The Salt Lake City home where Brian Higgins slept at night had been destroyed after a flood, with bare walls all the way to the timber framing and electrical wiring.

The owners had allowed Higgins, who had been homeless for months, to stay over the winter if he was mainly staying in the basement. So he stuck a shower curtain over the missing windows to fight the cold and lay down on a mattress with a few blankets.

In the morning he would brew coffee in a blue plastic kettle – the same one he also used to heat his soups and stews later in the day.

When he first became homeless, he would stick to certain routines, often going to the library to fill out job applications and check his emails. Over the weeks and months, however, he had given up on trying to create a sense of normalcy. He expected his alcohol and substance use to kill him soon anyway.

“I thought there was no answer for me,” said the 44-year-old.

Then one day, unexpectedly, a mere encounter with children in a park shattered his resignation – and changed the course of his life. In the eight years since that turning point, he came out of homelessness, founded a non-profit organization, and became a leading advocate for mental health.

Now he occupies a critical position on the state’s new homeless council, occupying the one seat reserved for someone who has actually experienced the hardships the panel is trying to cope with.

“To have that system-level voice… we didn’t have that,” said Michelle Flynn, executive director of the nonprofit The Road Home, which operates two of the Salt Lake County resource centers. “That someone can take a look at the big picture and see how the system works and have that voice at the table, I’m delighted. “

Wayne Niederhauser, Utah’s homeless services coordinator, said Higgins’ ideas will help the council – which formed earlier this year as part of the state’s efforts to streamline funding and services – understand the links between trauma and housing loss.

Researchers found that child abuse, neglect, or family dysfunction in a person’s youth is linked to housing instability later in life, with 77% of men homeless and 85% of women homeless in a study reporting a form of childhood trauma.

Niederhauser said that before becoming the state coordinator, he thought about homelessness in terms of the need for a job or to get rid of an addiction.

“I am a perfect example of misunderstanding and being misinformed,” he said. “Having been involved now in homeless services, having done some outreach, getting to know people in this situation, this is not what I expected. It’s different. I did not understand. And having [Higgins] it will help us to understand.

Higgins says no one could have pushed him to seek healing before he was ready, and state officials and service providers can’t force anyone else to this point either.

“But once someone asks,” he said, “we have to be there with the answers.”

“Everything started to fall apart”

Higgins arrived in the United States at the age of 26, traveling on a special visa from his native Northern Ireland.

He had grown up surrounded by violence and sectarian conflict, but it was not until he left his home country that the post-traumatic stress of these experiences began to plague him.

“It wasn’t until I was taken out of the situation,” he said, “that everything started to fall apart for me.”

A flashback from a car or just noises around the house could trigger a wave of panic. At one point, he stuck foam plugs on the backs of his closet doors, as the sound of their slamming would remind him of gunshots.

His mental state worsened as he entered and left psychiatric services and sought relief in treatment centers. He tried traditional talking therapy, meditation, and yoga. He even tried the primal cry therapy, but nothing seemed to work.

Alcohol reduced the fear.

Higgins recently told the state’s homeless council he had his first drink when he was 4 and started trying to quit when he was 19. But his attempts at sobriety were usually short-lived and came in response to a crisis.

“I lost the car, lost the girlfriend, lost the job, whatever,” he said. “And then once I got those things back, it was like a clock, it was just a stopwatch to start drinking and using again.”

Despite this, he was able to work in architectural design for some time. He married, moved to Utah, and became a father.

Below, however, her family life was crumbling. During the recession, Higgins quit his job and honestly says he wasn’t even upset. This meant he could stay home all day and drink.

Then one day, almost exactly ten years ago, he returned home to find that the locks had changed.

He stayed in a hotel for a little while, then crashed onto a friend’s couch and some hostels. When his money ran out, he had nowhere else to go but the shelter or the street. He was too embarrassed to ask his friends for help.

“Weapons are bananas”

The plan, Higgins said, was to drink and use substances until his death.

Being in shelters exacerbated her post-traumatic stress disorder. Between his mistrust of strangers and his fear of being recognized in the street by a friend, he isolates himself when he can. He resented most of the people he passed in public, remarking that they refused to make eye contact and treated him as invisible.

Once he gained access to the abandoned Sugar House, he retreated there. He was convinced that there was no hope for him.

Higgins remembers boiling over with “hate and bile” one day in the park, as he looked around at the people in the park. No one would be ready to help, he thought, or even acknowledge its existence.

A group was picnicking nearby and a few children were running around playing with a banana. They walked over to him, pointed the banana at him and pretended to fire like a pistol.

One of Higgins’ recurring and disturbing flashbacks of the trauma in Northern Ireland was of men pulling him out of a car and putting a gun to his head. The banana gun recalled that violent image, he said, but transformed it as well.

“The thought occurred to me, that if these two kids really believe that this banana is a gun, there is no reason I couldn’t believe the opposite to be true,” did he declare. “These guns are bananas.”

This moment marked the start of his recovery journey, prompting him to admit he needed help and reconnect with resources and services. He was able to find housing, find a job and started volunteering with The Road Home.

The epiphany in the park also helped shape his way of thinking about recovering from trauma.

Years later, he founded a nonprofit called Mental Healthy FiT, an organization that uses storytelling and creativity to help de-stigmatize mental health issues. He has worked with veterans, refugees, youth and marginalized communities, he said.

Through his program, he said, people often create works of art featuring “fictional avatars” that go through trauma but find their way to happiness.

At the end of the program, participants perform or show their work in front of an audience.

“Now there are about 100 people in the audience, 100 strangers, applauding them,” he said. “It might be the first time in their life that someone has paid attention to them.”

But one turning point isn’t enough for someone trying to leave addiction behind or heal from trauma, Higgins says. Tracking is an equally essential part of the system, said Higgins, which he had learned from his 18 months of roaming.

In a presentation to the state council that will guide Utah’s homeless service system, Higgins said he has relapsed into alcohol several times over the past decade and that he had taken several years longer to achieve sobriety than to find stable accommodation.

His sobriety is strong now, but he knows it depends on the daily rituals of taking care of himself, helping others and making progress.

He now leads a simple life of gratitude, he said, even for elements of his past.

Recently, while searching his Salt Lake City home, Higgins came across the blue plastic kettle he was once using to heat coffee and soup in the abandoned house. When he found it, he smiled.