The video presents Jamika (Jameka) Palmer’s testimony about a life marked by chronic trauma, homelessness, and suicidal ideation. She recounts a violent childhood—her father died when she was six after involvement in drug dealing and gang extortion, and her mother, who suffered from severe mental‑health issues, often brought her to shelters during fights. Repeated episodes of homelessness left her sleeping in a car, using a makeshift fabric curtain for privacy, and feeling hopeless. After a suicide attempt at age twelve, she spent seven days in a hospital where she was told her children would be taken away. Determined to regain custody, she sought help from OnRamp, a program run by The Relatives, where she was assigned a caseworker named Sean. Through OnRamp’s case management, therapy, and workshops, Jamika discovered coding and earned marketable tech skills (CompTIA A+, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MongoDB, MySQL, React.js). These credentials, combined with therapeutic support, enabled her to meet the requirements for child‑custody reinstatement and to envision a stable, brighter future. Sean and the staff emphasize her dedication and potential, framing her story as a testament to the life‑changing impact of comprehensive social‑service programs.
Chapters
I've been homeless several times. The last time I had a car, I would go to Planet Fitness and go work out and shower. I actually got a long piece of fabric from Walmart, and I would stick one end in my back window so it would kind of just create this little space.
I was homeless for 3 years.
I got to a place where I just felt like I had— I just, I didn't know what to do. I didn't— my life was so bad, I didn't see a way out. My dad, he started selling crack, and he started doing, like, extortion work for gangs, and he died when I was 6. My mom— we're all coming from a time when it's like not— you don't talk about sexual assault or child molestation or child abuse. She came from a really traumatizing, like, My mom had a traumatic background, so she suffered with a lot of, like, emotional, mental health issues. Those issues were, like, projected onto us. When my mom and I would get into fights that were too bad, she would bring me to the shelter up here. I don't know a time when I was just like, was a child who wasn't traumatized. Just my entire life has just been trauma, just like wading through incident after incident after incident of just turmoil. So that's really all I know, but I'm trying to get to a place where it's different, where it's like brighter and it's sunny and I'm emotionally stable, especially because I have kids and I don't, I don't want that to affect them. I've struggled with suicidal ideations and making attempts on my life a lot since I was like 12. I would always just want to die. I put my youngest in the car And I went to the hospital and I just said, I need help. I need help. They're just like, we gotta take your kids. And I went into the hospital and I stayed there for 7 days. There really wasn't any real help. There wasn't like a real therapist or anyone. And so I was like, well, if, if I have nothing and I have to get my kids back, then I need to go somewhere where I know there are resources. I go up to OnRamp and I didn't have a plan at that point, so I was kind of just in there. When you go to OnRamp, you get a caseworker, and I got, I got Sean.
Jameka Palmer is the type of client you want to get into social work for. This is a person who is pretty devoted to bettering herself. At the Relatives, it is a privilege to be able to work with somebody like Jameka. At the end of the day, we are here to help save lives. I think Jameka Palmer has as bright a future as anybody.
I would go to their workshops. That's when I came across coding. I wanted to get my CompTIA A+ certification. Now I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MongoDB, MySQL, React.js, and these are like all very marketable skills. Everything, the job, the housing, all of that, those were the requirements for me to get my kids back. Therapy, they helped me with that as well. OnRamp made that happen. There are people like me who are clawing to try to get somewhere, and they help. They give you the footholds to be able to make it to the top and ring that bell.
