Deachman: These faces will make you think differently about the homeless

Jodi McCullough is one of six people whose stylized portraits are on display throughout the LRT system as part of the Shepherds of Good Hope’s Faces of Hope campaign. The campaign aims to tell the stories of people whose lives have intersected with the organization. Photo by Tony Caldwell /PostmediaArticle content

If you’ve travelled on the Confederation LRT line lately, you may have noticed six stylized portraits on the stations’ walls. Each subject is someone whose life, in one way or another, has overlapped with the Shepherds of Good Hope. Their written stories are superimposed on each of the black-and-white images, the text following the contours and shadows of their faces. In that way, their stories are literally etched on their faces.

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Each is also accompanied by a QR code, so commuters can discover these stories at their convenience.

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Together, the six portraits comprise Faces of Hope, a campaign by the Shepherds aimed at breaking down the stigma of homelessness. The images remind us that behind every person in need of shelter are friends and families whose lives are also affected. The homeless are not mere statistics, or one-dimensional stories. They are community members as much as you and I.

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At the campaign’s launch the other day, one of the portraits and stories especially caught my imagination. The woman in the photo is Jodi McCullough, a Gatineau resident and mother of a four-year-old girl. I wondered what she saw when she looked at her photo. Did she just see a picture of herself, or did she see her identical twin sister, Jordan Leigh McCullough, some of whose ashes Jodi keeps in a crucifix she wears around her neck? And I wondered how Jodi felt as March 15 approached, the date marking the second anniversary of Jordan’s death from a fentanyl overdose when she was just 29.

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Jodi McCullough stands alongside her portrait inside the Rideau LRT station. Hers is one of six portraits and stories that make up the Shepherds of Good Hope’s Faces of Hope campaign. Photo by Tony Caldwell /PostmediaArticle content

Growing up in Brownsburg-Chatham, Que., near Lachute, the sisters were always close, in those ways non-twins can only imagine. They shared a bedroom until they were 12, and felt each other’s emotions. They asked the same questions. They cheered one another on as Jordan sang and Jodi danced. In a difficult upbringing without other siblings or a father figure, the two often had only each other to rely upon, with Jordan — the elder by 13 minutes — typically assuming the maternal role.

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“She was my protector, my mother, my safe place and my best friend,” recalls Jodi.

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There were traumas, including feelings of abandonment and self-doubt. Jordan numbed hers with substance use. In her 20s, she’d been a client at the Shepherds of Good Hope, staying at their shelter in Ottawa when the guilt of couch-surfing with friends and family got too great to bear.

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“She always felt like a burden,” says Jodi. “Even at her lowest, she was always apologizing. She had so much guilt and shame.”