with intent and purpose. I don’t keep my money anywhere where it can be taken.” Simple.
She’s also a romantic. Named after a character in her mother’s favorite book, “How Green Was My Valley,” Bronwyn gave her own daughters names that encrypt the name “Ann” somewhere in their spelling. “Ann means ‘by the grace of God’,” Bronwyn said. “So I gave them all a talisman, to keep them safe.”
A published writer, an artist and a jewelry designer, Bronwyn reads everything from Charles Bukowski to William Burroughs to cheap zombie books.
Bronwyn’s mother had borderline schizophrenia (“she talked in tongues”). Her dad was an alcoholic who was gone for months at a time. “It was a volatile household,” she said.
Bronwyn left home for good when she was 16. Eventually, she got married and moved to Arizona and then to Las Vegas. She and her husband raised three daughters, who are now adults. She wrote for a magazine called Las Vegas Music Scene, interviewing alternative music bands and doing CD reviews. She wrote “dirty stories” for Erotica magazine.
Tiring of the desert and the gambling culture in Las Vegas, Bronwyn and her husband moved to Portland with his band. The band quickly broke up.
“Drugs got in the way,” she said. “It’s hard to have a band when the guitarist pawns his guitar.”
Their 15-year marriage also ended. Bronwyn worked a series of jobs, as a grocery checker, selling shoes, selling furniture, working the register on the graveyard shift at Frolics, an adult bookstore. Most of the jobs were stressful, and most of them she hated.
Then, in 2015, she said, “I lost my place.” It was a no-fault eviction. Bronwyn and her second husband had been paying $850 for a two-bedroom in inner Southeast, where they been for 15 years. The landlord saw an opportunity to remodel and charge twice the rent. Finding another place was impossible.
“The cheapest I could find was $900,” she said. “Then they want first and last month’s rent, deposit, application fee, cat fee. We’re up to four grand! I didn’t have that!”
So Bronwyn and her husband were homeless. They moved into a van, but the city had it towed because of expired tags. Most of their stuff, they never got back.
The biggest loss was her art and her jewelry, much of which she had made herself.
“I make three-dimensional art,” she said. “They’re collages, but I layer them, so they’re tactile, as well, so there’s dimension and interest in it. I like to combine nature and man-made items. Branches and chicken wire, or things like nuts and bolts.”
Losing the van and having to move to a camp “was actually a blessing,” she said. “My cats prefer to be out of the van, it’s more spacious.”
“The first year we were out we had that horrible winter. We didn’t know anything,” she said. “Now we know about hand sanitizer and how that burns to stay warm, which Dumpsters have all the food that’s still wrapped, that’s still good. All of these things that you pick up, you become very self-supporting, so Armageddon, bring it on! I’m ready.”
Bronwyn got into Street Roots via another vendor. She was holding up a sign at an off ramp near Emmanuel Hospital where a Street Roots vendor was also selling the paper. He encouraged her to look into Street Roots.
Her first poem for Street Roots – she’s had three published so far – is titled “A Tale from the Ramp.” “It’s about ‘flying a sign’ and having your pride stuck in your throat,” she said.
With Streets Roots, it’s different.
“Street Roots gives me the opportunity to earn the money, and feel some sense of pride about it. And of course, getting published in there is really nice, too.
“I encourage people even if you’re buying it to support me, please open it up and read it. It’s an award-winning paper, the journalism is bar none. You’re going to get a real story, not something just picked up off the wire.”
Bronwyn’s considering going back to Portland Community College, where she has already taken two years of journalism, creative writing, ceramics and figure drawing. She has a hard time staying focused on her art because of her bipolar disorder.
“It seems like the older I’ve gotten, the worse it becomes,” she said. She’s hopeful that the medication and dosage she’s using now will be effective.
“When you’re manic, it’s like your filter is bad. My husband is really helpful during those times. He touches my shoulder or back just to let me know, ‘It’s too much; reel it in.’”
Despite her challenges, Bronwyn’s upbeat about her life.
“I feel like I know a secret that most people don’t. I don’t need the material things to make me who I am or to bring me happiness or joy. I don’t have to work for somebody else to make their dream come true versus my own. When I was working, I would stress so much. I was just so wrapped up and involved and killing myself slowly. And now, I really don’t have stress. Honestly, the biggest stress now is when we’re told we have to move.”
You can find Bronwyn at her sales post outside the New Seasons on North Williams Avenue or at the corner of North Gantenbein Avenue and Cook Street.
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