Insight from OFP Interns: Holly Kaiser, Metro State University BSW Intern
What was your experience as an OFP intern?
My time spent interning with Our Front Porch has been filled with laughter, heartbreak, resiliency, and learning. When I started in late August 2020, I jumped right into the reality of the impact home fires have on survivors and the community. COVID-19 may have shut down the world, but human suffering had not stopped. From the first day of my internship, I was full speed ahead with helping people who had been displaced due to a home fire. I gained the greatest insight into the state of the housing market and how difficult it is to get people into affordable housing in the Denver metro area. The greatest joy I experienced came when clients proclaimed that just knowing that someone was in their corner while going through a horrendous experience was uplifting to them. Working with Heather and Maggie has been a wonderful experience. Their love, passion, and dedication to Our Front Porch is obvious with each interaction I have with them. Maggie has provided me with a wealth of social work knowledge while working through difficult cases. I am happy that I chose to intern with OFP and was able to be a part of such a wonderful agency built by two unique women.
The most profound sentence I have heard from a handful of clients these last seven months still resonates so deeply: “Thank you for not giving up on me.” I am learning from my clients how difficult it is to navigate after a home fire. They share about unwavering stress, profound grief, and a new need to rely on the people around them… something so difficult and humbling especially for my most independent clients. As people navigate finding new housing, recovering items/documents, and renegotiating boundaries with loved ones, it can seem like nothing is going well for them. I work with these clients in case management and therapy, and I am amazed. They navigate such profound difficulty with tremendous resilience, and they often experience a newfound softening towards leaning on others. That is where that sentence—thank you for not giving up on me—comes in. I am always caught off guard, in part because I can forget how exposed they feel in losing the four walls they could safely live behind. Yet, in calling our clients each week, listening to their stories, and empathizing with them throughout the highs and lows of rebuilding their lives, I see their resilience and courage to keep going. I cannot help but feel honored to enter into their stories and offer support in the small ways I can… but more than anything it has shown me the importance of offering support to my loved ones and receiving support as well. We are all so much stronger when we can lean on each other.
