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Just In Time For The Holidays 2025
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In Their Own Words: Sauna
An original poem on resilience
March 22, 2024
Upcoming events
March 23: My Life, My Story Kickoff
March 23: Pathways Financial Simulation Workshop
March 25: Financial Fitness 102 Workshop
March 30: JIT Block Party Event
At Just in Time’s recent Rise to Resilience Conference, Sauna, a Just in Time alumni performed an original spoken word poem written for the event. The deeply personal poem details Sauna’s own challenges growing up and her bittersweet journey to empowerment.
Have you ever felt so low that the ground felt high?
Your mind saying give up , but you hear hope whisper give it one more try
At your weakest point
But still feeling heavy
About to break
Like a New Orleans Levy
Your insides wanna shout
You want to reach for more but you’re filled with self doubt
Feeling like you’re a endless road with no route
No destination
Drifting , a lonely state
Tell me, Can you relate ?
DID YOU KNOW?
Sauna Johnson Joined the Just in Time community in 2016 when she participated in the My First Home service to help her furnish her first apartment. She has also participated in Career Horizons, College Bound and Basic Needs. As an alumni, she remains and active member of the Just in Time community.
“Rise to resilience”
Broken
Beat down
Hope gone
Stoic
Your minds closed off
And your hearts not open
Blind to reality
Damaged mentality
Frozen in time stuck in a zone
A room full of people and feeling alone
I was 8
The first time i seen my father arrested
I was conflicted about this, it was the first time i found out you could feel
Two emotions at the same time
I felt relief , for my mother
She’d now be safe
But sadness for my father
Because he’d now be caged
As i watched a neighbor explain to the officer what happened
I saw one sentence become his sentence
Wait
Maybe i was 10 the first i felt real hunger
My sisters and i sat in a room and wondered if we should leave that room and search for our mother
Let me see
I feel like i was 13 the first time i felt alone
I fell asleep on the trolly because i had no where to go , no home , no phone, just me alone
I had to be 14 the first that i thought i might be dumb. I was in math class and i could not catch on, the information wouldn’t stick. It wouldn’t be until much later , i realized it wasn’t me i just moved around so much i didn’t have time to retain it.
Hmmm
I was 15 when i wrote my first poem
I didn’t recite it out loud at first.
it just sat in my journal. Even though i didn’t say it out loud
Not one word. It was the first time i ever felt heard.
And if I’m being honest
I don’t remember how old i was when i realized that my circumstances did not have to dictate my future.
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That the cards you’re dealt don’t have to be the hand you play.
That people enjoy watching a sunset slowly because deep down we all know that sometimes the most Beautiful moments are delayed
That hearing the word No doesn’t mean Never. It can mean Not right now or Not at this time, but if i keep pushing success can be mine.
When you are defeated that does not mean you have died.
Change that thought to
“Now i have arrived”
Because that moment you thought would define you , look at you, you survived
So
When you feel those low moments that i described
Close your eyes and remember everything you been through , the moments that knocked you down and you decided to rise
Live in it , just for a moment
Own it
Feel it
List it
and then immediately after honor your
RESILIENCE
