The first thing I notice about Betty Jo Griffiths is more than just her immediate smiling personality or her kindness.
It’s the joyful calm of her spirit. So much so that I forget what questions I have planned to ask that day.
Betty Jo’s youngest child had just moved out when she was laid off from her job as a certified nursing assistant of about 30 years. The collapse of the housing market and recession left her unable to pay her mortgage and she lost her house, forcing her and her husband into a motor home for three years. Then she found that she had been living with a tumor for a year. She had a routine hysterectomy and died on the table for two minutes. If that wasn’t traumatic enough, her motor home caught fire, leaving her and her husband living in a tent in Roseburg.
“That was the beginning of my spiritual awakening,” she said. It was these tragedies, she said, that began to bring her to her current state of empathy, love and acceptance.
She’s worked as a nursing assistant since she was 16, and she said she never felt the love from her family that she believes is the most important thing parents can give to their children — what she wishes she had shown her own children more when they were growing up.
“What’s more important, buying your kids everything they want, or actually spending time and teaching them stuff? That’s what’s more important,” she said.
She used to make assumptions about people who were in similar situations to the one she has experienced.
“I used to judge them,” she said. “They must be homeless because they’re on drugs or they just don’t care.”
Through her own personal tragedies and through her own spiritual growth with her husband, who is a minister, she has come to not just accept others, but also empathize with them.
“I have learned that everybody has a story,” she said. “And some are more tragic than others. And I understand addiction to drugs and alcohol because I’ve seen it, seen a lot of it.”
She and her husband love to do as much as they can to help others who are struggling with homelessness, hopelessness and addiction. She says it’s not uncommon for people struggling with addiction and hopelessness to come to the door of her and her husband’s new motor home. Her husband will pray with them.
“They just need love,” she says. “You don’t have to give them everything, just let them know that they’re worthy.”
Now, Betty Jo’s husband is working in demolition, giving them money to save up for their future plans of having a farm that would be a safe place for families struggling with addiction, and she is selling Street Roots to meet daily needs.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “I didn’t think I was going to be that good at it. But I’m pretty darn good at it. And I love what I do. I love being a vendor.”
Betty Jo’s joy is infectious. As she stands up as our interview ends, she gives me a hug.
“And how lucky am I? Truly blessed!” she said.
Before she left, she encouraged me to come see where she sells her papers, at the Alberta Co-op Grocery.
“Most beautiful people in the world are there,” she said.